Garden Preservation
"I designed the garden with the end in view of its being eventually turned over for public inspection, and, this design was not to interfere with its effectiveness in its planting. The principle of design was to keep open centers and vistas: and, to confine planting to the borders of the same." - Weeks Halls Notebooks, ca. 1940
In
1990 the National Endowment for the Arts awarded the Shadows-on-the-Teche
a Design Arts grant to conduct a landscape study, which involved researching
all the documentary evidence, both photographic and archival, analyzing
that evidence and developing a design through which to interpret the landscape.
After extensive research in several archives followed by numerous oral
history interviews, historic landscape scholar Suzanne Turner produced
a four-volume Historic Landscape Report for the Shadows.
In the fall of 1992, the Shadows convened a landscape advisory committee, comprised of National Trust and Shadows staff, community members, Weeks and Moore family members, landscape architects and historians, horticulturists and preservationists to review the landscape research and determine an interpretive direction to guide the landscape design team. The overwhelming consensus was that Weeks Hall's gardens represented the most recent landscape layer of historical significance and that ample documentary evidence existed to guide the restoration of Hall's landscape.
As time passes, this commitment to telling a more complete story will be revealed in the ongoing restoration of Weeks Halls landscape, the continued research of all aspects of the site's history, and the meticulous maintenance of the property as a museum.
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