Chatham Gardens

In the 1920s, Chatham's owners hired Ellen Biddle Shipman to design these gardens.

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Historical/Interpretive Information/Exhibits

Visiting the gardens: Whether you are visiting the gardens for solitary reflection or to take photographs commemorating a special occasion, please be mindful of other visitors and help us protect this special place. Learn more about conducting photography sessions in the park. 

Today, Chatham is locally famous for its walled gardens. In 1920, Helen and Daniel Devore, a wealthy couple from Washington, D.C., purchased Chatham and embarked on a project to renovate the property in the Colonial Revival style. The Colonial Revival movement encompassed architecture, art, and landscape design that sought to emulate an idealized vision of early American style and values. 

The Devores hired Ellen Biddle Shipman, a prominent female landscape architect, to create the walled gardens in the 1920s. Shipman completed her "General Plan of Gardens for Chatham” in January 1921. The gardens include Shipman’s trademark labor-intensive planting designs, including perennial beds near the house and scattered floral and arboreal elements beyond. In the 1950s, the Pratts simplified the garden using the 1954 designs of landscape architect Charles Gillette. 

Between 1984 and 1986, the National Park Service completed a restoration of the walled garden using Ellen Shipman’s designs and planting plans. Today, visitors experience gardens that have changed over the years, from a romanticized conception of Chatham’s colonial ancestry to a location acknowledging the history of enslavement on the landscape.

 

Before There Were Gardens

Walking along the paths through the gardens are often the first landscape feature visitors experience at Chatham. These paths are the primary means to access the Chatham house. Following these paths to the Chatham gardenside entrance will lead visitors to a slate patio situated at the base of a two-story, Georgian-style, brick house constructed between 1768 and 1771. The home was once the center of a massive plantation complex built by William Fitzhugh. The name “Chatham” likely refers to places and people in England, although we cannot say for sure why Fitzhugh chose this particular name. We can say that he followed the example of other wealthy planters in Virginia. By giving their property a distinguishable name, wealthy landowners like William Fitzhugh hoped to express their social and economic status.

Fitzhugh enslaved over two hundred people to create and maintain Chatham. Free craftsmen oversaw the project, but enslaved people carried out most of the labor. The process was highly labor intensive, including hand-making thousands of bricks and felling and squaring huge timbers of wood. The development of Chatham Plantation involved clearing the land, constructing the main house and outbuildings, and, finally, cultivating outlying fields for the production of agricultural goods. The property served as a mark of wealth and power for nineteen individual owners before John Lee Pratt donated it to the National Park Service in 1975.
 

Who takes care of the gardens today?

Today, the Friends of Chatham are the primary caretakers of the Chatham gardens. The Friends of Chatham employee a gardener and organize a dedicated group of volunteers to maintain the gardens throughout the year.