Rock Hill

The Thomas Jefferson Chapter of Preservation Virginia has given its 2011 Annual Preservation Award to the Monticello Area Community Action Agency and community volunteer Bob Fenwick for their work preserving the Rock Hill Estate Gardens. Designed and built in the 1930s by Reverend Henry A. Porter, the minister of Charlottesville’s First Baptist Church, the Rock Hill Estate Garden is the most ambitious and complex private garden landscape in Charlottesville. Long overgrown, the distinct parts of the garden—the garden terraces, the northern woodlands section, with its switchback trails, and the extraordinary garden wall surrounding the entire site had disappeared from public view. By marshalling hundreds and hundreds of hours of volunteer effort, using United Way’s Days of Caring and more informal work days, the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, guided by community volunteer Bob Fenwick, has made substantial progress in renewing this significant cultural landscape. The Preservation Virginia award celebrates this impressive community project in historic preservation and community renewal.