[From UVa News Services, by Rebecca Arrington]

The University of Virginia will participate in the 75th Historic Garden Week in Virginia April 22. Events include a lecture by Will Rieley, U.Va. School of Architecture alumnus and former faculty member, and a student-designed exhibit on the architectural history of the U.Va. gardens. As always, the University's pavilion gardens and selected homes will be open to the public for the event.

Rieley, who serves as consulting landscape architect to the Garden Club of Virginia, which sponsors historic garden week, will give a public talk titled "The Garden Club of Virginia and the U.Va. Gardens" at 2 p.m. in the auditorium of the Harrison Institute/Small Special Collections Library.

Special Collections will also house a student-curated exhibit, "Designing History, Curating Nature: The Gardens Within the Academical Village" on April 21 and 22. The exhibit outlines the architectural history of the gardens and their relationship to the wider University community.

Landscape architecture students Jessica Calder, Melissa Celii, Taylor Cooper, Paul De, Kurt Fulmer, Dhara Goradia, Lauren Hackney, Christa Kolb, Elise Mazareas and Chihiro Shinohara, as well as College of Arts & Sciences student Mary Brandon Ingram, created the exhibit as independent study projects over the course of the year. They explored themes such as how the gardens have changed over time, their use as social spaces and the patronage of the Garden Club, which restored the gardens in the second half of the 20th century.

Landscape architecture professor Beth Meyer, who guided the students in developing the exhibit, said that the project was a chance for the whole University community to learn more about the unique spaces.

"There are a lot of myths about those gardens," Meyer said. She also pointed out that while Jefferson laid out the serpentine walls, "He didn't design the gardens. He let the faculty develop them the way anybody who moved into a house would. They had to grow their own food...." [for complete article, follow link to UVa News online]