The Play Garden

STUNNING VIEW of the SHENANDOAH RIVER

The Play Garden is a charming country home in the Shenandoah Valley overlooking the foothills and main range of the Blue Ridge Mountains in historic Clarke County, Virginia, a place where the local people cherish the “land as the most rarified artifact in any museum anywhere.”

The property consists of two recently renovated houses (Main House and Guest House) and a recently renovated swimming pool, all located on 21 plush acres overlooking a bend of the Shenandoah River. The property has beautiful gardens as well as one of the largest collections of American and English boxwoods in the nation.

The Play Garden is 1 hour and 15 minutes west of Washington, D. C., 20 minutes west of Middleburg, Virginia, and 20 minutes east of Winchester, Virginia, with easy access to I-66 and U. S. Highway 50.

See more photos here.

MAIN HOUSE:

The Main House was built at the turn of the 20th Century. Following the original owners, the Play Garden has remained in the same family for four generations.

The Main House is beautifully furnished with three bedrooms, two full baths, and two half baths, a fully equipped kitchen with a great view; a living room, dining room, and den (with a pull out sofa).

A spacious veranda offers a breathtaking view of the Shenandoah River and the Blue Ridge Mountains and offers a wonderful opportunity for outdoor dining. A gas grill is provided. There are endless paths through the gardens, a swimming pool nestled among the boxwoods, and total privacy.

GUEST HOUSE:

The Guest House has one bedroom with a king sized bed, a full bath, a living/kitchen area with two pull out sofas, and a porch overlooking the forest.

Both the main house and the guest house have two hundred channel satellite TV and wireless high speed Internet. There is air condition and heat in both houses.

PERFECT for RELAXATION and ENTERTAINMENT

The Play Garden is perfect for entertaining friends, hosting family reunions, or relaxing with your family. A caterer is available for hire, as is a blue grass band, but guests of the Play Garden handle these arrangements on their own.

Adults and children can enjoy the innumerable day trips that are at your fingertips, with the happy expectation of returning to the Play Garden for a swim in the pool and supper on the porch, while the sunset drapes shadows over the mountains.

Though isolated down various rural lanes, the Play Garden is only 10 minutes from the town of Berryville, where banks, churches, grocery stores, coffee shops, and restaurants are located, and 10 minutes from the village of Millwood, where Locke’s Store has been transformed into “a combination coffee bar, wine shop, bakery, deli and grocery store,” serving local products and exquisite foods. (see review of ‘The Modern Country Store’ in The Washington Post, October 8, 2008)

ACCOMMODATIONS:

Main House:

Bedroom w/ 1 King and flat screen TV (upstairs)
Bedroom w/ Twin beds (upstairs)
Bedroom w/ 1 Queen (upstairs)
2 Full Baths (upstairs)
1 Pullout sofa and flat screen TV in den (downstairs)
2 Half-Baths (downstairs)
Fully equipped kitchen with seating for 6 (additional seating for 3 at the granite counter island) and flat screen TV
Dining room seats 10
Porch with outdoor dining with assorted seating for 12

Guest House:

1 King Bedroom
2 pullout sofas in the living room, and TV
Fully equipped kitchen with compact appliances
Seating for 4 at kitchen table
Carport

LIST of AMENITIES:

General:

Ceiling fans in each bedroom, kitchen and porch
Fully equipped kitchen
Hardwood floors throughout (including Guest House)
Linens provided
Hair dryer
Bath towels and pool towels provided
High-speed wireless Internet
Spacious outside porch (with wrought iron tables and chairs seating 12)
Gas grill
Large swimming pool with stone patio

Kitchen:

Newly renovated, fully equipped kitchen
Coffee maker
Toaster
Microwave
Dishwasher
Garbage disposal
Filtered water system (fridge, sink, and bar sink)
Washer/dryer
Ice maker (in fridge)
Wine & beverage cooler
Kitchen table seats 6 + 3 at kitchen-island
Blender
GE double oven/cook-top
Granite countertops
Portable high chair

Living Room and Den:

Flat Screen TV
Library

Dining Room:

Large buffet perfect for serving
Dining room table seats 10

Entertainment:

4 flat screen TVs with 200 channel satellite channels (one in den, one in master, one in guest house, and one in kitchen)
Stocked library – kids/adults books
DVD player
Board games
Outdoor games: Croquet, Bocce Ball, Ladder Ball
Pool toys for kids

ACTIVITIES NEARBY:

There is easy access to horse-back riding, canoeing, tubing down river, fishing, tennis, hiking (Shenandoah National Park), mountain biking, golfing (a Jack Nicklaus golf course is 25 minutes away, see link below), cavern touring (Luray Caverns), bird-watching, and long walks along the river.

There are many wineries (see links below) and antique shops within short driving distances.

Each summer there is the Upperville Horse Show and each autumn the Blue Ridge Hunt.

GREAT DINING & SHOPPING NEARBY:

Dining:

Ashby’s Inn - Paris, Virginia

Hunter’s Head - Upperville

French Hound - Middleburg

Red Fox Inn - Middleburg

Yellow Brick Bank - Shepherdstown, West Virginia

L’Auberge Provencale – White Post, Virginia

Battletown Inn – Berryville

Wayside Inn – Middletown

The Inn – Little Washington, Virginia

Shopping:

20 minutes from great antique shopping in Middleburg, Va

45 minutes from Premium Outlet Mall in Leesburg, Va

20 minutes from ample shopping in Winchester, Va

NEARBY CIVIL WAR BATTLE SITES:

Antietam (Sharpsburg)

Manassas (First and Second Bull Run)

Cedar Creek (Fisher’s Hill)

Front Royal (including Civil War museum)

Winchester (including Stonewall Jackson’s Headquarters)

Stonewall Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign of 1862

Strasburg (including Civil War museums)

John Mosby’s ‘guerrilla’ campaigns of 1864

See http://www.Shenandoahatwar.org/

OTHER HISTORICAL SITES:

10 minutes from Millwood’s Burwell-Morgan Mill and Museum, built between 1782-‘85 by Hessian soldiers captured during the Revolutionary War. See http://www.clarkehistory.org/. The mill was restored in the 1960s through the efforts of several people, including Richard Plater, Jr., of the Play Garden, and is the oldest operating merchant grain mill in the Shenandoah Valley.

5 minutes from Old Chapel, established in 1738. The one room church was built in 1790. Virginia Governor Edmund Randolph and local planter Nathaniel Burwell are buried in the simple, graceful cemetery, as are former owners of the Play Garden.

30 minutes from the museum and restored village of Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, where John Brown launched a slave insurrection in 1859.

30 minutes from Charles Town, West Virginia, where a museum tells the story John Brown’s trial and hanging after the failed insurrection.

10 minutes from Berryville, Virginia. The town was first known as Battletown because of the frequent brawls there but was renamed Berryville after a local man when the town was charted in 1789. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Josephine School Museum in Berryville relates the history of free and enslaved African-Americans in Clarke Country.