In this Issue
Chairman’s Letter
Restoration Maintenance Workshop
Featured Property: Point of Honor
GCV Landscape Architecture Fellow
A Plant Worth Knowing: Ginkgo biloba
On The Road Again with the Restoration Committee
Announcements
- Restoration Committee Note Cards
|
|
Greetings,
I hope you all had a wonderful holiday filled with family and friends. 2024 is here, and the Restoration Committee is excited about the year ahead.
First, we hope you all will join us at the Kent-Valentine House in Richmond for our biennial Restoration Maintenance Workshop. This is a great opportunity to enjoy time with your fellow gardeners as well as gather new information about the care of historic landscapes. Restoration Committee members Sally Travis and Meg Turner have put together a terrific morning of speakers for you. See below for details and a link to online registration. There is no charge for the program, and lunch is included.
This past year of strategic planning and the search for our new GCV landscape architect has served to strengthen our commitment to GCV’s mission of preserving historic landscapes in the commonwealth. We are grateful to partner with all of you as we build on our legacy, and we look forward to sharing some very exciting news with you in the upcoming weeks.
Thank you for your dedication to the future of protecting Virginia’s treasures.
Wishing you a very Happy New Year,
|
|
Jean E.R. Gilpin
Chairman, GCV Restoration Committee
Winchester-Clarke Garden Club
|
|
Restoration Maintenance Workshop
|
|
Garden Club of Virginia Restoration Committee
cordially invites you to attend the
2024 Maintenance Workshop and Luncheon
January 24, 2024
10 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Kent-Valentine House
12 East Franklin St., Richmond, VA
(Snow Date: February 13, 2024)
The Garden Club of Virginia Restoration Committee’s 2024 Maintenance Workshop will focus on the importance of a sustainable (horticulturally, ecologically, economically) approach to a healthy, vibrant public landscape. The speakers will share practical information and advice gleaned from years managing and studying horticultural practices at a wide range of public and historic gardens. The workshop provides the opportunity for a robust exchange of ideas between our guest speakers, the managers and the gardeners who steward historic landscapes restored by GCV.
The speakers and topics for the January 2024 maintenance workshop are:
Dr. Glynn Percival: Practical Strategies for Nature-Based Solutions: Boosting Tree Immune Systems to Protect Against Pests and Diseases
During their lifecycle, urban trees are susceptible to many pathogenic fungi and bacteria that, if uncontrolled, can result in high mortality rates. Conventional management relies heavily on repeat application of pesticides. Induced resistance is the concept of boosting a tree’s own inherent immunity by the application of organic-based soil amendments. This presentation will discuss the range of inducing agents available for professionals involved in tree management as well as their effectiveness, time of application and strategies for use within urban and woodland landscapes.
Dr Glynn Percival is the senior arboricultural researcher at the Bartlett Tree Research and Diagnostic Laboratory, primarily focusing on how environmental stress (drought, heat, waterlogging) influences tree growth and susceptibility to pest and disease attack. He is the author of more than 100 scientific papers, magazine articles and book chapters and is an honorary lecturer at Reading University and the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew.
Tyler Holtzman: Selecting, Planting, and Maintaining Groundcovers
Groundcovers are prevalently used in public landscapes, and stewards of those gardens are entrusted with keeping those planting beds thriving and weed-free. It is often a constant struggle to do so. Tyler will address the factors to consider when deciding whether to plant or not plant a groundcover (or to remove an existing planting); the best groundcovers for the site; how best to prep for a new ground cover installation; and how best to maintain ground cover beds to allow for success and reduce future headaches.
Tyler Holtzman is the Science Museum of Virginia’s in-house horticulturist, charged with supporting and maintaining its urban landscape. Tyler has nearly 20 years of experience in the landscape industry, including as a gardener for the City of Richmond, as the native plant gardener at Monticello and as owner of a landscape business. Tyler is a certified Virginia landscape designer, a level one Chesapeake Bay landscape professional, a certified Virginia horticulturist and a member of the Virginia Native Plant Society.
