Sponsors: The Fauquier and Loudoun Garden Club and The Leesburg Garden Club

Tickets: $35; single-site, $15; ages 6-12, half-price

Info: (540) 338-3514; www.VAGardenweek.org

Lunches: $12; Monday, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.; Hill School Dornin Science Center, 1753 The Plains Road, Middleburg. Reservations by April 14; checks payable to Daphne Cheatham, P.O. Box 324, Middleburg, VA 20118.

Info: (540) 253-5120

Middleburg is known as the horse capital of Virginia. Steeplechase races have been run in Fauquier County since 1844.

Tour highlights:

The Hill School Dornin Science Center, 1753 The Plains Road, Middleburg, offers students hands-on experience in gardening. The arboretum features indigenous Northern Virginia Piedmont trees and woody shrubs, orchards, copses and natural hedges.

The log cabin at Coon Tree Ridge Farm, 610 Coon Tree Road, Middleburg, was used as a "hunt box" until 2005 when it was relocated from Lafayette, Ind. It's now a residence and owners have added to the structure. The house showcases a collection of American folk art. Outside, garden rooms feature stone walls, terraces and a fireplace.

A sycamore-lined driveway leads to Lee Hall, 6370 Herringdon Road, The Plains (Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Ohrstrom, owners), a three-story Virginia farm house built in 1818. The owners dismantled, moved and reconstructed 10 farm buildings. They created a compound that includes an 1840s dairy, an 1835 smokehouse, two post-and-beam barns and a privy where a son of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee is said to have hidden from Union soldiers.

Built in 1991, Roundaway Farm, 2575 Five Points Road, Marshall (Col. and Mrs. Robert W. Newton, owners), has a front facade of the Federal Colonial style. Types of wood found in the house include local black walnut, character-grade oak, heart pine and sugar pine. Enlarged gardens showcase a European Hornbeam arch, topiaries, perennials, a natural garden, roses, crape myrtles, rhododendrons, foxglove and hollyhock.

With a name that hints at its owner's previous business, Peakewood Pharm, 2380 Atoka Road, Marshall (Mr. and Mrs. William Kennedy, owners), has been transformed into a horse farm. The stone farmhouse is filled with French antiques and racehorse paintings. The property includes a horse arena, barn, guest house, farm manager's house, stream and a pond.

The fieldstone manor house at Rockburn Farm, 2224 Crenshaw Road, Marshall (Mr. and Mrs. Donald Glickman, owners), was built in 1728 and reconstructed in 1828 after a fire. Additions made throughout the years include a ballroom. During the Civil War, wounded Confederate cavalry leader Col. John Singleton Mosby was brought to this farm to be nursed back to health.

*At Peakewood Pharm, the horse barn is made from 100-year-old logs.