A Hot, Wet Season Means a Heavy Workload for University Gardeners

Gardener Roland Von der Muhll prunes plants in the Jeffersonian gardens. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Von der Muhll, who has worked in the Jeffersonian gardens for about three years, enjoys working in a detailed ornamental landscape, with a variety of plantings.

“Here there is a lot more pruning detail work with the plants, but also what makes the gardens kind of unique is it is not the type of plant species you would see in a recently installed landscape for a shopping mall, or even newer parts of Grounds,” he said. “We have fruit trees, berry bushes, grapes, different culinary herbs such as lavender and rosemary, and, to a certain degree, you could say ‘historic-type plants,’ such as the smoke tree in lower Garden X, a lot of boxwoods, espalier fruit trees. It is a whole different landscape in that regard than what you would tend to find on the rest of Grounds – a more interesting one I would say.”

In the early years of the University, the gardens were utilitarian work areas for the pavilions and the hotels, with enslaved laborers doing the work necessary to keep the University running. The garden areas did not function at all like their current spaces of sanctuary and botanical variety.

The gardens have been restored and renovated a number of times since the 1950s – most notably by the Garden Club of Virginia – and are considered public spaces, open to visitors.

Gardener Tim Andrus trims shrubbery on the edge of the west side Jeffersonian gardens. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

Much of the work that Andrus and Von der Muhll do is maintaining what is there, as well as working on other locales. Von der Muhll also tends the courtyards at Rouss-Robertson Hall and between Old Cabell and New Cabell halls. Andrus tends to the plantings in the west-side gardens and around the Rotunda. On a recent early morning, he was at the Rotunda trimming back distylium.

“It has had shoots sticking out a foot into the pathway on either side,” Andrus said. “Dozens all the way down. I just finished trimming that off the pathway and I had to trim it away from the building, on the side where it drops off into the English ivy beds on either side all the way down that everybody photographs.”

Andrus also tends the fountain in the Rotunda’s east garden.

“I have to go up and keep that clean because it gets moldy and you get bacteria growing on the side,” Andrus said. “I have to keep that going and all those pocket gardens at the Rotunda.”

But the bulk of their work centers on the pavilion gardens.

“Today is weeding, as always,” Von der Muhll said. “They are growing up everywhere, and cleaning walks from the recent storms trying to get all the sticks and debris off the walks and making sure they look nice, making sure you can see the brick edges, because the gardens look so much prettier when you can see well-defined walks with brick edges, instead of having mud and gravel washing over the edges.”

Ishika Khemani, a rising fourth-year student from Fairfax, is nestled into her hammock under trees in the Pavilion VII garden reading “Gentrifier,” a memoir by Anne Elizabeth Moore. (Photo by Dan Addison, University Communications)

“Keeping ivy and other plants off the pathways,” Andrus said. “A lot of shrubs start to grow vigorously in the summer so they will start to block the pathways. Pruning, raking, keeping weeds out and keeping the paths cleared, that is 90% of it.”

The gardeners often encounter visitors during the summer – fewer students, and more families and tourists.

“I don’t know much about the historical part of everything here, but I know the plants pretty well and I can answer questions about taxonomy and things that have to do with the plants here in the gardens,” Andrus said. “I am always curious about why people come here. I like to engage in conversation. I was told that as a gardener I am an ambassador for the University.”

Andrus, a botanist and plant taxonomist, is also happy to see students using the gardens.

“These are their gardens,” he said.