inTown: An Inspired Spot of Tea, Anyone?
Green Spring Gardens is a 31-acre park in Alexandria, Virginia, featuring a 1784 manor house–complete with traditional English tea room–along with estate gardens, a tropical greenhouse, a wooded stream valley with ponds and gazebo, a naturalistic native plant garden, and much more.
Growing in popularity is Green Spring’s ongoing selection of educational programs followed by a traditional English tea service. Programs are by reservation only (703-941-7987) and private events are also available.
You can view the entire schedule on the Green Spring website, but we’d like to highlight a few upcoming programs of special interest to inReaders:
September
September 16 & 30, Sundays
Tea at Downton Abbey
Call park for reservations. 1-3pm. $27 (13 yrs. and older) The spellbinding “Downton Abbey” portrays the intertwined lives of Edwardian aristocrats and their servants during a period of changing world order. Hear about life upstairs and downstairs at Downton: the fashions, food, manners and social customs and how each character is a study in a portrait of their time.
October
October 21 Sunday
The King and Mrs. Simpson
Call park for reservations. 1-3pm. $27 (13 yrs. and older) Hear the captivating tale of the man who gave up his throne for love. We’ll examine the scandal, intrigue and drama that brought Britain to the brink of constitutional crisis in 1936 as we tell the sensational story of King Edward VIII and Mrs. Wallis Simpson.
December
December 8 Saturday & 9 Sunday
Jane Austen’s Regency Christmas
Call park for reservations. 1-3pm $27 (13 yrs. and older) “At Christmas everybody invites their friends about them…” wrote Jane Austen in “Emma.” Imagine yourself at home at Christmas with the Elliots, Bingleys or Bennets as we learn how Austen’s characters, and the novelist herself, would have celebrated the festive season in the early 1800s.
