Week of festivities caters to more than just green thumbs

Visiting Tupelo Farm for the first time, Albemarle residents Pat Allinson and Ramona Shugart slowly roamed the pink tulip-lined grassways and admired the blooming redbud tree next to the property’s 1870s farmhouse.

“We’re drooling,” Allinson said.

The two women were participating in the 76th Historic Garden Week in Virginia, where numerous gardens and estates become available for the viewing public’s adoring eyes. Tupelo is set on an expansive grassy knoll in Free Union

“There’s such a serenity to the gardens,” Shugart said. “Garden Week, we look forward to it. [There’s] just too much to stay away from.”

From April 18 to April 25, Garden Week patrons have the chance to see more than 250 gardens all over the state. Sponsored by The Garden Club of Virginia, events will be held from the Atlantic coast to the Allegheny Mountains and properties span the 17th to 21st centuries.

In the Charlottesville area, five historic properties and gardens are featured this year in Free Union and tours will also be held of the University of Virginia’s Pavilion Gardens. The Free Union-area tours will also be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. today, and the UVa

garden tours will take place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Pam Bracey, co-chairwoman of the Charlottesville-Albemarle tour, said the event has seen no shortage of people this year.

“We’ve had thousands of people here today,” she said.

Bracey said one of the main purposes of the week is to raise money to help pay for the properties’ restoration and maintenance.

Gardens that have been maintained using the event’s proceeds include those at Monticello, Montpelier and UVa.

Bracey said the tours also allow the club to showcase the area.

“We really hope people can walk away with ideas they can use in their own gardens,” she said.

Renee Quinn said the event was great for that very reason. A Milwaukee resident, Quinn was visiting friends and was attending Garden Week for the first time.

“It is beautiful, fun, and it’s just a look into a different lifestyle,” she said shortly after snapping pictures at Albemarle’s Morrowdale Farm. With white houses and symmetrical brick paths, Morrowdale sits on 300 acres of pastoral land near the Blue Ridge Mountains and is a working thoroughbred horse, beef cattle and hay farm.

Quinn’s friends — Ross and Lisa Cline from Harrisonburg — have participated in the annual event countless times, they said.

“We always try to get to a couple of localities,” Ross Cline said.

Lisa Cline said they have visited gardens in Harrisonburg, Staunton, Lexington and Orange, to name a few.

But in Albemarle, the Clines said they really liked the large estates and gardens that matched in their presence.

“These are some of the largest estates we’ve been to,” Ross Cline said.

Lisa Cline agreed. “They’re spectacular,” she said.