The Garden Club of Northern Neck will hold its Garden Week activities on Wednesday, April 24 from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.

With 1,100 miles of tidal shoreline that supports a vibrant seafood industry and surrounds productive farmland, the Northern Neck has been known for food and hospitality since colonial times.

Nowhere is that tradition better expressed than in Westmoreland County’s homes and gardens—set amid small towns and pastoral landscapes that honor the region’s rural culture and history as the “mother” of three of the country’s first presidents.

The tour includes riverfront cabins on the Potomac River, a restored colonial home and two other properties in the village known as The Hague. Discover the reason the Northern Neck is designated a National Heritage Area.

The tour chairs are Becky Latané and Margaret Withers. The tour headquarters and check-in area is at St. Paul’s Catholic Church, located at 7808 Cople Highway in Hague. Here, wristbands will be issued to all ticket holders during check-in. Tickets are $40 per person in advance at VAGardenWeek.org and $50 the day of the tour online and at the tour headquarters.

Facilities are located at the tour headquarters, Hague Winery at 8268 Cople Highway and the parking/shuttle location at Coles Point.

Parking is available at each Village of Hague property, which includes Hague House, Lee Hall and Woodlawn. There is no parking for the Salisbury Park Road properties. A shuttle service will be provided at Coles Point.

Lunch is available at Hague Winery, 8268 Cople Highway. There will also be food trucks with seating available. Complimentary refreshments will be provided at the garden club’s market place at Lee Hall from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m.

Special activities

Enjoy the Outdoor Market Place at Lee Hall from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m., weather permitting. There will be floral arrangement demonstrations, lectures, local produce and flower vendors and garden items for sale. Bartlett Tree Experts will also have a tree sapling giveaway.

There will be tours of St. Paul’s Catholic Church led by church members.

Stratford Hall, a Garden Club of Virginia restoration project, will be open for morning and afternoon tours of the restored gardens.

Lee Hall (Gardens Only)
8311 Cople Highway, Hague.

Three generations in the making, the flower beds at Lee Hall bear witness to the power of perennials to connect gardeners to a sense of place and tradition.

Owner Mary Young, who grew up at Lee Hall and lives there now, took charge of the plot that years ago had once flourished under the care of an aunt and, before that, was established by her grandmother.

Old varieties of peonies and crepe myrtles from her grandmother’s tenure will thrive, and like her grandmother, Young has developed a fondness for roses.

This garden will be open to the public for the first time since 2008 when the owner closed an herb shop on the premises. The garden features nearly 40 roses and an old variety of liriope, or monkey grass, which has defined borders and foundations at the home for generations. The home is also owned by Chuck Tracy.

Hague House
8667 Cople Highway, Hague.

The careful restoration of Hague House, a pre-revolution structure, earned the John Paul Hanbury Award from the Northern Neck of Virginia Historical Society shortly after its new owners, Jeffrey Miller and Johnny R. Hunt, brought the old home back to life in 2022.

After clearing the undergrowth that had engulfed its yard during 30 years of abandonment, the owners constructed a formal garden out front that mirrors the quiet but stately architecture of the distinctly gambrel-roofed home.

Bracketed by two double-ramped exterior chimneys and capped by a two-sided roof not found on any other local structure surviving from the era, the house was built as early as 1742.

The center hall entrance retains its original pine plank floors and extends past a stairway casement sheathed in its original pine panels. Two rooms flank the hall and are visually anchored by massive brick fireplaces. The original house contained only four rooms. A modern kitchen occupies a fifth room, added years ago.

Members of the Lee family once occupied the home, once part of early Lee family holdings in the neighborhood, which remains a landscape of farm fields and woodlots.

Woodlawn
9249 Cople Highway, Hague.

Though newer, Woodlawn is reminiscent of the old homesteads that dot the Northern Neck countryside.

Built on 95 acres where cropland rotates between small grains, soybeans and corn and at the end of a long driveway lined with crepe myrtles, the setting exudes a sense of history. Owners Betsy and George Sisson were aiming for that look when they built it in 1991.

