BGuthrie Photos: VA -- Richmond -- Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden

VA -- Richmond -- Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden:

Bruce Guthrie Photos Home Page: [Click here] to go to Bruce Guthrie Photos home page.

Recognize anyone? If you recognize specific folks (or other stuff) and I haven't labeled them, please identify them for the world. Click the little pencil icon

underneath the file name (just above the picture). Spammers need not apply.

Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

Accessing as Spider: The system has identified your IP as being a spider.
IP Address: 18.222.117.109 -- Domain: Amazon Technologies
I love well-behaved spiders! They are, in fact, how most people find my site. Unfortunately, my network has a limited bandwidth and pictures take up bandwidth. Spiders ask for lots and lots of pages and chew up lots and lots of bandwidth which slows things down considerably for regular folk. To counter this, you'll see all the text on the page but the images are being suppressed. Also, some system options like merges are being blocked for you.
Note: Permission is NOT granted for spiders, robots, etc to use the site for AI-generation purposes. I'm sure you're thrilled by your ability to make revenue from my work but there's nothing in that for my human users or for me.
If you are in fact human, please email me at guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can check if your designation was made in error. Given your number of hits, that's unlikely but what the hell.

Help? The Medium (Email) links are for screen viewing and emailing. You'll want bigger sizes for printing. [Click here for additional help]

[1] GINTER_140112_001_STITCH.JPG

[2] GINTER_140112_002_STITCH.JPG

[3] GINTER_140112_009.JPG	[4] GINTER_140112_016.JPG	[5] GINTER_140112_018.JPG
[6] GINTER_140112_029.JPG	[7] GINTER_140112_034.JPG	[8] GINTER_140112_037.JPG
[9] GINTER_140112_043.JPG	[10] GINTER_140112_049.JPG	[11] GINTER_140112_051.JPG
[12] GINTER_140112_054.JPG	[13] GINTER_140112_060.JPG	[14] GINTER_140112_062.JPG
[15] GINTER_140112_070.JPG	[16] GINTER_140112_076.JPG	[17] GINTER_140112_082.JPG
[18] GINTER_140112_088.JPG	[19] GINTER_140112_098.JPG	[20] GINTER_140112_105.JPG
[21] GINTER_140112_107.JPG	[22] GINTER_140112_109.JPG	[23] GINTER_140112_115.JPG
[24] GINTER_140112_120.JPG	[25] GINTER_140112_127.JPG	[26] GINTER_140112_129.JPG
[27] GINTER_140112_131.JPG	[28] GINTER_140112_133.JPG	[29] GINTER_140112_137.JPG
[30] GINTER_140112_145.JPG	[31] GINTER_140112_146.JPG	[32] GINTER_140112_155.JPG
[33] GINTER_140112_156.JPG	[34] GINTER_140112_160.JPG	[35] GINTER_140112_163.JPG
[36] GINTER_140112_169.JPG	[37] GINTER_140112_170.JPG	[38] GINTER_140112_173.JPG
[39] GINTER_140112_175.JPG	[40] GINTER_140112_178.JPG	[41] GINTER_140112_182.JPG
[42] GINTER_140112_188.JPG	[43] GINTER_140112_194.JPG	[44] GINTER_140112_202.JPG
[45] GINTER_140112_206.JPG	[46] GINTER_140112_212.JPG	[47] GINTER_140112_213.JPG
[48] GINTER_140112_219.JPG	[49] GINTER_140112_226.JPG	[50] GINTER_140112_230.JPG
[51] GINTER_140112_233.JPG	[52] GINTER_140112_239.JPG	[53] GINTER_140112_244.JPG
[54] GINTER_140112_252.JPG	[55] GINTER_140112_256.JPG	[56] GINTER_140112_259.JPG
[57] GINTER_140112_268.JPG	[58] GINTER_140112_272.JPG	[59] GINTER_140112_278.JPG
[60] GINTER_140112_281.JPG	[61] GINTER_140112_290.JPG	[62] GINTER_140112_292.JPG
[63] GINTER_140112_297.JPG	[64] GINTER_140112_300.JPG	[65] GINTER_140112_307.JPG
[66] GINTER_140112_311.JPG	[67] GINTER_140112_321.JPG	[68] GINTER_140112_324.JPG
[69] GINTER_140112_331.JPG	[70] GINTER_140112_340.JPG	[71] GINTER_140112_352.JPG
[72] GINTER_140112_354.JPG	[73] GINTER_140112_360.JPG	[74] GINTER_140112_363.JPG
[75] GINTER_140112_373.JPG	[76] GINTER_140112_377.JPG	[77] GINTER_140112_379.JPG
[78] GINTER_140112_385.JPG	[79] GINTER_140112_388.JPG	[80] GINTER_140112_394.JPG
[81] GINTER_140112_399.JPG	[82] GINTER_140112_405.JPG	[83] GINTER_140112_408.JPG
[84] GINTER_140112_412.JPG	[85] GINTER_140112_416.JPG	[86] GINTER_140112_421.JPG
[87] GINTER_140112_427.JPG	[88] GINTER_140112_431.JPG	[89] GINTER_140112_438.JPG
[90] GINTER_140112_443.JPG	[91] GINTER_140112_449.JPG	[92] GINTER_140112_460.JPG
[93] GINTER_140112_466.JPG	[94] GINTER_140112_469.JPG	[95] GINTER_140112_473.JPG
[96] GINTER_140112_478.JPG	[97] GINTER_140112_483.JPG	[98] GINTER_140112_491.JPG

Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. GINTER_140112_009.JPG: Grace Evelyn Arents Grace Arents was a visionary social reformer and philanthropist whose quiet determination and generosity transformed Richmond. Her passions were children, nature, books, architecture, and her church. To aid the poor, "Miss Grace" established the city's first public housing and visiting nurse system; built schools, a gym, a playground, a kindergarten, and churches, introducing a sweeping array of health, educational, and vocational reforms. She also built Richmond's first free circulating-library. Arents converted her Henrico estate, Bloemendaal Farm, into a children's convalescent home and later a model farm. Ultimately she bequeathed it to the city to become the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden honoring her beloved uncle, entrepreneur Lewis Ginter.
2. GINTER_140112_037.JPG: Healing Garden: Meditation: Healing gardens engage the senses and provide spiritual renewal through soothing scents, sounds and images. The healing qualities of plants have been recognized for thousands of years. Taoist, Zen, Islamic, and medieval gardens, among others, were designed to foster a resting place for the eye, the body and the spirit. In the 21st century, the medical community acknowledges the connection between nature, human stress reduction and medical outcomes. The healing garden has gained renewed recognition as a supplement to medical technology. The increasing appearance of community gardens, hospital gardens and pocket parks attests to the growing awareness of the importance of the landscape to the recovery of a healthy mind and body. Inspired by the cloistered gardens of the medieval era, our garden was designed as a quiet place for reflection -- a refuge from the daily stresses of the outside world. Benches provide a place to sit and relax amid the ordered arrangement of aromatic herbs and flowers. The soothing fragrances of rosemary and lavender aid relaxation. A sense of enclosure is provided by the false yew hedge. The bubbling font in the center provides a calming murmur of peace and tranquility during warm months.
3. GINTER_140112_043.JPG: Healing Garden: Medicinal: Botanical medicine has been used by all cultures from the beginning of human history. The oldest known list of medicinal herbs dates to 3000 BCE. Much herbal lore was developed by trial and error, word of mouth, instinct, and by observing animals. These customers were the roots of the science of pharmacology. In the West, medieval monasteries (500-1500 CE) preserved ancient plant knowledge by hand copying herbal manuscripts, around which herbal practice was centered. Most monasteries also had herbal gardens for herbal and culinary use. Storerooms for herbs, called officines, gave rise to the Latin term officinalis, the specific epithet for many plants. Medieval monastic gardens were the forerunner of physic gardens, whose purpose was to provide plants for academic study. The inspiration for our Healing Garden is the first physic garden, which was established in 1545 at the medical school of the University of Padua in Italy. Medicinal plants are the original source of many modern medicines including aspirin, which is derived from various plant sources including meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria) and willow bark (Salix alba); digitalis, the cardiac stimulant derived from foxglove (Digitalis lanata); and taxol, the cancer drug whose name references the botanical name of the yew from which it is derived, Taxus.
4. GINTER_140112_388.JPG: Jane Quinn Saunders Farm Garden: From a very early age, Jane Quinn Saunders (1916-2005) loved animals, gardening, and farm life. Even before she could walk, Jane loved watching ponies in the fields of her grandfather's farm in Charles City County. By age ten, she was winning ribbons in pony shows at the Deep Run Hunt Club and the Virginia State Fair. During the 1920s, Jane and her younger sister Ann Lee lived in a big yellow house with a barn in Ginter Park, Richmond. This "new" neighborhood developed by Lewis Ginter combined the conveniences of a growing city -- a trolley ran along the street's median -- with the natural pleasures of rural childhood. Jane and Ann Lee loved playing with their ponies and dogs, climbing trees, gathering eggs, hiding in the hayloft, helping in the vegetable and flower gardens, and caring for their father's homing pigeons. As a young girl, Jane knew she wanted to be a farmer. When her family moved to Tuckahoe Point Farm in Goochland County, the thirteen-year old told her father, "I am never going to leave." And for the next seventy years, she lived a life full of the serious work of farming and became nationally as an expert breeder of Angus cattle. She also was passionate about photographing wildflowers and historic properties, and caring for the land she so dearly loved. To her nieces and nephews, she was fondly known as "Farmer Jane." Jane also loved Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, and with her sister Ann Lee Saunders Brown, she made a major gift in 1997 to create the Four Seasons Garden outside the Robins Visitors Center, in honor of their mother. When she died in 2005, Jane remembered the Garden again in her will, with a bequest that supports Children's Garden programs that honor "Farmer Jane" by connecting children and families to agriculture, nature, and beauty.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden (30 acres) is a botanical garden located at 1800 Lakeside Avenue, on the North Side of Richmond, Virginia. The property was once owned by Patrick Henry.

