FOXCROFT SCHOOL’S GARDEN LEGACY PROJECT: Friendship, Founders, & Flowers Written by Bill Kent
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oxcroft School’s 500 acres are shrouded by tall, sheltering woodland. One place on campus offers a Hunt Country vista so stunning that students, faculty, and visiting parents cannot help but pause and take it in. The view from the Library Courtyard faces south, framed by a low stone wall that reveals the grand oval of the school’s riding track. A prim, gabled guesthouse, the Spur and Spoon, sits behind it and could stand in for a country house. Behind that, the Bull Run mountains rise in the distance, rugged and verdant. Two waist-high bronzes of a fox and hound flank the courtyard scene. They represent two student teams established by the school’s founder, Charlotte Haxall Noland. On a day known as Choosings, each student joins a team and competes on horseback and in other sporting activThe Library Courtyard. Photo courtesy of Foxcroft School.
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ities as part of a rigorous educational regimen that’s shaped the lives of future politicians, scientists, artists, Olympians, actresses, writers, CEOs, philanthropists, and more during their time at Foxcroft. Among them was the renowned landscape architect Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon, designer of the White House’s original Rose Garden and other notable horticultural installations throughout the world. In 1989, while living at Oak Spring, the Upperville farm and garden she shared with her second husband, philanthropist and equestrian Paul, Mellon celebrated Foxcroft’s 75th anniversary by designing and installing the Library Courtyard. Mellon’s work on the Library Courtyard and Miss Charlotte’s Garden represents far more than a caring gesture from a grateful student. Earlier this month, Foxcroft faculty members Julie Fish-
er and Dr. Meghen Tuttle presented their Garden Legacy Project at the Henry Morrison Flagler Museum in Palm Beach, Florida. The culmination of three years of research at Foxcroft and the Oak Spring Garden Foundation Library, their work explored the ways Noland’s educational and horticultural ideas shaped Mellon’s. The project, funded by the William R. Kenan Jr. Charitable Trust, documents how Noland and Mellon went on to change the way American women saw themselves in their gardens, in nature, in their professions, and in the world. Fisher, director of Foxcroft’s STEAM Program, shares, “We embarked on the Garden Legacy Project to tell the stories of these courageous, creative, and compassionate women. We also endeavor to embody the same understandings they Garden | Page 27