Garden Club will restore historic wall at Green Spring Gardens

The Garden Club of Virginia has agreed to rebuild an old semi-circular stone wall behind the historic house at Green Spring Gardens, restore a boxwood hedge above the wall, and develop a plan for a garden in front of it.

This work is a gift from the club to Green Springs Garden. Deedy Bumgardner, chair of the Garden Club’s Restoration Committee, is making the presentation this morning.

The stone wall is part of a landscape plan designed by Beatrix Farrand and Walter Macomber in 1942 for Michael and Belinda Straight, the owners of what was then known as Green Spring Farm

Farrand was one of America’s earliest female landscape designers and the sole woman in the American Society of Landscape Architects when it was founded in 1899. She completed hundreds of commissions during her career, including her signature work at Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown.

Macomber was a restoration architect who worked at Williamsburg and Mount Vernon. He completely rehabilitated the interior of the Historic House at Green Springs in the colonial revival style. He added wings on each side of the 1784 brick home and installed paneling from a tavern in Baltimore.