Mary Petres: A Sustainable Approach to Maintaining a Healthy Garden
Mary will discuss tools for maintaining landscapes, including organic approaches to weed infestation, soil remediation and mulching, to ensure the garden promotes a healthy ecosystem and protects wildlife. Mary will also share tips on how to build a dedicated volunteer corps for long-term care of public landscapes.
Mary Petres owns Manchester Gardening, a full-service landscape company in Richmond, and manages the care of all public landscapes installed by Capital Trees. Mary is a Virginia Nursery and Landscape Association certified horticulturalist, a level one Chesapeake Bay landscape professional and has served as CVNLA’s president.
|
|
Point of Honor
High on a bluff overlooking the James River proudly sits one of Lynchburg’s oldest and most treasured landmarks: Point of Honor. What was once a 740-acre plantation on the edge of the Virginia frontier in the early 1800s is now a popular, four-acre historic site and neighborhood park in downtown Lynchburg. Where generations once struggled to build a new town and nation, today our community gathers together for special events and outdoor experiences—from festivals and fireworks, to concerts and theater—all in a uniquely beautiful setting.
When Point of Honor was converted from a neighborhood recreation center to a public museum in the 1970s, its architects and historians struggled with what to do with its grounds. Point of Honor’s Garden Committee Chairman Margaretta Harper went to the state’s experts in historic garden restorations for help. The Garden Club of Virginia’s Restoration Committee agreed to take on Point of Honor in 1977, and Chairman Lee Cochran immediately went to work with the GCV’s distinguished landscape architect, Meade Palmer.
Meade Palmer’s vision for Point of Honor still defines the site and delights visitors today. Palmer was careful not to call his plan a restoration, but instead a “period setting” that reflected general Federal-era style and practice. He called for “restrained plantings” of English boxwood, oak, and dogwood, which opened the grounds and took full advantage of its striking vistas of the James River and downtown Lynchburg.
The construction of a visitor center and kitchen dependency in the mid-1990s prompted the next major Restoration Committee project. GCV Landscape Architect Rudy J. Favretti integrated these new structures into Palmer’s landscape with sensitivity and care. He used historic stone materials and period plantings, including oak leaf hydrangea, clethra, sweetbay magnolia, and even an heirloom Virginia apple orchard.
The most recent improvement to Point of Honor’s grounds came in 2019 with the installation of the North Lawn. GCV Landscape Architect Will Rieley turned a problematic space behind the main house into an elegant garden room, with a rectangular grass lawn surrounded by brick paths, sweet gum, laurel, and liriope.
Thanks to our partnership with the Restoration Committee, visitors will be drawn the beauty and history of Point of Honor for many generations to come. Lynchburg is very grateful for this gift.
Submitted by Ted Delaney
Director of the Lynchburg Museum System and Chief Public History Officer
|
|
The Palmer Gate is one of the most iconic features of Point of Honor. Designed by GCV Landscape Architect Meade Palmer in 1977, it still welcomes visitors to explore the beauty and history of the grounds.
|
|
GCV Landscape Architect Will Rieley’s 2019 design for the North Lawn reflects the axial symmetry and understated elegance of the Federal era. The most distinctive feature is the U-shaped row of ‘Slender Silhouette’ sweet gum trees.
|
|
GCV Landscape Architecture Fellow
|
|
Restoration Committee sponsors GCV Fellow at UVA’s Blandy Experimental Farm, The State Arboretum of Virginia
A meeting in the spring of 2023 at Blandy Farm led to the happy outcome of a GCV Restoration Fellowship being awarded to Margaret “Greta” Mattheis, a second-year graduate student in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the University of Virginia. Professor Emerita Nancy Takahashi, School of Architecture, UVA, and a member of the Friends of the State Arboretum (FOSA) asked the Fellowship Committee (a sub-committee of the Restoration Committee) if a GCV Fellow might be assigned to help map an in-depth inventory and assess the current state of the trail network at Blandy. Greta has a particular interest in the study of wayfinding and of using path design as a means to facilitate people’s relationship with landscape.