History:

1884: Lewis Ginter bought the property and built the Lakeside Wheel Club, a one-story structure that was later modified and incorporated into Bloemendaal House. The Wheel Club was a destination for Richmond bicyclists.

1897: Lewis Ginter died at the age of 73.

1913: Grace Arents, Ginter’s niece, bought the abandoned Lakeside Wheel Club. She remodeled the structure, adding a second story, and made it a convalescent home for sick children from the city.

Later with the founding of the Instructional Visiting Nurses Association, the convalescent home was no longer needed and Arents moved into the house with her companion, Mary Garland Smith. She called it Bloemendaal in tribute to the Ginter family’s Dutch ancestors and developed gardens on the property. Bloemendaal means “valley of flowers.”

1926: Grace Arents died at the age of 78. She willed life- rights to Smith and stipulated after Smith’s death the city of Richmond was to develop the property as a botanical garden honoring Lewis Ginter.

1968: Mary Garland Smith died at the age of 100. The city of Richmond took possession of the property. The city investigated plans for a botanical garden but none of them came to fruition and the property languished.

1981: A group of botanists, horticulturists and interested citizens banded together to form the Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, Inc. to uphold the will of Arents. A lawsuit ensued.

1984: An amicable settlement allowed the formation of the Garden. The Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden was chartered by court decree.

1989: The Garden Club of Virginia restored the Grace Arents Garden as the first garden site of the new Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden.

1993: The three-acre Henry M. Flagler Perennial Garden was completed and dedicated, a gift of the Flagler Foundation.

The Robins Tea House was built and dedicated, a gift of E. Claiborne and Lora Robins.

1994-1995: The West Island Garden, Children’s Garden, Lucy Payne Minor Garden, Margaret Johanna Streb Garden and the Cottage Garden were completed.

1997: Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden unveiled its Capital Campaign.

1999: The E. Claiborne Robins Visitors Center opened (April) and the Massey Greenhouses were completed.

2002: The Education and Library Complex opened (October).

2003: The Conservatory opened (March).

2005: The Children's Garden opened (September).

Garden Areas:

The grounds consists of a visitors center, several named gardens, and the "Bloemendaal House" where Grace Arents, Ginter's niece and Richmond philanthropist, ran as a children's hospital and later converted into her personal dwelling. Major garden features are:

* Asian Valley - East Asian plants, displayed with rocks and cascades.

* Conservatory (11,000 square feet) - central palm house with large dome (63 feet tall), a semi-tropical wing featuring orchids, and two wings of seasonal displays.

* Four Seasons Garden - walled garden in early twentieth-century Arts and crafts style.
The Sunken Garden with Healing Garden and Visitors Center in background taken in July 2007.
The Sunken Garden with Healing Garden and Visitors Center in background taken in July 2007.

* Healing Garden (two parts) - The smaller area is designed as a quiet space for spiritual healing through contemplation, meditation, and reflection. The larger area is a herb garden with medicinal plants that are known to have specific "healing" attributes for a variety of physical afflictions.

* Island Garden - bridges, islands, boardwalks, and wetlands plants including pitcher plants.

* Henry M. Flagler Perennial Garden (3 acres) - more than 770 species and varieties of perennials, shrubs, trees and bulbs.

* Lucy Payne Minor Memorial Garden - large collections of daylilies and daffodils.

* Margaret Streb Conifer Garden - dwarf conifers.

* Rose Belvedere - rose collection.

* Sunken Garden - a garden at a lower elevation than the surrounding area, designed to leverage gravity to assist in drawing water towards it. This area contains perennials and annuals, with a reflecting pool.
Bigger photos? To save server space, the full-sized versions of these images have either not been loaded to the server or have been removed from the server. (Only some pages are loaded with full-sized images and those usually get removed after three months.) I still have them though. If you want me to email them to you, please send an email to guthrie.bruce@gmail.com and I can email them to you, or, depending on the number of images, just repost the page again will the full-sized images.
Connection Not Secure messages? Those warnings you get from your browser about this site not having secure connections worry some people. This means this site does not have SSL installed (the link is http:, not https:). That's bad if you're entering credit card numbers, passwords, or other personal information. But this site doesn't collect any personal information so SSL is not necessary. Life's good!
Photo Contact: [Email Bruce Guthrie].