The Four Gardens at Mount Vernon

As the focal point of the upper garden, George Washington built a commanding greenhouse (sometimes referred to as a hothouse). In this heated space, he cultivated delicate tropical plants that could not withstand cold Virginia winters. In addition to providing lemons, limes, and oranges for Mrs. Washington’s table, the greenhouse served as a gallery for exhibiting rare and unusual plants imported from around the globe, including an aloe vera from North Africa and sago palm from the East Indies.

When George Washington began planning the building in 1784, there were very few greenhouses in North America and none near Mount Vernon. Although he had seen several greenhouses in his travels, he was not familiar with the mechanics of the flues that heated the floor. He wrote his trusted aide, Colonel Tench Tilghman, seeking details of Margaret Tilghman Carroll’s greenhouse outside Baltimore. Combining these mechanical details with his own recollections and observations, Washington designed his own greenhouse.

Designed to be both beautiful and functional, almost every element of the building has a practical purpose. The thick brick walls provide a pleasing contrast to the white woodwork; they also retain heat and insulate the building. The five large windows with triple sashes add a vertical thrust to the design, but their primary purpose was to provide maximum exposure to sunlight from the south. The windows could also be opened at the top and bottom to allow for good air circulation. The wide, low wings added in 1792 balance the strong verticality of the central block and provided slave housing.

To accomplish this, Mrs. Washington instructed Mount Vernon’s hired and enslaved gardener of the types and quantities of fruits and vegetables she would need for her enslaved cooks to transform into meals.

Before grocery stores and farmers markets, kitchen gardens were “a necessary support of life,” as one gardening manual observed. In the 18th century, every home outside the city had a vegetable or kitchen garden providing nutritious supplements to rural diets. Since the 1760s, Mount Vernon’s kitchen garden has been continuously cultivated for the production of vegetables. A visitor in 1782 observed, “There is an immense, extremely well-cultivated garden behind the right wing. The choicest fruits in the country are to be found there.” While the lower garden was not intended for pleasure, the gate off of the bowling green may have enticed visitors to peek inside.

The area known as fruit garden and nursery began as a failed attempt at a vineyard. Once the grapes failed, the four-acre fruit garden and nursery was created.

The nursery area was where plants that required more space were planted and they included grasses, vegetables, and ornamentals.

One of the earliest horticultural entries in Washington's diary is dated March 24, 1762, when he recorded the receipt of cherry trees from his neighbor Colonel George Mason of Gunston Hall. Fruit trees were frequently mentioned in his diaries as a large quantity of fruit was desired for meals, preserves, and for making cider.

In 1785, George Washington removed fruit trees from the upper garden to make room for vegetables, flowers, and 215 apple trees were received from a Major Jenifer. Washington planted trees within the garden enclosures and a fruit garden just below the Mount Vernon kitchen garden. He also added orchards to the outlying farms. Apples, pears, cherries, peaches, and apricots were the standard fruit trees grown at Mount Vernon. Washington's gardeners also grafted and trained these trees as espaliers, a method of training trees to grow on trellises or on brick walls. Apple and pear espaliers were planted on the interior of the garden around garden beds and the stone fruits such as peaches, cherries, and apricots were "nailed to the wall" by his gardeners.

A visitor in 1782 observed, "There is an immense, extremely well-cultivated garden behind the right wing. The choicest fruits in the country are to be found there."