Meadow at Martha Jefferson Hospital
Martha Jefferson Hospital sits on 80 acres that draw from Virginia’s rich pastoral landscape. One of the greatest expanses of that space includes the hospital’s meadow, swollen with waves of golden flowers that fade into distant views of the Blue Ridge Mountains. In all its natural glory, the meadow fulfills its promise to celebrate both environmental and physical health.
“Tucked behind an imposing building on Pantops, this beautifully planted hillside with a strolling pathway soothes staff, patients, and families in the middle of parking lots, streets, and stress. At its peak in late summer and early fall it abounds in native plants, birds, and other pollenators.”—Cathy Clary
Japanese garden at Morven Farm
A taste of Eastern tradition emerges in the Japanese garden and tea pavilion at UVA’s Morven Farm. Although Thomas Jefferson purchased Morven in 1795, the four-acre Japanese garden and house were not installed until the 1990s, after the 1988 sale of the property to John Kluge. Today, the UVA Foundation-owned garden is ornamented with waterfalls, rock formations, evergreens, and a tea pavilion that requires visitors to undergo a ritual cleansing before entrance.
“A hidden legacy of John Kluge and his wife Tussie is an isolated Japanese garden in a deep valley below the manor house and formal gardens of Morven, now managed by the UVA Foundation. A temple of tranquility, a Japanese pavilion overlooks from its promontory a pond fed by two boulder-laden streams. ‘Shade is our Elysium,’ wrote Thomas Jefferson, and our gardens often seem stark under the relentless, sterile brightness of a Virginia summer sun. Most American versions of Japanese gardens fail, in part, because of this, but the cloistered Morven garden effectively integrates Zen transcendence into a shady, Albemarle ravine; upon entering the garden gate one feels he is along a wilder section of the Moorman’s River above Sugar Hollow. Designed by a Japanese landscape architect, Koji Tsunoda, and aided locally by Rieley & Associates, the garden was built by transplanted master craftsmen from the firm of Iwaki Zoen. The steeply-sloped and wooded site dictated the unique integration of East and West. Greenstone boulders were collected from Morven’s fields and individually placed by cranes for their dramatic effect. Shrubberies of native mountain laurel and Japanese Pieris and groundcovers of moss and evergreen Pachysandra frame the boulders, now faced with orange and silver lichen. Stone-lined pebble walkways circulate down from the pavilion along the pond to a teahouse and island, and from there cross the pond and the two streambeds on stepping stones, the sound of waterfalls and wind-blown bamboo drift in and out on this meditative walk. The pavilion, definitely the hang-out place, includes soft, straw tatami mats and paper-panelled, Shoji sliding screens that open on to an engawa or veranda. This delicate garden, with its steep slopes and fragile walkways, is a precarious stroll. It is open to only small groups by appointment.”—Peter Hatch
Photo: Robert Llewellyn
UVA’s pavilion gardens
Originally designed in light of Plato’s “groves of academe,” the pavilion gardens in UVA’s Academical Village were meant to support a studious atmosphere that united academia and nature. Today, University students still study there, but the gardens also attract admirers from far beyond the college’s community. Ten separate pavilion gardens bloom upon the fringes of UVA’s Lawn, each notable in its own way.
“Open to all, these unique serpentine spaces hold Jefferson-era plants and old Virginia sensibilities.”—Cathy Clary