Nearly 500,000 people visit the 175-acre Norfolk Botanical Garden each year, but its beginnings nearly 90 years ago were much more humble.
In 1938, the city set out to create the “Azalea Gardens,” but the area’s workforce was already working on other projects. As a result, 200 African American women and 20 African American men were assigned to the garden project as part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
“It was a lot of trees, it was marshy and…it was scary,” former WPA worker Mary Elizabeth Ferguson told the city of Norfolk in 2009.
That same year, Ferguson, the last known living WPA worker, helped the city unveil a statue honoring the original gardeners near the Norfolk Botanical Garden entrance…