I was not aware of this danger at the time; I just thought it was great to have room for me, more or less. The few visitors seemed to be walking in a perplexed state, as if they had just come across a lost world. The lush decomposition, to the extent that it was palpable, seemed to simply add to the feeling of exotic discovery.
Today, I would not bring my stationery to the Botanical Garden. It is no longer off the beaten track, but is off the beaten track, attracting over a million visitors a year. On weekends, there are a lot of people; for holiday exhibitions and special shows, there are people. People are of all ages; they are from the metropolitan area and across the country and around the world.
The Botanic Garden is not a Smithsonian museum and is not technically on the Mall, although it is across from Third Street SW of the National Museum of the American Indian. It falls within the domain of the Congress, which has proved to be favorable since its nadir of the 90s.
Significant renovations and improvements have taken place in recent years, and the Botanical Garden has avoided the difficult times that plague, say, our national parks or the National Arboretum. It is worth considering these improvements and their value, as the Botanical Garden marks its 200th anniversary this year.
The Palm House was closed and dismantled in 1992. Five years later, the entire veranda complex around it was closed for a full four-year restoration, including its very important air conditioning systems. The redesigned and replanted central house has been renamed Tropiques to reflect all of its flora, and the secondary greenhouses rationalized by specific plant habitats.
On the west side of the lanai, a once vacant site is the location of the three-acre national garden, which includes formal and naturalistic water gardens, a rose garden, an outdoor amphitheater / classroom, and a sophisticated garden of native trees, shrubs and perennials and their cultivars, which continues in the curbs outside the railing fence. Funded by a non-profit organization, the National Fund for the U.S. Botanical Garden, it opened in 2006.
Across Avenue de l’Independance, Bartholdi Park has seen its elaborate monumental fountain restored and the landscape reconstructed and replanted like a series of rain gardens.
Recent repairs to roofs leaking from porch galleries are now complete and include a 5,000 square foot green roof planted in October with succulents and grasses.
The garden has a wide range of backstage greenhouses in southwest Washington, where gardeners take care of its plant collections and raise new plants to display them. The production greenhouses, although not old, are aging and plans are underway to rebuild them and use the site for more educational programs in the garden.
In short, the American Botanical Garden is on the rise. In a city where we now rely on philanthropists to repair the nation’s decaying monuments, this is something to celebrate.
The Botanical Garden received its Congress charter during the administration of James Monroe, and was therefore formed before the Smithsonian Institution, the Department of Agriculture, the Age of Steam Locomotion and before the scientific revolutions of the evolution and genetics. The idea of a botanical garden was adopted by George Washington, who understood that such a place – essentially a zoo for plants – would have scientific and practical value, but also a cultural marker for a new nation.
The bicentennial “is an important milestone for us,” said executive director Saharah Moon Chapotin. “This is a chance to celebrate everything we have done and show where we are going next, so it seems like a turning point.”
It seeks to extend the scientific role of the garden, in particular by sending staff for trips to collect wild plants, in the United States and abroad, and its horticulturalists participate in the research and conservation of native orchids. She also wants to expand programs for underserved areas of the city and build on efforts to use the garden for horticultural therapy.
On the production greenhouse site, “we would like to have a place where people can see what it’s like to grow food in an urban setting,” she said. “We have identified a space where we can install an urban farm.”
Friday (in collaboration with the Smithsonian), the Botanical Garden launched its annual show of winter orchids in spring, reminding that although plants give us life, food and comfort, they are also a source of beauty and pleasure. And for the scribes, we hope, inspiration.
What inspires me these days is the sight of young people at the conservatory – in their teens and twenties, and there are many of them – because their presence belies the idea that, in our digital and urbanized era, we are raising generations disconnected from nature.
Because people of my generation have forgotten that plants provide us with things like bread, chocolate, aspirin and rubber, not to mention the oxygen we breathe – future generations don’t have the luxury of such indifference or ignorance.
One thing has fundamentally changed since the opening of the Botanical Garden. At the beginning of the 19th century, the world seemed vast and wild, so wild in the Western spirit that it was wonderful, frightening and indestructible. It now looks much smaller and much more fragile.
When the Botanical Garden opened, visitors were impressed by the wonders of the plant world and understood how it could serve us. Now let’s take a look at what we can do for these plants and the shrunken worlds they come from. The public money spent on such a place seems to me a very good investment.
Tip of the week
The roses have burst but can still be pruned in winter. Remove old, weak and diseased canes, and cut healthy ones to about 18 inches, cutting just above an outward-facing bud. Protect yourself from thorns.