Active Woman Traveler

Richmond, VA: Nearly 250 homes and gardens will be featured on 32 separate tours across the state of Virginia during 2013’s Historic Garden Week. 2013 also marks an important milestone in the annals of this venerable tradition: Historic Garden Week turns 80.

“Not only is it an exciting year for us, but it’s also an extraordinary collective effort,” notes Mary Frediani, co-chair of the Richmond tour. “Over 3,400 volunteers spend all year planning, preparing and producing the tours. I don’t think there is anything quite like it.”  

Beginning in the third week of April, hundreds of iconic “green arrow” signs will dot the landscape throughout the state leading the estimated 25,000 visitors who’ll make the pilgrimage to the country’s largest house and garden tour.  

Richmond’s tours, featured on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, April 23-25, feature 23 homes and gardens. “The houses and gardens on our tour represent a myriad of styles, tastes and periods” explains Noni Baruch, another co-chair of the Richmond tours. The neighborhoods of Chatham Hills and Windsor on the James are the focus of Tuesday’s Richmond tour. Historic Laburnum Park is featured on Wednesday, a tour produced in cooperation with Historic Richmond Foundation. “It’s a natural partnership,” notes Susan Fisher, chairman of HRF’s Historic Garden Week effort. “We offer house and garden tours which compliment the Richmond tour, but have a unique ‘Historic Richmond’ perspective.” Rothesay Circle, Loch Lomond and Windsor Farms are featured on Thursday’s tour.         

Special events are a hallmark of the 2013 Garden Week experience. “We’ve been working on a number of exciting events throughout the week,” says Madeline Mayhood, also Richmond co-chair. “We’ve partnered with many of the sites who have been recipients of Historic Garden Week proceeds throughout the years, including Maymont and Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.” Other highlighted events include special tours at Tuckahoe Plantation, boyhood home of Thomas Jefferson, which celebrates its 280t anniversary in 2013, and 80th On Main: From Plum to Vine, in which several galleries along West Main Street will remain open late on Thursday evening to celebrate Historic Garden Week’s 80th birthday and to wrap up the Richmond tour; the galleries will feature art and artists with a botanical focus.  

100% of Historic Garden Week tour proceeds have funded numerous restoration projects statewide, among them Mount Vernon, the pavilion gardens at the University of Virginia, Poplar Forest, Wilton House, the Executive Mansion, Capitol Square and the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library.

Learn more at the Virginia Garden Week web site.