Norfolk Botanical Garden

Norfolk Botanical Garden in Norfolk, Virginia, began in 1938 when city manager Thomas P. Thompson and horticulturalist Frederic Heutte secured land and reservoir space for a public garden closely tied to the Works Progress Administration. Under WPA funding, African-American women and men cleared and planted the site, establishing a landscape that soon expanded. Maintained from 1958 by the Old Dominion Horticultural Society, it grew through the 1950s and 1960s with themed gardens and today includes major features such as a flowering arboretum, a Virginia Native Plant Garden, a rose garden, a Japanese garden, and marble statuary. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005, it is significant as both a horticultural collection and a historic landscape shaped by New Deal labor.

Norfolk, Virginia · United States