It didn’t take much convincing to get Louise and Greg Battaglia to join Virginia Beach Historic Gardens Week last week.
Greg designed the North End Cottage with oiled white oak floors, handmade clay tiles, and a backyard with an ipe deck and fireplace. He also designed another tourist destination, the McCarty House, a bungalow built for low-maintenance summers by the sea. It features a combination of natural grass and AstroTurf, as well as floor-to-ceiling windows which attract light throughout the ground floor.
Louise has also been best friends with Holli Wachmeister, the co-president of the garden club, since elementary school. When they were phoned to ask about taking part, Louise said she “couldn’t say no”.
The garden club is responsible for creating the dynamic floral arrangements, with each home assigned its own team dedicated to specific sections of the space. Each local group defines a theme.
“I love that the garden club comes in and does these amazing arrangements,” she said. The arrangers “used a lot of flowers from their own garden, and a lot of flowers from Virginia. It is truly an honor for our house to be the site of such incredible work.
The hardest part, though, is finding homes people want to see and people who want their homes seen. The process takes more than a year – and crafting a sales pitch for homeowners to let strangers into their homes is just the beginning. Garden club co-presidents Maria Hillebrandt and Wachmeister reached out to club friends and family to arrange the visit.
“We were turned down a lot,” Hillebrandt said. “People are really incredibly generous and open to letting hundreds of strangers into their homes. Not everyone wants to do this, and some don’t think their home is worth a garden tour, but we would never ask someone if we didn’t think so.
Although the idea of the show is to tour grandiose landscapes and estates, the approach to this year’s Virginia Beach tour was a little different.
It was about how families maintain a stylish and decorated home and allow children and family members to work and play.
“I’m interested to see what it looks like when there are kids running around,” Hillebrandt said. “How do you balance art, style and design? This manifests itself in several different ways.
The tour also requires a lot of additional manpower, with more than 250 volunteers for the Virginia Beach tour and thousands across the state. A sponsorship manager is responsible for finding funding for the tour.
Costs for flowers, transportation, brochures and additional materials for the tour add up quickly, Hillebrandt said. Due to the narrow streets of the North End, the tour required a van to allow guests to visit areas where parking was limited. If costs are covered, remaining profits are used to restore and preserve historic gardens and landscapes throughout the state.
Many guests have admired the view for years. Virginia Beach resident Cindy Hyman loves attending the tour…
