Flora Ward Vranian, garden-club leader, dies

-- Flora Ward Vranian helped change Henrico County's landscape through her leadership of the Westgate Garden Club.

Flora Ward Vranian was born in Lunenburg County in 1922 in a place where "there wasn't even a town," said her son, Alan Vranian of Warrenton.

One of seven children, she moved to the Richmond area when she was 17 to find work and send money home to her mother. Her father had died when she was 12, and the hardships of the Depression haunted her in her later years, her son said.

She met and married an artist, became something of an artist herself and literally changed the landscape of Henrico County.

Mrs. Vranian was founder and first president of Westgate Garden Club, started in 1959 with 31 members. The club adopted part of the grounds of the old Skipwith estate when it became owned by the county. Three Chopt Elementary School was built on one part of the property. The garden club cleaned up the gardens and woods on another part, a place her son remembered playing when he was a boy.

The result became Cheswick Park, Henrico's first public park, which opened in 1980.

Mrs. Vranian died Friday in Warrenton, where she had lived with her son for the past seven years. She was 86. Her husband, illustrator F. Richard Vranian, died in 1992.

A graveside service will be held today, Monday, in Westhampton Memorial Park, 10000 Patterson Ave., at 12:30 p.m.

Mrs. Vranian served in the garden club in various capacities, as vice president and secretary in the mid-1960s, again as president in 1979, and always as a mentor to younger members, her son said.

In 1973, the club finished an 18-month project to landscape the grounds of Tuckahoe Library for National Library Week. The club is also known for landscaping and planting flowers and shrubs in the Three Chopt and Skipwith Road area, said her daughter, June Vranian of Culpeper.

Mrs. Vranian gave many presentations on flower arranging and landscaping, and flowers were one of her favorite subjects for her paintings. She also enjoyed woodcarving and had many friends in the James River Woodcarvers, and she learned jewelrymaking at Virginia Commonwealth University.

She was a member of First Baptist Church and St. James Armenian Church.

Westgate Garden Club, in appreciation of her service, sponsored her life membership in the National Council of Garden Clubs and donated a commemorative bench dedicated to her at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden, her son said.

In addition to her son and daughter, Mrs. Vranian is survived by two sisters, Mildred Ward Jones and Jean Evelyn Ward, both of Richmond; and two grandchildren.