The John Dickinson Plantation may not look exactly as it did 200 years ago, but it still gives the feeling of the 18th century. In 1954, Alden Hopkins, who helped design gardens for the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, designed a Colonial Revival garden for the plantation. The formal garden was installed during 1954 and 1955. The parterres (a flower garden having beds in paths, arranged in a pattern) in the formal boxwood garden resemble the British union jack, when viewed from the 2nd story of the house.