Warrenton -- Appleton Gardens of Marshfield

This 34 acre property, established in 1901, is defined by its stately white oak trees, expansive lawns, and textured beds that shelter a ranch style house. It was involved in the creation of three gardening and conservation groups: the Warrenton Garden Club in 1911, The Garden Club of America in 1913, and the Garden Club of Virgina in 1920. In 2010, the current owners hired C. Colston Burrell of Native Landscape Design to re-envision and expand upon the original gardens. A goal in the design of the gardens was to create season-long interest with color, form, and texture. The design employs both native and site adapted ornamentals, though native trees and shrubs provide the foundation for the gardens.

The original house at Marshfield burned down in 1942 and was replaced with a modest brick house. Remnants of the original foundation form the walls enclosing a pair of water gardens connected by a slender rill. Ferns, hellebores, Virginia bluebells, and thousands of bulbs flank the entry drive, sheltered by dogwoods, redbuds, and oaks. A rocky rill bordered by white azaleas spills down from a decorative waterfall to a shallow goldfish pond with iris and woodland plants. The old lawn now features a series of garden rooms. Adjacent to the house are the Winter Garden and Luna Garden. The Winter Garden includes hellebores and early bulbs, along with shrubs such as daphne and quince. The Luna Garden features intricate plantings, originally being designed in the shape of a crescent moon, and later expanded as a set of opposing arcs. Featured in this garden room are blue phlox, bicolored daffodils, and alliums in the spring. From the Luna Garden, you pass under a tall wood and metal archway festooned with flowering vines to stand at the head of a sweeping vegetable and cutting garden. At the end of this 200-foot vista, the axis ends with a 20 foot harvest table set on a wide bluestone terrace backed with a bosquet of columnar ginkgo trees underplanted with 500 blue camassia.

The 200-foot-long Boxwood Allee, parallel with the vegetable terraces, combines old American boxwood from the original garden with a collection of Japanese maple cultivars set in niches. Plantings of tulips, daffodils, Iphion, hostas, lilies, and elephant ears repeat the length of beds in blocks of color and texture. The Secret Garden contains a Celtic Stela, a stone monolith by Boston artist, Karin Stanley. A series of colorful meadow gardens, accessed down a curved hallway of fringe trees, anchors the central lawn. The meadows are planted with native and a few site-adapted wildflowers. The season begins with drifts of daffodils, overtopped by wildflowers and native grasses. A stately sycamore anchors the lawn below the house. The Druidic Circle features a grouping of teak root knots surrounded by aged boxwoods along with winter-flowering witch hazels. Off the back terrace, within a weathered stone foundation of the original house that burned down, lies a pair of water gardens connected by a narrow rill. Double cascades provide a pleasing sound that mitigates the noise from the busy country lane. Water cascades into the ponds through wide, stainless-steel waterfalls and exists to the rill in shallow spillways. The 15 acre bottomland along Great Run has been restored to a native meadow. Beebalm, ironweed, cardinal flower, and blazing-star bloom in summer, followed by asters, goldenrods and the dancing plumes of big bluestem and Indiangrass in autumn.

Persons associated with the garden include: C. Colston Burrell (designer, 2012-2015); Benito Hernandez (gardener, 2012-present); Dolores Mendoza (gardener, 2012-present).