Gardens of Williamsburg

       The gardens of Williamsburg, large or small, are generally formal, reflecting the symmetrical character of eighteenth-century architecture. Such mannered gardens must also have provided a pleasant contrast to the wilderness which surrounded the early colonists. A kitchen garden and pleasure garden, with a few carefully selected fruit trees, were arranged in a balanced fashion and linked by marl or brick paths to the associated house, outbuildings, and service areas. Thus the typical Williamsburg layout was a miniature plantation compressed to fit within the bounds of a city lot. 

Gardens for cooks were connected to the
kitchen by brick paths.

       Most gardens are based on English precedents, and offer strong evidence of the Dutch influence introduced into England by William and Mary. The designs, whether square, circular, oval, or rectangular, are usually outlined with fences, walls, or hedges of evergreen material such as box and holly; this extensive use of evergreen gives a distinctive character to Williamsburg gardens. Through most of the year color is added by flowers or by flowering trees and shrubs. Decorative walls, gates, and vases are used in the more elaborate gardens, and many include topiary work (trees or shrubs clipped to formal or quaint shapes). 

       In restoring Williamsburg gardens, landscape architects relied on excavations, manuscripts, old maps of the town and other southern colonial towns, and on studies of surviving colonial gardens in this general area. Only plants known to the colonists in the eighteenth century have been used.

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