In her work she will be seeking better linkages and connections across the Arboretum, ways to improve visitors walking and learning experience on the trails, and exploring potential trail network expansion that highlights and preserves historic cultural features. The plant collections at Blandy were started by the first director Orland E. White beginning in 1927. Now, almost a hundred years later, there is a native plant trail and notable groves of oaks, ginkgoes, and conifers among other examples of the plant kingdom. How best to discover exciting uses for these places where visitors can gather is part of Greta’s and the Blandy Team’s mission. The State Arboretum has 200,000 visitors annually and close to 4,600 students were served by Blandy educational programs in 2022. Greta will make a presentation of her findings at the GCV Annual Meeting in May 2024, and her report will be filed in the archives of Fellow’s reports for future reference.
Pictured are Restoration Committee Chairman and former GCV President Jean Gilpin, Restoration Fellow Greta Mattheis, and Professor Emerita Nancy Takahashi.
Submitted by Candy Crosby
Albemarle Garden Club
|
|
A Plant Worth Knowing
Ginkgo biloba
The ginkgo is a tree with a gap in its resume. It is a genus with a tenure that spans about 200 million years, back to the early Jurassic. During the Cretaceous, at the pinnacle of its career, at least a half dozen species of Ginkgo were spread around the northern hemisphere. Maybe it was the changing climate. Maybe it was competition with newer, more modern plants, but during the Cenozoic Era, the age of mammals and flowers, the genus went into a steep decline. By the Pleistocene, some 2.5 million years ago, its long run seemed over, and Ginkgo dropped out of the fossil record.
Like many of us, however, ginkgoes had a second act. Hidden away in China, beyond the eyes of western scientists, the Ginkgo species we know best, Ginkgo biloba, managed to avoid the fate of ginkgoes elsewhere around the globe. From China, they were exchanged with other Asian cultures, and when westerners finally stumbled upon them in Japan at the end of the 17th century, the tree began to recolonize a rapidly modernizing world.
The ginkgo is a tree that has something for almost everyone. The parallel veins of its leaves give it the common name “maidenhair tree,” a beautiful texture, unique among modern trees. They have virtually no pest insects, and their shape and pollution tolerance make them an ideal urban street tree. Detractors might point out that the flesh that surrounds ginkgo seeds has an odor that is unwelcome in polite company. However, the species has separate males and females, so if the seeds offend, a male ginkgo is your friend. Of all the remarkable things about ginkgoes, perhaps the most glorious arrives for about a week in the late fall of every year, when the leaves transition from green to golden yellow. The State Arboretum of Virginia at Blandy Experimental Farm features one of the largest groves of ginkgoes in the United States, and when those 300 trees blaze at the end of October, it is a sight to behold. The trees shine in synchronous color and tell everyone with eyes to see, the ginkgo has returned!
Submitted by David Carr
Research Professor, Environmental Sciences
Director, Blandy Experimental Farm
|
|
On the Road Again ... the Restoration Committee
Visits Historic Property Sites, September 2023
John Handley High School, Winchester
|
|
The Restoration Committee at John Handley High School in Winchester, VA
|
|
Burwell-Morgan Mill, Millwood
|
|
Burwell-Morgan Mill in Millwood, VA with Director, Nathan Stalvey
|
|
Blandy Experimental Farm, The State Arboretum of Virginia
|
|
Dogwood Lane, GCV Restoration project at Blandy Experimental Farm
|
|
Herb and vegetable garden at Belle Grove, Middletown, Va.
|
|
Information about all of the GCV restoration projects dating back to 1929, can be found here.
|
|
NEW! Garden Club of Virginia Notecards
Since 1929, the GCV has preserved and restored more than 50 public historic landscapes and gardens throughout Virginia. This important work is possible due to the efforts of GCV members who produce Historic Garden Week tours in their communities.
This first set in a series represents a selection of the GCV’s restoration sites through photos taken by GCV members and friends. The photos have been digitally converted to a lovely watercolor effect. $20 per set of 10 ($3 shipping).
Available at shop.gcvirginia.org, at the Kent-Valentine House and at select GCV events. Cards and gift-ready packaging are environmentally friendly.
|
|
Newsletter Editor: Clarkie Eppes, Hillside Garden Club
President of the Garden Club of Virginia: Debbie Lewis, The Garden Study Club
|
|
|
|
|
|
|