The Presidential Plantsman: George Washington’s Secret Garden Life

April 30, 1789

On this day, our esteemed first Commander-in-Chief, George Washington, was sworn into office with all the pomp and circumstance befitting America's inaugural president. What the adoring crowds and history books often neglect to mention, dear readers, is that beneath those impressive military credentials and political acumen beat the heart of a devoted gardener!

Yes, my fellow soil enthusiasts, the man who could not tell a lie about chopping down a cherry tree grew up to become quite the horticultural visionary. Washington personally oversaw every aspect of his beloved Mount Vernon estate with the same meticulous attention he once directed toward revolutionary war strategies.

Among his most treasured possessions was a personal copy of Batty Langley's New Principles of Gardening. Now, between us, I find it tremendously revealing that a man who rejected a British king would so eagerly embrace British garden design! Yet Washington, ever the revolutionary, abandoned the rigid formality so cherished by European aristocracy in favor of something far more radical for his time – a naturalistic garden style that whispered of freedom rather than screamed of dominance.

Should you find yourself perusing Mount Vernon's rather informative website (as one must when garden inspiration runs dry), you'll discover Washington's landscape consisted of four distinct gardens: the upper (formal) garden, the lower (kitchen) garden, the botanical (personal or experimental) garden, and the fruit garden and nursery. Each one a testament to the man's horticultural obsessions!

What fascinates this writer most profoundly about Washington's green endeavors were his methods and intentions. Unlike many gentlemen of his standing who employed gardens merely as status symbols, our first president possessed that most dangerous quality in a gardener – genuine curiosity.

The Virginia climate, with its punishing summers and unpredictable frosts, would send lesser gardeners retreating to their parlors with smelling salts in hand. Not Washington! He viewed these challenges as opportunities for experimentation, testing which plants might survive and even thrive under such conditions.

Of his four gardens, Washington repeatedly referred to his botanical garden as his favorite throughout his lifetime. "The little garden by the salt house," he called it, or more affectionately, his "little garden." One cannot help but note how the most powerful man in America found his greatest joy in the smallest of his garden plots – a lesson in priorities we might all benefit from considering!

This botanical sanctuary served as Washington's trial garden, where he tested alfalfa and oats with the enthusiasm of a child with new toys. His agricultural experiments were not merely gentleman's diversions but calculated efforts to increase his fields' productivity. Even in retirement, the man could not help but strategize!

One wonders what Washington might think of our modern gardens, with our imported exotics and chemical solutions. Would he approve of our methods, or would he, with that famously stern gaze, remind us that patience and observation are the true gardener's greatest tools? I rather suspect the latter, though I shall not put words in the great man's mouth – he has quite enough quotations attributed to him already!