Historic Garden Week

November 15, 2022

2013 Tour Chairman Anne Geddy Cross, The Ashland Garden Club

2014 Tour Chairman Alice Martin, The Petersburg Garden Club

Historic Garden Week celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2013, and what a celebration it was. The Guidebook was produced in-house and featured Tuckahoe Plantation on the cover. Publicity included coverage in Southern Living, Early American Home, Flower Magazine, US Airways inflight magazine, Virginia Living, Virginia Sportsman and the Boxwood Journal, among others. Veritas Winery created a special label wine, and GCV’s Restoration sites offered special events throughout the week. The anniversary tour was Historic Garden Week’s most financially successful in its 80-year history grossing over $1 million. 2013 Guidebook

The 2014 Guidebook cover featured the Anne Spencer Garden in Lynchburg, the retreat of the famed poet and gardener and twice the recipient of the Garden Club of Virginia’s Common Wealth Award. The tour was a huge success, despite significant rain affecting more than a third of the tours. Excellent publicity played a big part in this success. Coverage included Southern Living, Virginia Living, New York Times, Washington Post, numerous local newspapers, and a great interview with MayLily Lee on WVTF with Karen Miller, Sue Thompson and Peter Hatch. The Guidebook was a huge hit with a new size, better organized content using icons instead of redundant verbiage, color coordinating and a pull-out map to help plan itineraries. Online sales increased by $13,000 in 2014. 2014 Guidebook

The first GCV Boot Camp, aka “The Insider’s Guide Comes to Life,” was held August 20-21, 2013 in preparation for HGW in 2014. Fifty-eight attendees from member clubs, representing 26 out of 31 tours, walked into the Kent-Valentine House to find agendas and information sheets sticking out of wonderful Slogger boots, setting the tone for an informative and fun two days. Karen Miller and London Ray started things off with a plethora of useful information, former tour chairmen offered helpful hints, Will Rieley talked about the importance of GCV restorations, and attendees were offered an opportunity to tour historic Wilton House and gardens. Special guests included Anne Howard Spencer, daughter-in-law of the poet Anne Spencer, and her daughter Shaun Spencer-Hester.

The HGW marketing meeting was held on October 24 for 2014 tour chairmen, co-chairmen and publicity chairmen.

HGW Economic Impact

Executive Director Lynn McCashin reported at the 2014 Annual Meeting that a Virginia Tourism 2013 survey of online ticket buyers showed that this group was mostly female, from Virginia and all across the country, age 55-70 with income over $100K or more. Typical spending was $132 per day or $1200 if here for more than one day. The group is incredibly loyal and loves the gardens a little more than the houses. This information was a huge resource for all tours and tour chairmen. The data was scooped up at Boot Camp and used all over the state to leverage transportation, forge new partnerships, secure parking and show city officials how member clubs and HGW help the local economy. The numbers are important and impressive.

Buoyed by this experience and financially supported by a Bartlett Tree Experts partnership, the GCV has  embarked on a truly comprehensive study of Historic Garden Week and its economic impact on Virginia. Chmura Economics and Analytics, a highly respected firm, has been hired to develop the survey instruments and crunch the numbers. Several methods of data gathering are being used, including person-to-person interviews, electronic surveys and even old-fashioned pen and paper surveys. GCV wants to have a number that reflects not only the spending of visitors and homeowners, but also what the implications are for businesses and for jobs. This, combined with basic HGW expense from the local and state level, should provide a broad and descriptive picture.