It takes a lot of time, talent and treasure to keep the grounds and gardens of Hampton National Historic Site looking beautiful. With that in mind, a group of local garden clubs has organized a benefit, called "Beauty in Bloom," to raise money to restore and maintain the landscape of Towson's only national park and the ancestral home of the Ridgelys, a leading Baltimore County family.
The benefit, which is set for Tuesday, Oct. 18, will be hosted by the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland District III, an umbrella organization of 26 clubs in Baltimore and Harford counties, and held at the historic home of the Woman's Club of Roland Park.
The featured events will include presentations on fashion, food and flowers, a luncheon and fashion show, plenty of vendors, and a raffle of items ranging from vacations to Baltimore Ravens football tickets. The activities are designed to be interactive and allow attendees plenty of opportunity to browse vendor tables, listen to presentations and join in discussions, according to Carol Whitman, of Murray Hill, the event chair.
"It's going to be great fun," Whitman said.
Planning for the event grew out of a Lutherville Garden Club project, according to Betty Reeves, a Lutherville club member and director of the Federated Garden Clubs of Maryland District III. The Lutherville club had invited a New York floral designer to speak at several events. At the club's suggestion, District III took over the fundraiser — and it grew into the Oct. 18 event, she said.
"It's a lot of work for one club," Whitman said of the fundraiser, which is the first the district-wide garden club has undertaken. "We wanted to spread out the duties."
Because a number of garden club members are also members of Historic Hampton Inc., which raises money and awareness for the upkeep of Hampton in partnership with the National Park Service, the fundraiser was a natural, said Whitman, who is a member of Hampton's board of directors, a member of the Woodbrook-Murray Hill Garden Club, and treasurer of the District III organization.
Historic Hampton Inc. has worked with local garden clubs on many restoration and conservation projects at the site, which Whitman describes as "a textbook in the evolution of historic landscaping from colonial times through today."
The Glen Arm Garden Club, for example, has planted and maintained an herb garden at the site since 1966. Garden clubs also have provided funding for a summer intern who plants and maintains the colorful formal gardens at the site, which also features a historic mansion and a 63-acre park that contains several state champion trees and dozens of historic structures.
"They've been great supporters for years and years," Suzie Merryman, the chair of Historic Hampton Inc., said of the clubs. "It's wonderful that we have their support."
An historical landscape
Hampton's gardens were renowned in the 19th Century, Gregory Weidman, Hampton's curator, said of the estate, which was the home of generations of the Ridgely family.
The family included early industrialists who established an ironworks that provided arms to the continental army during the Revolutionary War, as well as one of Maryland's early governors, Charles Carnan Ridgely. The house's mistresses, including Eliza Ridgely, the wife of John Carnan Ridgely, who lived in the house during the mid-19th century, were instrumental in the design of the gardens.
The first gardens, the Great Terrace with its serpentine path and geometric "falling gardens," were probably laid out soon after construction of the Ridgely home was finished in 1790, Weidman added. Nearby, the oldest trees, catalpas, are probably even older than the house.
Garden layouts were inspired by the formal gardens of Europe. "Terrace gardens like this, with designed plantings, were quite popular in the Chesapeake region, Maryland and tidewater Virginia through the late colonial and early Federal period," Weidman said, adding that, through the years, the gardens evolved, as tastes changed.
Eliza Ridgely added specimen trees to the formal landscape. She planted the Cedar of Lebanon that now dominates the lawn of the Great Terrace, the saucer magnolias that bloom white and pink in the spring, and the fan-leaved ginkgo at the corner of the house, according to Whitman.
Brooke Derr, the National Park Service horticulturist at Hampton, has a long to-do list. "The older trees need constant care," she said.
Because voluminous records were kept through the years, park officials have a good idea of how the gardens were planted, Derr said.
However, while historic accuracy is maintained where possible, modern needs have forced some changes. Deer, for instance, have been a problem.
"Because of the deer, we have to pick different plants that evoke the look or function of the original," Derr said.
Once the Beauty in Bloom fundraiser has wrapped up, organizers will meet with park service staff to determine which projects to fund, Whitman said.
"Garden clubs enjoy beauty in nature, and Beauty in Bloom celebrates how nature inspires so many aspects of our life," she added. "By supporting the restoration and preservation of the landscape at Hampton, we can see how, through the centuries in America, our lives have been formed and enriched by it."
For more information on the event, visit http://www.historichampton.org.