Warren Heritage Society Gardens
- Location: 101 Chester Street, Front Royal
- Estimated tour time: 1 hour (allow extra time if also touring the historic buildings)
The grounds at the Warren Heritage Society feature an herb garden with both period culinary and medicinal plants used in the colonial kitchen and other historical programs, several perennial gardens, and a pollinator garden currently under development. On the property is a magnificent pecan tree planted in 1932 for the George Washington Bicentennial that you won’t want to miss. Northern Shenandoah Valley Master Gardeners coordinate closely with the Warren Heritage Society to develop and maintain the demonstration gardens on the Heritage Society property.
On the day of the tour, the historic buildings on the property—Ivy Lodge, Balthis House, Belle Boyd Cottage, and the Country Store Museum—will be open for self-guided tours at no extra charge. There will also be demonstrations in the outdoor kitchen and blacksmith shop.
The Blue House
- Location: Downtown Front Royal
- Estimated tour time: 30–45 minutes
The Blue House garden is an example of urban gardening with an emphasis on native plantings and creating habitats for wildlife in small spaces. Combined with creative artistic accents using free and found objects, this garden can provide inspiration for others. Among other features, the garden incorporates a canoe as a planter in reference to the honor bestowed on the city of Front Royal in 1999, Canoe Capital of Virginia. The Blue House Garden began three years ago and continues to grow each year. The owner attributes many of her ideas to the knowledge she gained from Extension Master Gardeners and her concern for maintaining the environment.
Tall Oaks
- Location: approx. 1.5 miles east of I-81 in Warren County
- Estimated tour time: 30–45 minutes
Tall Oaks is a beautiful woodland garden, with a focus on permaculture and bringing back natural habitat. Installed in 2022, there is a central large water feature surrounded by rocks, with two types of water flow, a bubbler as well as a waterfall, and bog areas. In addition, there is an herb garden, areas for berry gardens (including strawberries and gooseberries), and a kitchen garden section. The garden has lovely hardscaping with an eating area and an outdoor fireplace with wood-fired oven. The owners are passionate about natural plantings and encouraging pollinators, and have gone to great lengths to add new plantings that are both native- and pollinator-friendly. Creative DIY’ers, the owners used guttering to build a vertical strawberry garden and built two different kinds of self-watering planters. Tall Oaks has been designated a NSVMG Habitat Garden.
Montevento
- Location: approx. 5 miles west of Berryville in Clarke County
- Estimated tour time: 45–60 minutes
Montevento (Windy Hill) is a 100-acre farm in Clarke County, Virginia. The current owners moved to the property in 1998 after constructing their home. It is inspired by the Italian Renaissance architect Andrei Palladio. Symmetry is a hallmark feature. The gardens have been a 25-year work of love requiring intensive amending of the nutrient deprived and deer ravaged landscape. For their youngest daughter’s recent wedding, the gardens underwent extensive renovation. There is a pollinator garden and pond garden, rich with native species, among several more formal spaces that frame the view. A summer visit will include blooming roses, yarrow, hydrangeas, cone flower, amsonia, and lamb’s ear among others.
The owner’s management of their property include improvements that enhance biodiversity. These include the planting of a pollinator meadow, delayed bush hogging to allow grassland birds to properly fledge their young and fencing off a wetland area from grazing livestock to protect the Chesapeake Bay watershed. They also employ intensive rotational cattle grazing that has been shown to improve productivity and the nutrient value to the soil. Regularly they battle the invasives including Multiflora Rose and Tree of Heaven. Montevento has been the subject of biodiversity studies through Virginia Working Landscapes of the Smithsonian Institution. The owners regularly see meadowlarks, barred owls, kestrels, bluebirds and even bald eagles.