It's the annual Historic Garden Week in Virginia, and Rebecca Fass is hard at work preparing her home.
On Wednesday she'll open her house and surrounding gardens to thousands of visitors who come through the Hampton-Newport News tour of the statewide event, which is in its 90th year and features 29 different local tours.
Fass, who lives on the James River in the Riverside neighborhood, said she grew up loving gardens — so much so that "pretty flower" were among her first words.
She's now a longtime member of the Hampton Roads Garden Club who also advocates for ways to help the local bee population.
The Fass household features a range of different gardens — herbs in the backyard, a more formal and manicured layout of hedges out front, even a gated "secret garden."
All will be on display this week, along with the inside of her home.
“There’s always so much creativity behind the different flower arrangements," Fass said. "It's fun to see what people have come up with and it gives the visitors an idea of things to do in their own homes.”
Kim Harris, chair of the Hampton-Newport News garden tour, said the event's often called "one of the country's largest open houses."
People all over the state open their homes for curious onlookers. Money raised goes toward historic restoration projects throughout Virginia.
Fans of garden week have recently told organizers they're particularly interested in looking at outdoor living spaces, Harris said.
"I think a lot of that had to do with COVID and people just started being outside more," she said. "There's so many people that are making actual living spaces outside that we thought it was real important to showcase that also."
Fass said she tries to incorporate native plants as much as she can, including beardtongue, woodland phlox and stokes aster. Lavender, roses and daffodils are among the flowers visitors will encounter.
"I tried to focus a little bit on having some things that would be blooming this time of year," she said. Her lavender, for example, survived the winter and is now blooming, "just in time."
