Boxwood Garden

Boxwood Garden. Historic Blenheim.

"She is establishing a reputation as the blue ribbon girl." , William Scott, October 8, 1968

, So wrote William Scott when his wife, Barbara, won two blue ribbons at a Fairfax Garden Club show., Moving to Blenheim in September 1962, the Scotts immediately began transforming the landscape: farm fields became flower beds, vegetable gardens, berry patches, and a fruit orchard with cherry, crab apple, nectarine, and peach trees. "Our suppers now are nearly all home grown. Tonight we had tomatoes, squash, beets, and lettuce," he noted in July 1971., Their passion for gardening produced a profusion of flowers: dahlias, tulips, roses, lilacs, lilies, peonies, and irises. Daffodils were a favorite. "Barbara picked her first full size daffodil," her husband noted on March 15, 1977. In April 1982, Barbara's miniature "Calcicola" daffodil won the Garden Club of Virginia's Jacqueline Byrd Shank Memorial Trophy., In the 1940s an earlier generation installed a boxwood garden, complete with a sundial, popular elements of Colonial Revival landscape design. The Scotts added roses and paths covered with buckwheat hulls. Becoming overgrown and diseased over time, the boxwood garden was replaced in its original form during the current restoration., [Captions:] , Mural: The Scotts frequently entertained guests in the garden. Recalling an evening in June 1980, William Scott wrote: "as it turned dark the yard took on a new atmosphere with the candlelight and floodlighted fountain.", Left: Barbara Duras (right) and unidentified guest pose (c. 1945) at the sundial, the central feature of the original boxwood garden., Inset: During the Scotts' residency, a profusion of roses enveloped the north side of the house and the c. 1948 kitchen addition. "The rose garden does look its best with new flagstones laid on black plastic and surrounded with buckwheat hulls," William Scott noted in 1967.