The grand lady of springtime events, Historic Garden Week in Virginia, is underway. It began 90 years ago, and the Garden Club of Gloucester worked right alongside with the club’s parent, the Garden Club of Virginia, in promoting the tour of beautiful homes and gardens throughout the state in 1929.

This Saturday, the local tour is renewed and the tradition continues with four sites in the southern part of Gloucester. With the exception of the World War II years when everything was suspended for the war effort, and in 2004 as this area recovered from Hurricane Isabel, the garden tour has accompanied, like clockwork, the blooming of fresh leaves, dogwoods and azaleas.

Once upon a time, Garden Week was just about the only large public festival. Today it is buttressed in our counties by many other fun events. But Garden Week undoubtedly is the grand lady of them all, and just as we celebrate the return of spring, we rejoice that the tour is still going strong. ...