Mrs. David Holmes’ garden work in Williamsburg, Virginia, requires a green thumb, a working knowledge of botany, birds, history, and architecture – and a comfortable pair of shoes.
A lecturer and hostess with Colonial Williamsburg, the non-profit organization restoring Williamsburg to its 18th-century splendor as the capital of the Virginia colony, her specialty is a daily garden tour.
Such tours will be a feature of the 1955 Garden Symposium March 9-11 and March 16-18, which Colonial Williamsburg co-sponsors with FLOWER GROWER.
Design and Features of Restored Gardens
Mrs. Holmes’ tours, which originated 10 years ago, take visitors through at least six private restored gardens not generally open to the public. Each day (except Sunday) at 10:00 A.M.
She meets her garden tourists at the Courthouse of 1770 on Duke of Gloucester Street, and they walk from one garden to the next, inspecting plants, designs, and gardening methods used in the days of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.
The magnolias, crape-myrtles, and mockingbirds attract the interest of many of the garden visitors from the North, where such Southern garden features are unknown. But practically every state is represented by the 3,000 persons who go along on the garden tours annually.
Whether the visitors are from California or Connecticut, generally, they are interested in the same questions: “What ideas can I borrow from the 18th century for my garden back home?”
“Many,” says Mrs. Holmes. To help her visitors find ideas, she encourages questions on any of the garden features. That’s where her knowledge of history, horticulture, birds, botany, and building comes in handy.
18th Century Garden Life
Most of the questions arise from a mistaken idea visitors have about 18th-century gardens. They come to Williamsburg expecting to seem old-fashioned. Victorian-type gardens with helter-skelter designs and an abundance of lilacs and roses.
Williamsburg’s restored gardens, with designs carefully outlined by walks. rows of hedges and lines of fences surprise many visitors. Design came first two hundred years ago, flowers second.
In re-creating 18th-century Williamsburg, Colonial Williamsburg got down to earth in the restoration – right down to the plants and garden designs used two hundred years ago.
That is why visitors won’t see annuals such as petunias and zinnias in the restored gardens. Such plants were unknown in 18th-century America.
Part of Mrs. Holmes’ work has been historical research on garden plants to make sure those used today in restored gardens were used during the days of the Revolutionary War.
She falls back on her history to explain many of the questions asked by her garden visitors. For instance, her answer to the query about topiary work is:
“When the colonists began settling in Virginia, they felt they were living on the edge of a wilderness. They were homesick for the civilization, which included the formal gardens they had left across the sea.
So, in surrounding themselves thus with such formalized devices as topiary work, they felt they had affected some order from the encircling wilderness.”
Gardens and orchards in those days provided beauty and recreation, food, brandy, and medicine.
There were plots for vegetables and kitchen herbs as well as medicinal herbs. The 18th-century gardener relied on nature for his DDT, planting the strong-smelling chafe tree, pyrethrum, and others.
Chinese Influence on 18th Century Botanicals
After 10 years of garden tours, one feature of the 18th century particularly impresses Mrs. Holmes.
As she explains it: “It is fascinating to see how the Chinese influence so popular in 18th-century furnishings and even architecture spilled over into the botanical world.
So many plants popular then (and now) were imported from the Orient along with the textiles, spices, and porcelain.
For instance, the crape-myrtle. Oriental’ lilacs and the paper mulberry originated in the East.”
Dedication and Importance of Garden Tours
Mrs. Holmes walks about 15 miles weekly in explanation of the restored gardens. She believes Williamsburg’s colorful past means more to garden enthusiasts after they have toured the gardens.
Somehow, they understand better a background familiar to Washington and Jefferson after seeing a Williamsburg garden with the kind of plants and patterns these two patriots liked and used.
A typical tour would include the Blair Garden, famous for its herbs; the Bryant Garden, famous for its spring bulbs; and the gardens of the Dean, James Geddy, Curtis Maupin, Hartwell Perry, and the Taliaferro-Cole Houses.
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