Resident curator program for the White Gardens is on hold

The resident curator application for the White Gardens is on hold, but cannot be considered dead, according to Park Authority officials.

The White Gardens are located in the Falls Church area of Mason District. The Fairfax County Park Authority is seeking a “resident curator” to live in Margaret and John White’s former house rent-free while fixing it up.

Margaret White deeded the property to Fairfax County in 1999 with the stipulation that the site becomes a public garden. She and her husband had cultivated a big collection of rhododendrons and other horticultural treasures that she wanted to be saved.

Related story: More details emerge on the resident curator applicant for the White Gardens

The only resident curator applicant, Meg Stout, proposed having her daughter’s family live there rather than herself.

“We have informed the applicant that the Park Authority needs additional time to review due to the public comments,” said David Buchta, manager of the Heritage Conservation Branch. “We have no further comment on the specifics of the White Gardens, but we are considering input from the family and the community.”

“We’re looking into the totality of the site,” said Park Authority spokesperson Judy Pederson. After park staff invited family and friends of Margaret White to tour the site, Pederson said, “they took to heart the concerns voiced by the family.”

Margaret’s son Doug White, one of the invitees, said it was his mother’s wish that the plantings be conserved and that the property be turned into a horticultural park. She didn’t care about saving the house.

“We’re considering all of that,” Pederson said. “There are no specifics on the table.” Another community meeting will be held “sometime within the next several months.”

Doug White calls the resident curator concept a “misguided idea.”

What the park needs is a horticultural expert to take care of the gardens and meadow, he said. “The idea of just bringing in someone to live in the house is ridiculous,” White got the impression after meeting park staff last month that the resident curator program is not going forward. “They have admitted it’s off the agenda. It’s not going to happen.”

The well and septic system on the property are not sufficient to handle a resident and park visitors and it would be expensive to hook up water and sewer lines to the house, he said. “It really all boils down to money.”

The county spent about $80,000 on a consultant to recreate the meadow but it is not being maintained. “It’s not a meadow anymore,” White said. Large shrubs have appeared.

“That’s $80,000 down the drain,” added Don Hyatt, a longtime friend of Margaret White and a notable rhododendron expert.

At one time, the White property “was one of the most beautiful rhododendron gardens in the Washington area,” said Hyatt, the recipient of a gold medal from the American Rhododendron Society. Some of those rare plants cultivated by the Whites have already perished.

The Park Authority planted some native azaleas on the property. But they were planted in the wrong places, Hyatt said, and are already being taken over by invasives.

The 1999 deed on the property allowed Margaret White to live there for the rest of her life. In the years before her death, in 2010 just before her 104th birthday, she spent her days in the large glass-enclosed room at the rear of the house enjoying the view of the gardens, Hyatt said.

“She had a wonderful collection of rare and spectacular rhododendrons, including a brilliant pink one named John C. White for her husband,” Hyatt noted. “It was a wonderful place.”

He called it “absolutely bizarre” that the Park Authority gave Green Spring Gardens the authority to manage the White Gardens without additional funding.

Giving it to a resident curator with no gardening experience goes against the deed and the Park Authority’s own Master Plan for the property.

Hyatt said the house, built by the Whites in 1939 is nothing special and calls it “laughable” that the Park Authority is trying to pass it off as historic.

He blames the Park Authority for “total mismanagement” and says there’s no full accounting of where the money went.
A lot of the money from a park bond “all seemed to disappear.”

About $500,000 has already been spent, he said. All that appears to have been done is repaving the driveway, creating the meadow, putting in new plants, and installing a new HVAC system and security system in the house. The county has been working on the property since 2018.

Marie Reinsdorf, a friend of Doug White who lives next to the White Gardens, submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to find out exactly where the money went.

Related story: Margaret White wouldn’t have wanted a ‘resident curator’ for the park that bears her name

She decided not to go through with the FOIA request, however, after learning she would be charged $3,500. “I was astonished that so much work would be required to uncover expenses on a project, which makes one question the record-keeping.”

“All the money that has been spent at the White Gardens,” she said, “would have paid for basic landscaping maintenance and a consulting team that knows how to work with the public to create an actionable path forward for incrementally growing a beautiful public garden. This is still what needs to be done today.”