Honey Bees at Mount Vernon
John Ferree, Mount Vernon's very own beekeeper, discusses the roles honey bees played, and continue to…
Mount Vernon is open to visitors throughout the inauguration week. We look forward to seeing you.
Washington's mind was rarely far from the lush gardens and majestic views at Mount Vernon. Today you can explore the gardens Washington developed and enjoy his unspoiled view across the Potomac River.
George Washington oversaw all aspects of the landscape at Mount Vernon. He extensively redesigned the grounds surrounding his home, adopting the less formal, more naturalistic style of 18th century English garden landscape designer Batty Langley. Washington instructed his enslaved workers to reshape walks, roads, and lawns; cut vistas through the forest, and plant hundreds of native trees and shrubs. Eighteenth-century visitors were delighted by bountiful offerings of fresh vegetables and fruits and reveled in after-dinner walks amongst all manner of opulent flowering plants.
George Washington's estate features four separate gardens for guests to enjoy. In addition to visiting the gardens, experience the wooded landscape on the quarter-mile-long forest trail.
What to know what's in bloom? The name of a plant at Mount Vernon? Or if George Washington grew it? Use the Plant Finder tool to help you while strolling the 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”.
This book explores General Washington's influence over the gardens at Mount Vernon and the preservation of the landscapes by the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association which has been the caretaker since 1853.