The two-story main structure is balanced with wings on both sides of the home and features a central entry foyer that welcomes guests and opens into the formal parlor, dining room and rear quarters.

Featuring nine-foot ceilings throughout, Woodlawn’s spacious main floor living areas present the house as a modern expression of a 19th-century farmstead. Wall coverings blend with trim painted in historic colors to harmonize the interior’s furnishings and the exterior’s charm.

The rooms contain the family’s ancestral furnishings and other pieces passed down for generations. An iron bell dating to the early 1800s from Wilmington Farm, near Tucker Hill, was incorporated into the hardscape near the rear entrance.

Woodlawn is surrounded by a large lawn with mature trees and extensive landscaping that includes a brick patio and swimming pool.

The Cabin
1554 Salisbury Park Road, Hague.

Built in 1927 at the point where Lower Machodoc Creek empties into the Potomac River, the Cabin originally was a hunting lodge when diving ducks, such as canvasback and scaup, gathered by the thousands on the nearby waters.

The current owners, Douglas and Kathleen Luzik, bought the waterfront property in 2004. They commenced a complete renovation to winterize the structure, rebuilding a porch and adding a heating system, new roof and boat dock to create a rustic yet comfortable family getaway.

Built of pine logs harvested from nearby woods, the Cabin features a massive stone fireplace and chimney constructed of what are said to be ballast stones jettisoned into the river by sailing ships and polished smooth by the waves.

From the Cabin’s windswept lawn, the view stretches a mile across Lower Machodoc Creek and commands a sweeping view of the Potomac and the Maryland shore five miles away.

The Cottage
786 Salisbury Park Road, Hague.

This example of the eclectic-style beach cottages that have evolved along the Northern Neck’s waterways in the hands of generations of vacationing owners was built in 1985 as a basic riverside getaway beside the Potomac River.

The structure received a series of spirited renovations years later when new owners took the helm. The renovations included adding an upstairs en suite bedroom and expanding the first-floor primary bedroom and kitchen while adding windows to capture the panoramic view of the broad tidal river.

Owners Rod Sisson and Corey Proffitt have continued to develop the cottage’s personality since buying the property in 2019, sight unseen, with the help of a FaceTime tour. The owners, who relocated from New York City and lived at the cottage during the COVID-19 pandemic, refinished its pine floors and added wallpaper and original art that harmonizes with the home’s many interior details.

A striking oil on canvas by Maryland artist John Brandon Sills depicts the Baltimore Harbor and serves as a welcoming entry from the home’s waterside.

Additional updates include a renovated screened porch, which doubles as an outdoor living and dining area. A converted tool shed is now a gym and home office.

The result is a mix of styles that convey a relaxed sophistication in keeping with the casual riverfront living the Northern Neck is known for.

Outside, on the small lot, a wooden walkway wraps around the home, offering a whimsical pathway to the sand beach and around the many hydrangeas and shrubs that cloak the yard in privacy under a canopy of loblolly pines.

Potomac Delight
182 Salisbury Park Road, Hague.

Potomac Delight is a spacious and airy log cabin at the tip of Coles Point and commands a 180-degree view of the tidal Potomac River and the historic Ragged Point Lighthouse.

Built in 1930, the cabin is among the earliest riverfront getaways in the area and harkens back to when sailing vessels and steamboats hauled freight on the river and linked the region to the outside world.

The cabin was probably built by watermen during off-season when they were otherwise not oystering, crabbing, pulling long nets from shore, hauling seines or capturing rockfish, spot and croaker.

The cabin features a wide porch that frames the view of the miles-distant Maryland shore and captures river breezes even in the heat of summer. Shingles conceal the log cabin’s construction from the outside, but the cabin’s interior showcases the rich brown warmth of the logs that rise in parallel rows between layers of white mortar. A huge hearth constructed of smooth river stones anchors the rustic interior of this log house.

The natural theme is continued with an Adirondack-style railing along the stairway to the second floor. A broad lawn sweeps to the river in front of the cabin. Pines and an exceptionally tall black gum tree shade the backyard of this unique riverfront house.

Linda Darr is the owner.