Restoration And Research Fellowships

December 16, 2021

Chairman  Mina Wood, The Lynchburg Garden Club

Restoration Chairman Mina Wood reported at the 2004 Board of Governors on an investigative visit to Jamestown Island, as preparations were underway for the 2007 Jamestown quadricentennial celebration with a planned visit by Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Attendees were still dreaming about a royal visit when Mina delivered news about projects under consideration: Historic Virginia Gardens Part II, by Margaret Bemiss and Nancy Talley; a February 23 Restoration Workshop for site gardeners at Fredericksburg’s Ferry Farm; and a partnership with the Virginia Historical Society to digitize restoration landscape plans and records.

April 27 and 28 brought two glorious, sunny days for Restoration presentations. Nearly eighty visitors gathered on Wednesday for the presentation of the GCV restoration of a 19th-century perimeter fence surrounding the Sutherlin Mansion, now serving as the Danville Museum of Fine Arts and History. Photos

Thursday’s event brought another large gathering for the presentation of Sweet Briar’s newly installed Arrival Court in Amherst. The wide brick walks outlining the historic boxwood circle and newly planted native and exotic trees added to the original arboretum. The college was also presented with a site plan of Tusculum Institute, a historic preservation resource center on the campus dedicated to preserving and studying the region’s historic assets within a context of environmental stewardship. Photos

Mina Wood introduced three restoration projects at the 2005 Annual Meeting.

• Yeardley House Garden on Jamestown Island
• Pavilion IX Garden replanting
• Historic St. Luke’s Church in Isle of Wight refurbishments of a 2002 planting

In an update to the digitization project, Mina announced the committee had contributed $25,000 to the Virginia Historical Society to underwrite the digitization of restoration plans and documents.

She followed with a timeline of GCV association with the Adam Thoroughgood House. The relationship began in the late 1940s when GCV Landscape Architect Alden Hopkins designed a Colonial Revival garden for the property. When the property ownership changed hands from the City of Norfolk and the Chrysler Museum to the City of Virginia Beach in 2003, contracts between the new property owners and the Garden Club of Virginia had to be considered. Meanwhile, extensive research and archeology by Virginia Beach revealed that the house and garden might be later than thought when Hopkins designed the garden. As a result of these findings, and the fact that Virginia Beach purchased surrounding properties to prevent encroachment, the site called for reinterpretation. It was mutually agreed that the Garden Club of Virginia and Adam Thoroughgood House should suspend any further efforts to renew or maintain the 17th-century Hopkins garden.

At the 2005 fall Board of Governors, Mina Wood moved to set aside $25,000 from restoration funds for rebuilding a garden or gardens and/or the replacement of trees on the Gulf Coast, due to damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Motion was seconded and carried. The Restoration Committee intended to seek out a proper organization to direct the gift appropriately.

Attendees at the 2005 Annual Meeting learned that Pavilion IX was scheduled for refurbishment following completion of Pavilion III. Unfortunately, a severe storm came through Charlottesville and did extensive tree damage in the Pavilion VI Garden. The focus then switched to that garden, where additional problems related to its heavy use would require a new design to successfully replicate the intent of its earlier architects — Griswold, Parker, and Hopkins.

Mina announced at the 2006 Annual Meeting that work was in full swing at the Beale Garden, approved at the 2004 Annual Meeting. It is located in the heart of the Hollins University campus and was given to the university in honor of Lucy Preston Beale, an 1864 graduate, by her daughter. Roanoke landscape architect A. A. Farnham designed the original garden, constructed in 1930. This extensive Beale Garden restoration would include new stone walls, walks, benches, streamside improvement and native plantings.

Research Fellowships

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Mina reported at the 2004 Board of Governors Breport with exciting research fellowship news. The Favretti Fellowship was established in 1996, to be awarded annually for the study and documentation of private gardens. She announced a new research fellowship to begin in 2005, the Garden Club of Virginia Fellowship, for the study and documentation of public gardens. She added that 2004 Favretti Fellow Andrew Kohr from Ball State University had completed his summer studies in Charlottesville researching and recording the gardens at Mirador, home of the Langhornes, and was currently preparing his final report.

Three recipients were awarded Research Fellowship for summer 2005. Two inaugural Garden Club of Virginia Fellowship applicants were selected to document Gay Mont, a 2000-acre property and a well-documented 1825 garden in Caroline County, near Port Royal. Penny Heavener of George Washington University Landscape program was selected to research and organize the documents, and Courtney Hinson of North Carolina State Landscape Architecture program was selected to map and model the extensive terraces. Favretti Fellowship applicant Jacqueline Lazar from the Ball State Master of Landscape Architecture progran was selected to document Dan’s Hill in Danville, the 1830s family home and garden of John Wilson during Revolutionary times. Charles Gillette worked on some of the gardens during the late 1940s.

The 2006 Favretti Fellowship was awarded to Joshua Meyer, a student in landscape architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia, to document the garden at Tuckahoe Plantation in Richmond, Thomas Jefferson’s boyhood home. Tuckahoe is a National Historic Landmark and is the home of GCV member Sue Thompson and her husband, Addison B. Thompson.

The 2006 GCV Fellowship was awarded to Zachary Scott Rutz, MLA candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, to research the once spectacular garden designed in 1924 by Ellen Biddle Shipman at Chatham Manor.

Historic Chatham Manor, a Georgian-style brick manor house that sits on the banks of the Rappahannock River opposite the City of Fredericksburg, was once the site of an elegant 1924 Colonial Revival style garden designed by Ellen Biddle Shipman, one of only nine gardens that Shipman designed in Virginia. When the property changed hands, new owners felt the garden was attracting too many visitors, particularly after the property was opened for Historic Garden Week in 1938. In 1954, the owners asked Charles Gillette to simplify the gardens by removing Shipman’s parterres and labor-intensive beds of densely packed annuals along the axial walks. The once renowned gardens were largely forgotten when the National Park Service inherited the property in 1975. In the interest of preserving the legacy of Shipman’s design, the Restoration Committee visited Chatham Manor in 2005 and recommended the site be considered for a Garden Club of Virginia Fellowship.