Historic Garden Week Tour

Hi everyone, I hope you had a great weekend and for all you moms, that you had a lovely Mother’s Day. I always am happy with any excuse to procrastinate doing laundry and turn over dish duty for a day 🙂 Today, since it’s Monday and that is always a good day to have light, pretty things to look at I thought I’d share some photos of beautiful gardens with you.

Also, since our spell of cold, rainy weather we’ve had here in Virginia has finally passed, thankfully, it puts me in the mood to look at beautiful flowers, pretty landscaping and plant combination ideas. I am not much of a gardener, I loved digging in the dirt prior to contracting Lyme disease 5 years ago (an update on all that coming soon), but since I was bitten by a tick while gardening I now shy away. I still appreciate fine gardens, and some of these are spectacular!

 

{shoes}

Virginia Garden Week is a statewide program that raises funds to preserve historic buildings through public tours of homes and gardens. Our local tour is only held every two years, and since only exterior photos are allowed I don’t have any decor pictures to show off but the gardens were definitely the centerpiece.The only downside to the tour was that the weather was beautiful that day, but it was the first nice day after days of rain. I should have worn my Hunter boots, my shoes were definitely not up to the task of slogging through all the grass and mud from the parking lots!

We had the nicest girls’ day out, my Mom invited me, along with her best friend Paula, along on the tour, so we spent the day together touring the homes and gardens and enjoyed a relaxing lunch between stops. My Mom is the garden whisperer, her yard is spectacular,  so I learn from her whenever we do these types of things. If you follow us on Instagram you may have seen my stories that day, I tried to post the prettiest gardens, some were pretty spectacular.

 

 

The first house was probably the most grand on the tour, it had a mile long driveway which meandered around lakes and horse pastures {though this is horse country, so those are typical in larger homes in this area}. The house itself was pretty but the views were amazing. I think this kitchen garden was one of my favorites. I loved the curved little breakfast room you can see too.

 

 

Next, we toured an 18th century home. Here I bumped into Diane, one of our sweet blog readers who I’d never met in person. She was a hostess at this home, so we only got to chat for a minute but that was another highlight of the day.

 

 

Our next stop was probably my very favorite on the tour. Owned by a family committed to historic preservation, the home has been restored and is now open it for events. In fact, Terry, our former co-blogger turned event planner extraordinaire just did a wedding here last weekend and it was stunning!

 

 

 

 

My favorite part of the home {which I desperately wish I could show you because it was so cool!} was they used reclaimed wood from another historic building to make the kitchen cabinets {you could still see the original nail holes}. The gardens were simply beautiful, I can only imagine what a perfect place this is to have a wedding. {You can read all about this property HERE}

 

 

 

The final home was still owned by the original family and sat on 60 gorgeous acres. The back garden was simply gorgeous, I can only wish someday (when I have a professional gardener of course, which no doubt they do!) for a yard with a touch of this beauty.

 

It was a lovely day, the perfect chance to enjoy the beauty others have created in their homes and yards and of course, it’s always fun to peek into pretty homes 🙂

XO,

 

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