Gardens

Dean Norton, the Director of Horticulture, discusses all of the work that goes into maintaining the historic and modern gardens and landscape at Mount Vernon.

Each of Washington's gardens served a different purpose, but they were all important to the estate. 

Did you know the lower or kitchen garden has been cultivated for the production of vegetables since 1760?

George Washington possessed a strong interest in landscape design and architecture throughout his adult life.

Enslaved gardeners, including George and Harry, tended flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees. They also maintained the landscape around the Mansion.

Washington instructed enslaved workers to create sweeping lawns, groves of trees, walled gardens, serpentine paths, and vistas that can still be seen today.

George Washington actually spent time gardening in the Botanical Garden at Mount Vernon.

Today visitors can marvel in the Upper Garden at the landscape originally imagined by Washington. However, the garden has undergone many iterations in its lifetime.

While Washington's grape-growing efforts in the early 1770s gave the locality its name, that endeavor quickly proved to be unsuccessful.

Following aristocratic British practice, George Washington had 18 acres fenced off on the slope between the Mansion and the Potomac River, to serve as “a paddock for deer”.