In 1917, Oatlands Gardener Arthur P. Murray wrote his name on a garden dependency wall, beginning a tradition that has lasted for over a century. While we are unsure if he was the first to put pencil to plaster, many have followed since, with some including dates and others leaving doodles.
In 2013, through a National Trust Innovation Lab Grant, the wall was photographed and researched. While rarely seen, names, notes, and doodles speak to the close, complex relationship Oatlands’ caretakers have had with the gardens. They also pique our curiosity: while we know that enslaved workers made thousands of bricks on the property to build the mansion, dairy, meat house, garden dependency, and other brick buildings on the property, there are no marks or names of the enslaved who first created the gardens in the early 1800s…what did they think of the space?
Twentieth-century immigrant Alfredo Siani brought his own horticultural knowledge to the space. Do the gardens retain his impact? Indeed, the wall speaks to the fact that places are not created by one person, but many.
