The Importance of a Botanic Garden
July 22, 2005
Washington is crawling with boy scouts. Troop after troop appears to have descended upon the city.. is there some annual Washington jamboree? In the morning I headed over to the Capitol Building so I could get in line to watch the House of Representatives at work. As I neared the little white tent where people line up, I was horrified to find that it was filled to overflowing with lads wearing tan shirts and green khaki shorts.
It is getting on twenty years since I wore those same shirts and shorts, but I could not remember much about the meanings of their sundry decorations and insignia. The patches on their left shoulder identified where they were from, that was easy enough to see. The troop ahead of me in line turned out to be from Lansing, Michigan, gamely waiting their turn to get into the Capitol. Another large group of boy scouts tromped past and I saw that they were from Salt Lake City, and their patch also featured a black Stealth Bomber on a white background. Another troop also had a Stealth Bomber on their patch, although I could not quite read the name of their district.
While I continued to stand in line (I was there for over an hour) a boy scout troop passed coming up the hill at the same time as two highly armed Capitol police, one carrying a shotgun, walked down. The scouts gawked, and aimed their cameras at the gun toting guards.. and then someone got the gumption to ask if he could get his pictured taken next to the guy with the big gun. The guy with the gun agreed, while his friend said he would keep working, and with a serious look stepped back and started scanning the sidewalk for potential attackers. A couple of other scouts got a similar picture with themselves nest to the big gun.
Later in the afternoon, when Emily finished her paleography class, we headed down to the U.S. Botanic Garden. Although coming and going we saw many boy scouts, once inside the botanic garden we saw none.. What I had expected to be a quick diversion turned out to be a well-spent full hour. It made both Emily and I think about how fun it would be to have a home and get to put some time into learning about the green world.
In the current crowded state of the mall, with museum piled upon museum, a botanic garden seems like just one additional frill.. perhaps a distraction for the older set. But it is interesting to note that before all these other museums existed, the United States Botanic Garden existed. In fact it was back in 1796 that George Washington recommended a botanic garden for the mall. The botanic garden was no afterthought, rather the first thing that leapt into the minds of the founders. The botanic garden at one time even stood front and center on the west side of the Capitol Building, in the place where the Grant Memorial now stands, but it was moved early in the 20th century to its current place slightly to the side.
After touring Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, the prominence given to the botanic garden should have given us no surprise. At Monticello a long thin strip of land was devoted to growing different crops.. and Jefferson loved to experiment. Inside his house our guide pointed out a special chest of drawers where he kept rare seeds that were sent to him. His instructions to Lewis and Clark mandated that they return with samples and seeds from the new plants they discover on their trip far west. Jefferson was an agrarian.. and Washington too was proud to be known simply as a farmer. For men like these a botanic garden was an obvious desideratum.
Times change. Left to the founders the mall might have looked more like a giant 4-H Club exposition. But our popular national interest runs now more toward technology and the military.. witness the daily long lines outside the National Air and Space Museum; witness the boy scouts and their badges. We are more impressed by mach-speed than exotic orchids.. but wandering through the botanic garden called to mind some alternative versions of our America.
