Francis Land House
Virginia Beach Master Gardeners maintain historically-based gardens at two historical sites within the City of Virginia Beach. The gardens are open to the public and there are no admission fees. Volunteers maintain regular hours on most Tuesday mornings at each garden and are available to answer questions and assist the public. Hours are subject to change due to weather or other events. Please see each historic site’s page for details.
Welcome to the Francis Land House and gardens, circa 1805. The current gardens consist of a large heirloom vegetable garden, a pollinator garden bursting with beautiful flowers, a historical demonstration garden showcasing the standard crops of the colonial period, a fruit garden with both trees and shrubs, and a traditional herb garden featuring medicinal and kitchen herbs.The vegetable garden consists of 36 raised beds that are crop rotated. Typically, the VBMG volunteers plant and harvest about 150 different varieties of heirloom vegetables, which are grown organically. The herb garden includes a wide variety of medicinal and culinary herbs that represent what would have been used in colonial times. The demonstration beds feature the flax bed (for linen that the museum has used to demonstrate the use of the spinning wheel), the soybean bed, and a 3 sisters’ bed (corn, squash, and runner beans) practiced by Native Americans and adopted by colonists. The Pollinator Garden is both beautiful and functional - the bees and other pollinators that are attracted to the flowers pollinate the vegetables in the garden. We invite you to wander the property at your leisure and enjoy the beauty of these special gardens. Food grown in the garden is donated to a local food pantry and supports our community. In 2025 we donated over 1400 pounds of produce.