HISTORY IN BLOOM

VIRGINIA'S OATLANDS PLANTATION IS REBORN IN ALL ITS GLORY

Author: By Judith Bell, Globe Correspondent

Date: SUNDAY, June 28, 1998

Page: M1

Section: Travel

At Oatlands, a historic property administered by the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the gardens first begun nearly 200 years ago have been reborn into a quiet splendor that holds true to the vision of the estate's legacy.

The restoration of the four-acre walled garden led by master gardener Alfredo Siani began 18 years ago. The gardens had been left to grow wild for a quarter century. Slowly, through meticulous research and an uncanny ability to imagine his way into the lives of previous owners George Carter and Edith Morton Eustis -- separated from Siani by a century -- he rediscovered the structure and personality of the gardens, bringing them back to life. ``There aren't too many gardens in this country with such a perfect design, a perfect system of terraces, a unique view that goes as far as 25 five miles away to the Blue Ridge Mountains,'' Siani says.

According to Holly Shimizu, assistant to the executive director and supervising horticulturalist of the US Botanic Garden in Washington, D.C., Oatlands is simply one of the best historic garden restorations. ``Siani has a sense of beauty and great vision,'' she says. ``He was able to respect the history of the gardens while incorporating his own artistic expression into the design. And he has the guts to carry out the hard decisions necessary to restore a garden.'

Just as a dog and his owner look alike after a number of years, so it is with people and their gardens, Siani says. ``By learning about the previous owners, I learned a lot about the kind of garden they had.'' Indeed, he speaks of Carter and Eustis as one would of old friends.

Raised and educated in England, George Carter was a great grandson and heir of Virginia's famed grower Robert ``King'' Carter, and had apparently learned the importance of a good vista. The three-story stucco late-Georgian house, built in 1803 with bricks made on the 3,000-acre estate and wood harvested from its forests, sits on a hill overlooking the rolling countryside. George Carter built the terraces himself, cutting into the hill and filling the terraces with soil, and constructing stone and brick staircases and walls, a smokehouse, a brick greenhouse, and a granary. ``A terraced garden is all about views, and knowing about his English education, I knew he wanted to be able to see from the garden as far as he could,'' says Siani. So he set about opening vistas and perspectives, pruning Carter's overgrown boxwood, bringing the space beyond back to the garden.

``At first it baffled me why Carter had decided to have a terrace garden on the east side, a garden he couldn't see from the house, when he could have put it to the west where the greenhouse is.'' Siani says. ``Studying the man enabled me to understand the wisdom of a good farmer, the exquisite wisdom of early America. They were Renaissance men, doctors, lawyers, farmers. They had a wonderful knowledge of nature. Early American gardens were primarily vegetable. Mrs. Carter wrote in her diary about harvesting 45 bushels of cabbage, about canning peaches, apricots, and figs. The orientation he gave the gardens would have been a critical advantage. The predominant wind blows from the northwest here. He designed the terracing sloping east and south. The wind blew over the garden so he could start planting a month ahead and harvesting a month later.''

The Carter family fortunes declined after the Civil War, and in 1897 Oatlands was sold to Stilson Hutchins, founder of The Washington Post. He never lived at Oatlands, and the property continued to deteriorate. Despite its condition, Mr. and Mrs. William Corcoran Eustis fell in love with Oatlands, purchasing it in 1903. The grandson of William Corcoran, the Washington banker and philanthropist, and the daughter of Levi P. Morton, vice president under Benjamin Harrison, they returned the house and gardens to their original splendor. Used by the Eustises as their summer country home and during fox-hunting seasons, Oatlands became a popular venue in Washington social life.

The gardens Mrs. Eustis found were an impenetrable forest, even more advanced than the challenge Siani would face 75 years later. She wrote that they were ``falling into ruins; bricks were crumbling, weeds crowding the flowers, and yet the very moss-grown paths seemed to say, ``We are still what we were.''

``Mrs. Eustis was an extraordinary Victorian lady,'' says Siani. ``She was very precise: Every tree, every plant relates to the next. We know from old photographs that she was never satisfied, she was always changing her mind. We have that in common.''

In restoring the gardens, Mrs. Eustis was mindful of Carter's original design. When she added a garden balustrade, she took the design from ``A Treatise on Civic Architecture, 1768,'' the same book Carter used in designing his house. Careful to maintain the individual character of each terrace, she enlarged flower beds, extended the boxwood parterres, designed a rose garden, and introduced statuary. ``She was strongly influenced by Gertrude Jekyll,'' says Siani. ``In her library in a Jekyll volume called `Small Gardens of England,' I found annotations in her own hand. The classical-style teahouse and reflecting pool, her additions to the Oatlands gardens, were exact replicas of Jekyll designs.''

Mr. Eustis died in 1921, but Mrs. Eustis continued to spend time at Oatlands until her death in 1964. Their daughters, Mrs. David E. Fineley and Mrs. Eustis Emmet, presented the 261-acre estate to the National Trust in 1965. The property was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1972.

Today, the flower beds at Oatlands are once again graced with the soft pinks, blues, and whites preferred by Mrs. Eustis. ``I'm strict about remaining true to what was there,'' says Siani, ``but I'm fortunate because I can go back 200 years --that's a long time for a garden.'' When Siani uses red and yellow, he does so sparingly in respect for her tastes. Bulbs were moved to the many banks found throughout the garden -- there are 17 in all -- interplanting them with hosta and Siberian Iris. White clematis, traditionally a climbing vine, is grown at the banks' edges, where Siani trains them to spill over the bank, forming blankets of white flowers. A characteristic seen everywhere at Oatlands is framing. The lilies are framed with espaliered apple and pear trees, and the reflecting pool is framed with ivy. In the rose garden, simple metal chains draped between two posts frame the rose parterre in blossoming garlands each June. Mrs. Eustis wrote that she put the rose garden ``around the corner so as not to interfere with the mood of the garden.''

``She wanted the garden to have a pleasant calming mood,'' says Siani. ``The rose is a powerful, disruptive flower. Orange, yellow, red, these colors interfered with her scheme of a pastel palette.'' In the present rose garden, visitors find varieties that date from the 1700s to the present. ``I decided to mix them after taking the public there and seeing their faces fall down when nothing is in bloom,'' says Siani. ``Old roses bloom mostly in the spring, and by mixing them I always have some flowers.''

In 1991, a water garden was dedicated in memory of Anne Eustis Emmet, Mrs. Eustis's daughter and Siani's close adviser during the restoration. ``She was a shy lady of simple tastes,'' says Siani. ``I wanted to design a garden that embodied her personality.'' Located just east of the rose garden, the water garden consists of a reflecting pool planted with two water lilies -- one pink, one white -- and a papyrus plant from Siani's personal collection. ``Visitors to the garden often think this is the oldest part of the garden,'' Siani says, ``something that pleases me very much.''

Other additions include the complete restoration of a section of the original garden wall and the formal herb garden added nearby. Still an Oatlands dream is that the greenhouse, the second-oldest standing orangery in the eastern United States complete with a hot-water heating system designed by Carter, will be restored. Although a major fund-raising drive is planned, the staff struggles to keep standing the structure where the Carters once kept pots of oleanders, gardenias, and orange, where Mrs. Eustis grew her disruptive roses.

Admission is $3 for adults. From Washington, D.C., take US 66 west to the Dulles Airport toll road. Take Route 15 south exits. Oatlands is six miles on US Route 15.

For further information, write to Oatlands, Route 2, Box 352, Leesburg, VA 22075; or call 703-777-3174.