The Norfolk Botanical Garden was founded through the collaboration between Norfolk City Manager Thomas P. Thompson and horticulturalist Frederic Heutte. In 1938, the pair were granted of high, wooded ground plus of reservoir for a city garden. Later that year, under a Works Progress Administration grant, 200 African-American women and 20 men cleared the site. By March 1939, 4,000 azaleas, 2,000 rhododendrons, several thousand miscellaneous shrubs and trees, and 100 bushels of daffodils had been planted. and another grant was quickly secured to expand the garden. In 1958, the Old Dominion Horticultural Society took over maintenance and changed the garden's name to Norfolk Botanical Garden. The garden did at one point contain 175 acres, but the neighboring Norfolk International Airport expanded and took away 20 acres. A number of gardens were added through the 1950s and 1960s, including a Japanese garden, desert plants garden, colonial garden and rose garden. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
Gardens
The grounds include numerous theme gardens, including:
All-American Selections Display Garden - features All-America Selections of new annual varieties.
Annette Kagan Healing Garden - medicinal plants, stream, and pools.
Bicentennial Rose Garden - over 3,000 rose plants representing more than 430 varieties.
Border Walk - traditional English-style border, with tulips, daffodils, pansies, as well as azaleas, hibiscus 'Diane', impatiens, petunias, and gomphrena.
Hofheimer Camellia Garden - one of the region's largest camellia collection; more than 500 varieties. Predominant types are varieties of Camellia japonica and C. sasanqua.
Holly Garden & Turner Sculpture Garden - evergreen hollies in garden "rooms". The garden contains 121 varieties of hollies, including more than 20 types of American and Asiatic hollies and a dozen English hollies are grouped by geographic regions.
Japanese Garden - created to honor Norfolk's sister city, Moji, Japan, and rededicated in 1962 to Kitakyushu, formerly Moji; redesigned and refurbished in 1995.
Kaufman Hydrangea Garden - nearly 200 varieties of hydrangea and close relatives.
Matson Garden - large sweeps of perennials and smaller mixed groups.
Mirror Lake - lake with paved trail and small woodland trails.
NATO Overlook - view of garden, with redwoods and blue atlas cedars; named in honor of the nearby NATO installation.
Norfolk International Airport Overlook - detailed map of Norfolk International Airport with a description of how planes work. Visitors can monitor airport ground communications.
Purity Garden - Cataldi's sculpture of Madonna and Child, with backdrop of camellias.
Renaissance Garden - patterned upon Italian Renaissance gardens of the late 16th century, with vista, terraces, stone fences, statues of the seasons, and reflective pool and fountain.
The tram starts in front of Baker Hall Visitor Center, in the designated tram circle. The tram tour takes approximately 25 minutes, and has nine stops around the garden. On weekdays the tram runs at the top of the hour, and on weekends the trams runs every half hour. The tram is driven by a Garden Guide that will explain the different gardens passed by during the tour.
Rose Walking
This tour is an in depth view of the Bicentennial Rose Garden. It was completed in 1976 in honor of America's 200th birthday. Inside the 3.5 acres there are 3,000 individual rose bushes representing roughly 400 cultivars. It was previously one of 23 testing sites for the All-American Selection for roses, and now it is a designated display site only.
Boat
A 45-minute tour that starts and end at the boat basin right behind Baker Hall and next to the Japanese Garden. The tour goes out onto Lake Whitehurst, where you learn about the lake and all the inhabitants.
Sunset Boat
These tours are only offered about once a month. It is a tour that lasts for an hour and a half out on Lake Whitehurst. It is a more in-depth look into the body of water and all its inhabitants than the daily boat tour.
