Maymont Park is on a bluff overlooking the James River. Over some 30 years, EDA has provided the planning, design and historic preservation that transformed this park from a neglected former estate to the city’s most celebrated open space.
Maymont was built at the turn of the 19th Century and bequeathed in the early 1920s to Richmond for use as a public park. Maymont fell into a state of serious disrepair. In 1968, a private foundation took over its care and operation.
EDA developed the master plan and lead a team of consultants, providing planning, design, historic preservation and public facilitation for over 50 diverse projects. Major works included restoration of a two-acre terraced Italian Garden, design of a 10-acre wildlife exhibit of native Virginia animals, a nature center and the largest Japanese style garden on the Eastern seaboard.

The house is in the heart of Virginia’s apple orchard region near Berryville. The grounds have been a work in progress for the current owner and landscape architect for over 30 years. The latest addition is a Japanese style garden set within the karst topography (a landscape created by groundwater dissolving sedimentary rock, here, limestone).

In George’s day you needed stables; now it’s parking lots. EDA is working with Mount Vernon to transform the overflow parking lot into a 350-space eco-friendly parking area that “vanishes into the landscape.”
The least intensive zone will appear as an extension of the adjacent pasture with a grass surface supported by structural soils to reduce surface runoff. Bioswale and rain garden medians help manage storm water. Native trees will be planted to screen the facility from the adjacent highway.
Similar environmentally friendly techniques are planned for the renovation of the north ha-ha wall area that bounds the North Grove today. (Note: A ha-ha wall was a masonry wall built into the side of a hill to kept livestock away from more formal grounds.)