#71 Pavilion Gardens

#71 Pavilion Gardens

In 1948 the Garden Club of Virginia embarked on its thirteenth major restoration project, the University's gardens. In his plans for the University, Thomas Jefferson had intended these spaces between the pavilions and the range to serve largely as work spaces for enslaved laborers. The serpentine walls—just one brick thick but taking strength and stability from their curves—divided one garden from another. By 1948 they were “crumpling,” according to the Garden Club, and its members resolved to restore the bricks and plant the gardens.

Alden Hopkins, an expert in Colonial Revival landscape architecture, completed work on the West Range in 1952. The East Range was completed four years after his death, in 1964. The gardens were planted only with flora known to Jefferson and six were divided in half by new serpentine walls, creating a formal Pavilion Garden and a utilitarian Hotel Garden.