Gardens & Landscapes

For more than 50 years the Ladies of Mount Vernon have been working to preserve George Washington’s view across the Potomac.

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

No place at Mount Vernon better shows off the secret George Washington - his desire to be self-sufficient, his enchanting curiosity, and his determined optimism, undeterred by considerable failure - than his botanical garden.

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

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.