Garden sights in Washington, DC
- Sort by:
- Popular
-
A
Tidal Basin
Beloved for the magnificent Yoshino cherry trees that ring it, the Tidal Basin is an elegant aquatic interruption to the stone and grass of the Mall and its surrounding web of roads. The orchard was a gift from Japan in 1912; since then, every year in late March or early April the banks shimmer with pale pink blossoms. When said blossoms start to shed, the effect of soft pink snow against warm spring weather is intoxicating. The National Cherry Blossom Festival celebrates this event – late March and early April draw 750,000 visitors to DC for the festivities, which culminate in a big parade. The amoeba-shaped Tidal Basin serves a practical purpose: flushing the adjacent W…
reviewed
-
B
United States National Arboretum
The best things in life – or this city – require a little effort. In this case, you need wheels to reach the greatest green space in Washington, almost 450 acres of meadowland, sylvan theatres and a pastoral setting that feels somewhere between bucolic Americana countryside and a Romantic artist’s conception of classical Greek ruralscapes. Stop at the Administration Building near the R St gate for a map and information. Highlights include the Bonsai & Penjing Museum (10am-4pm), east of the Administration Building, and the Capitol Columns Garden, south along Ellipse Rd. The latter is studded with Corinthian pillars removed from the Capitol in the 1950s. The best time…
reviewed
-
C
Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens
DC was built on a marsh, a beautiful, brackish, low-lying ripple of sawgrass and steel-blue water, wind-coaxed and tide touched by the inflow of the Potomac from the Chesapeake Bay. You’d never know all that now, of course, unless you come to the only national park in the USA devoted to water plants. The aquatic gardens were begun as the hobby of a Civil War veteran and operated for 56 years as a commercial water garden, until the federal government purchased them in 1938. Today this is the only place in the city to see the natural wetlands the District sprang from; look out for beaver dams, clouds of birds and the more traditional manicured grounds, quilted in water lili…
reviewed
-
D
Kahlil Gibran Memorial Garden
In the midst of the wooded ravine known as Normanstone Park, the Kahlil Gibran garden memorializes the arch-deity of soupy spiritual poetry. Its centerpieces are a moody bust of the Lebanese mystic and a star-shaped fountain surrounded by flowers, hedges and limestone benches engraved with various Gibranisms: ‘We live only to discover beauty. All else is a form of waiting.’ From a trailhead just north of the garden, you can hop onto trails that link to Rock Creek and Glover Archbold Parks.
reviewed
