Written by Catriona Tudor Erler | Photography by Catriona Tudor Erler
They’re digging the dirt at Mount Vernon. Archaeologist Esther White and her support team are digging deep in the Upper Garden to
discover how it was laid out and what was planted in George Washington’s day. By the spring of 2011, they plan to unveil a newly planted garden that
accurately represents how it would have looked in the 1790s when Washington did
his last redesign of the space.
Limited excavation work began in 2005. At that time, the horticultural and
archaeological staff at Mount Vernon thought that 250 years of continual
gardening would have destroyed the archaeological evidence of the garden’s evolution. Much to the delight of everyone, they were wrong. The garden site
is still rich with evidence, justifying the more extensive field work that has
been done in the ensuing years.
The spot chosen to start was based on a drawing of the property done in 1787 by
Samuel Vaughan, a close friend of Washington’s. Other factors that were part of determining where to dig include clues such
as soil color, which may indicate amendments made in planting beds, and
compaction, which suggests path locations.
In archaeological digs where a building once stood, researchers can expect to
find crockery shards and other household detritus that are treasures to an
archaeologist looking for physical clues and evidence to document how life was
lived in the past. In the Mount Vernon garden dig, White and her team may come
across the occasional piece of eighteenth-century brick—which an untrained eye might mistake for a pebble—but the real treasure is hidden in the soil particles and is revealed only by
analysis in a laboratory.
At the lab, technicians separate out and analyze phytoliths, pollen, and soil
chemistry. Phytoliths are microscopic crystals that are present in most plants.
Each has a unique shape and size, and, since they are mineral, they remain even
after the rest of the plant has decayed. They are invaluable in garden
archaeology for determining what was once growing in a given plot. Pollen is
another durable substance that survives for centuries in soils, and each plant
has a recognizable, signature pollen. The soil chemistry gives the researchers
a breakdown of the nutrient content of the soil. On site at Mount Vernon, the
archaeologists also separate out the seeds, which provide excellent evidence
for what once grew in that soil.
Any archaeological evidence of the herbaceous flowering plants grown in the
beds will be a boon for the research because, while Washington’s farm documents and journals reveal critical information about the nursery
orders for ornamental trees and shrubs as well as the vegetables, berries,
melons, and fruit trees grown, there is little or no record of herbaceous
flowering plants. George Washington just wasn’t that interested in flowers. Historians know they were planted in the garden
because the Mount Vernon records of the period include debit accounts for “sundrie flower seed bought for Mrs. Washington,” and visitors to Mount Vernon during the 1790s often described the gardens in their
journals, mentioning flowers in the “Upper Garden.” In July 1796, the English architect Benjamin Latrobe described the garden in
his journal, saying, “On one side of the lawn is a plain Kitchen garden, on the other side a neat
flower garden laid out in squares, and boxed with great precission [sic]."
It is Latrobe’s journal that also alerted historians to the parterre garden planted next to Washington’s greenhouse. He wrote, “For the first time again since I left Germany I saw here a parterre, clipped and
trimmed with infinite care into the form of a richly flourished Fleur-de-Lis:
The expiring groans I hope of our Grandfather’s pedantry.”
Clearly Latrobe enjoyed waxing eloquent in his journal, but his cutting remark
highlights a duality in Washington’s approach to his landscape design. On the one hand, he was steeped in the
classical tradition of ordered, symmetrical, formal design. On the other,
Washington was aware that the latest trend for the huge country estates in
England was to create naturalistic landscapes with serpentine paths and
informal plantings. He wanted to be up-to-date and in step with the latest
fashions. His solution in 1786 was to reroute the entrance road that ran in a
straight line to the front courtyard along the central axis of the mansion, and
instead dedicate the open space to his “Bowling Green,” a swath of lawn framed by naturalistic groves of trees on each side. He thus
had an uninterrupted view across grass from his front door westward, framed on
either side with his “wilderness” of trees. This design is the iconic view of the mansion we have today.
The flowers that ultimately were grown in the Upper Garden were perhaps a
concession to Martha, as written records indicate that she was the primary
recipient of all flower seeds and roots. In Vaughan’s 1787 drawing, both the Upper and Lower Gardens are labeled as Kitchen Gardens,
and the matched spaces were both divided into six plots. But, eventually,
Martha’s influence must have prevailed because by the 1790s visitors such as Latrobe
described the great variety of trees and flowers in the Upper Garden. While the
beds continued to contain vegetables and fruit trees, the flowers became more
and more of a feature.
Over the decades that George Washington worked on the Mount Vernon property,
his design concepts evolved. Gardens were relocated and reshaped, plantings
were modified, and, perhaps, he succumbed to pressures from his wife for more
flowers in the Upper Garden. Similarly, the gardens have changed since the
Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association saved the property from ruin when they purchased it in 1858.
Extensive research over the years has increased the understanding of what the
gardens were like in Washington’s day, and this current archaeological work is expected to reveal even more
information. When the newly laid-out and planted Upper Garden is revealed next
year, it will be the most accurate representation of what the garden was like
in the 1790s since George Washington himself walked its paths. If he could
return, he would feel right at home.
