Please join us for a spring outing to Leesburg, Virginia to explore the grounds of two historic properties: Oatlands and Morven Park.
10:00 am Meet at Oatlands for Garden Tour
11:30 am Drive to Morven Park; tour gardens (about a 25 minute drive to the Park)
1:00 Lunch in Leesburg at Fire Works Pizza (about 15 minutes from Morven Park).
This trip involves three destinations with driving in between. Carpooling encouraged. If you need assistance finding a carpooling partner, please contact Laura at lauraferguson8@me.com. We will have one carpool leaving from the Kensington area.
We’ll begin at Oatlands at 10:00 am where we will meet up and tour the gardens on our own. Enjoy the four and a half acres of walled gardens including the tea house, yew walk, meditation and herb gardens and the color border. Springtime brings the Daffodil Wall and a riot of peonies. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased onsite. You can learn more about Oatlands at www.oatlands.org.
At 11:30, we’ll drive over to Morven Park (about 25 minutes from Oatlands), where we will wander the gardens there. Morven Park encompasses 1,000 acres of lawns, fields, wooded ridge, and formal boxwood gardens. Over half of the property has been placed in conservation easement to preserve the open space for future generations. The expansive mansion lawn and verdant rolling fields are remnants of Morven Park’s 19th century landscape. Today the pastures are dotted by creatively designed equestrian cross-country jumps. Marguerite Davis, the last owner of Morven Park, installed the formal Colonial Revival boxwood gardens in 1930. The gardens were created during a boxwood renaissance in America that was inspired, in part, by the restoration of Colonial Williamsburg. To complete such a large project, Marguerite and Westmoreland Davis purchased mature English boxwood from estates throughout Virginia. In the late 1960s, boxwood blight struck the Morven Park gardens, killing off much of the English boxwood. To retain the original look and feel, American boxwood was brought in to replace the lost plants. Be sure to venture off the main path to discover some of the hidden features such as the Reflecting Pool, the boxwood allées (or pathways), and the sundial surrounded by seasonal flower beds. There is no charge for visits to the garden. You can find out more at www.morvenpark.org/mansion/visit/gardens-grounds/
For those who want to stay on for lunch, we will dine at Fire Works Pizza in Leesburg at 1:00 pm. You can check out the menu at https://www.fireworkspizza.com/leesburg