Historic Garden Week

September 10, 2024

2017 Tour Chairman Meg Clement, Three Chopt Garden Club

2018 Tour Chairman Stephie Broadwater, The Nansemond River Garden Club

Oatlands is one of the last of the great houses built by the descendants of Robert (“King”) Carter. Construction began in 1804. It was altered in 1827 to reflect the Federal style. George Carter himself laid out the terraced gardens and designed the greenhouse and forcing wall. In 1903, Oatlands was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. William Corcoran Eustis, who turned it into their summer home and restored it to its former glory, enhancing and enlarging the garden while remaining faithful to its original design. Conveyed to the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1965, the Garden Club of Virginia completed its first restoration project there, of the north forcing wall, in 1992. Two years later, English boxwood that had fallen prey to “boxwood decline” were replaced on the affected terraces using proceeds from past Historic Garden Week tours.

The white-pillared teahouse was added by Mrs. Eustis as a respite in the series of garden “rooms” that were created in her expansion of the formal grounds. The Garden Club of Virginia recently completed a restoration of the path to the teahouse.

Chairman Meg Clement and her team re-established a relationship with VDOT prior to the 2017 tour. VDOT personnel placed directional signs and picked them up on tour routes in counties across Virginia and created a map that Bartlett Tree Experts sponsored and Virginia Living distributed.

Located on the banks of the North River, 2018 Guidebook cover featured Auburn Plantation, one of the architectural and historical showplaces in Tidewater Virginia for almost two centuries. Completed in 1824 by Dr. Henry Wythe Tabb, it is an impressive Federal-style mansion of three stories over an English basement. Ancient trees, including a spectacular Kwanzan cherry, occupy a landscape filled with English boxwoods, azaleas, camellias, and crepe myrtles. Auburn comprises 31 acres of expansive lawns and gardens with broad views across the river to Ware Neck. After passing through various owners, including John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Auburn was purchased by the current owners in 1997.