Honey Bees at Mount Vernon
John Ferree, Mount Vernon's beekeeper, discusses the roles honey bees played at Mount Vernon.
George Washington's estate features four separate gardens for guests to enjoy.
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.
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?
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.
George Washington possessed a strong interest in landscape design and architecture throughout his adult life.
Washington instructed enslaved workers to create sweeping lawns, groves of trees, walled gardens, serpentine paths, and vistas that can still be seen today.
Enslaved gardeners, including George and Harry, tended flowers, vegetables, and fruit trees. They also maintained the landscape around the Mansion.
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.
Mount Vernon is home to a variety of trees, some dating to Washington's time and others planted by some of the estate's most notable visitors.
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”.
Dean Norton, Director of Horticulture at Mount Vernon, muses on what may have been George Washington's favorite plant.