Set in the rolling terrain of Northern Virginia, the house and gardens at Oatlands have graced their Loudon County hilltop setting for over two centuries. Dominating the National Historic Landmark site is a grove of mature mixed hardwoods and a large three-story late Federal (begun in 1804) dwelling, the home of George Carter and, much later, his wife Elizabeth (m. 1835). George Carter gets credit for the design of house, grounds, and gardens, the latter falling off in a series of terraces to form a four-acre enclosure set within a brick-capped fieldstone wall and accessed by stone stairways. Early on it seems to have typified gardens of the era by mixing kitchen stuffs with aesthetically satisfying flowering plants and shrubs. Complementing the garden is a Carter-designed heated orangery, the family crypt, and other brick service structures. As with his ancestors at Nomini Hall and Sabine Hall, George Carter’s plantation livelihood came from the labors of enslaved men, women, and children, and visitors are encouraged to give them credit for the thousands of hours spent in constructing and tending this highly articulated landscape.
Following years of post-Civil War decline at Oatlands, the enraptured new early twentieth-century owners, William and Edith Eustis, returned the gardens to an ornamental glory they had never known. Strongly influenced by British designer Gertrude Jekyll, Edith enlarged rectilinear beds for flowers, planted more boxwood, created water features, and installed a rose garden, while also bringing in statuary, container plants, and ultimately a teahouse. While the management of Oatlands came under control of the National Trust for Historic Preservation in 1965, it was not until the 1980s that the gardens experienced major restoration attention, as directed by designer/horticulturist Alfredo Siani. As well, in the early 1990s the Garden Club of Virginia provided funds to repair a large segment of garden wall, the work taking place under the guidance of their consulting landscape architect, the late Rudy Favretti. Oatlands grounds and gardens highlighted a SGHS Sunday tour during the 2010 Mount Vernon annual meeting, Society members catching just a glimmer of the equestrian pleasures and social swirl enjoyed by the Washington region’s social elites in the heady days before World War II.
For further details, visit: https://oatlands.org/historic-garden/
Recommended reading: Margaret Page Bemiss, Historic Virginia Gardens: Preservation Work of the Garden Club of Virginia, 1975-2007, “Oatlands,” 153-157.
Image note: Frances Benjamin Johnston, who took the accompanying picture, numbers among the most acclaimed American photographers of the twentieth century.
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