The Friendship Garden is the first garden that visitors see when they enter the R Street Gate. It surrounds Arbor House, which was once a caretaker's residence but is now home to the Friends of the National Arboretum and the Arbor House Gift Shop. Appropriately, the Friendship Garden is perhaps the garden that homeowners can most easily relate to. The Arbor House looks like a suburban residence, and the gardens demonstrate the ideals of low-input landscaping: a diversity of beautiful plants with limited inputs of pesticides, fertilizer, water, and maintenance.
The design of the garden is the brainchild of renowned landscape architects Wolfgang Oehme and James van Sweden. It is a great example of their body of work known as The New American Garden, a movement that did much to popularize the use of ornamental grasses in landscapes in America. Ornamental grasses, hosts of daffodils and other spring bulbs, and a generous helping of evergreens give this garden interest in all seasons. Much of the garden requires no special care beyond regular weeding, watering, mulching, and the annual ritual of cutting back spent foliage.
A shaded portion of the garden on the north side
of Arbor House is known as the Robert Lewis Baker Garden and showcases
small potted plants positioned along the path. An ornate structure
known as the Garden House, is sited in the shade of large white oaks in
the back yard of the Arbor House. It was designed by Lethbridge and
Associates and funded by the National Council of State Garden Clubs and
is used for tool and equipment storage. Maintenance of the Friendship
Garden is supported in part by the National
Capital Area Federation of Garden Clubs.
Two pieces of garden sculpture can be seen in
the Friendship Garden. John Cavanaugh's sculpture of Demeter, the
goddess of agriculture, is nestled among grasses and heavenly bamboo along
the walk to the entrance to Arbor House. To the rear of the garden,
in an open space to the fore of the National Boxwood
Collection, you can see Beverly Pepper's abstract sculpture Split
Ritual.
Although the Friendship Garden is as small as any suburban yard, you'll want to budget fifteen minutes to a half hour to savor all the detail this landscape has to offer. Benches and seating areas are available for you to pause and be inspired to make your garden more environmentally friendly. Wide brick paths make the Friendship Garden easily accessible to all our visitors.
Last Updated December 2, 2005 3:14 PM
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