I am not a gardener. I appreciate gardens, but I don’t garden. One of my good friends gardens, and she is in her happy place when she’s outside with her hands in the dirt.
A lot of people garden. In a taken in December, 2023, gardening is the 9th most popular hobby in the United States (after cooking/baking, reading, pets, video gaming, outdoor activities, traveling, socializing and DIY/arts and crafts).
The popularity of gardening will be on full display in Virginia from April 20-27; during this week, the 48 garden clubs affiliated with the Garden Club of Virginia will be celebrating “all things green and garden-related,” according to this article.
The Williamsburg Garden Club will be celebrating this event on April 23 from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The Garden Club tour will focus on the Walnut Hills neighborhood and Colonial Williamsburg. The houses on the tour will showcase their exterior gardens along with flower arrangements in the interior. According to the Garden Week chair for the Williamsburg club, four houses on Williamsburg’s tour have not been open before, so this will be a new experience for attendees.
In nearby Gloucester County, tours will be held over two days. On the first day, three homes on the Ware River—the Mazzocco Home, River Promise, and Paget – will be open to guests, along with the Fine Arts Museum of Gloucester. On the second day, guests can visit the Gardens of Goshen, described as “a spectacular, enormous property” that includes world-class sculptures. The chair of the Gloucester evens described is as a Very Big Deal.
In Essex County on the Middle Peninsula, the tour includes Mountcastle House (a modern farmhouse on the Rappahannock River) and historic Wheatland (a plantation home built in 1848). In the town of Tappahannock in Essex County, the properties on tour are Thornbury (a two-story Greek revival home on the Rappahannock River), Little Egypt (dating to the 1750s) and the Essex Inn (a bed and breakfast in an 1850-era brick Georgian Mansion.
Garden Week is happening across Virginia. If you live in the state, there’s probably a program near you. You could make it a thing. For information, visit https://www.vagardenweek.org/.
Sounds like fun!! 😎
A great opportunity to see lots of houses that none of us will ever live in - and most of us could afford the upkeep!
I am a gardner and rank it third (not 9th) after puppy and painting.... well, mostly painting the garden, so are they the same thing? Thanks for the reminder that Garden Week is just around the corner!