It didn’t take much convincing for Louise and Greg Battaglia to join in Virginia Beach’s Historic Garden Week last week.
Greg designed the North End cottage with oiled white oak floors, handmade clay tiles and a backyard with ipe decking and a fireplace. He also designed another tour destination, the McCarty home, a bungalow built for low-maintenance summers at the shore. It features a combination of natural grasses and AstroTurf, and floor-to-ceiling windows that draw light across the entire downstairs.
Louise has also been best friends with Holli Wachmeister, the garden club co-chair, since grade school. When the call came in asking them to participate, Louise said, she “couldn’t say no.”
The garden club is responsible for creating the dynamic floral arrangements, with each home assigned its own squad dedicated to specific sections of the space. Each local group sets a theme.
“I love the fact that the garden club comes through and does these amazing arrangements,” she said. The arrangers “have used a lot of flowers out of their own yards, and a lot that are native to Virginia. It’s really an honor for our house to be a backdrop to some amazing work.”
The hard part, however, is finding homes that people want to see, and people who want their houses to be seen. The process takes over a year — and crafting a sales pitch for homeowners to let strangers into their homes is just the start. Garden club co-chairs Maria Hillebrandt and Wachmeister reached out to friends and family of the club to curate the tour.
“We got turned down a lot,” Hillebrandt said. “People are really being incredibly generous and open to let hundreds of strangers walk through their home. Not everyone wants to do that, and some don’t think their home is garden-tour worthy, but we would never ask someone if we didn’t think so.”
While the idea of the show may be sweeping landscapes and grand estates, the approach to the Virginia Beach tour this year was a little different.
It was about how families maintain a stylish, decorated home, and allow kids and family members to work and play.
“I’m interested in seeing what it looks like when there are children running around,” Hillebrandt said. “How do you balance art and style and design? It comes across in multiple different ways.”
The tour also requires lots of extra hands, with more than 250 volunteers for the Virginia Beach tour and thousands across the state. A sponsorship chair is responsible for finding funding for the tour.
Costs for flowers, transportation, brochures and additional materials for the tour add up quickly, Hillebrandt said. Because of the narrow streets in the North End, the tour required a van for guests to visit areas with limited parking. If costs are covered, remaining proceeds are used to restore and preserve historic gardens and landscapes throughout the state.
Many guests have been taking in the views for years. Cindy Hyman, a Virginia Beach local, loves attending the tour every year she can, and has on and off since 1985.
She was at the McCarty home Wednesday. “I love it,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to see the inside of this house since they remodeled, and it’s exquisite. It exceeds expectations.”
Billy Schuerman, william.schuerman@virginiamedia.com
