Botanica Atlanta - Landscape Design, Construction & Maintenance

The celebrated public landscape of Washington, D.C., which includes the National Mall, the White House Grounds, the Ellipse, and the United States Capitol Grounds, is a landscape that has been in the works since 1791. The parks were envisioned and enhanced by some of our country’s greatest landscape designers, including Pierre Charles L’Enfant, Andrew Jackson Downing, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the Olin Partnership, and the improvements were achieved through the backbreaking manual labor of countless others. A feat of engineering and landscape design, the District of Columbia was transformed from farmland and riverfront wetlands into our country’s pride and joy. The national park is massive is monumental in scale, spanning more than 600 acres.

And yet my favorite section of the landscape measures only about thirty feet by thirty feet.

Image: D. B. King

The level of detail is what first caught my attention. The Summerhouse, which is an open-air courtyard on the northwest corner of the United States Capitol Grounds, is an elegant composition of carved brick, chiseled stone, and flowing water. The quality of its craftsmanship and the intricate detailing is jaw-dropping.

Images: Sam Valentine

From the 1870’s through the 1890’s, Frederick Law Olmsted designed improvements to the United States Capitol and its grounds. One of the most recognizable changes that he made was the addition of the iconic marble terraces on the north, south, and west faces of the Capitol, which he recommended in order to provide a visual foundation to the dome-topped building that he believed looked rather top-heavy.

Olmsted made countless other changes to the grounds, including re-grading slopes, adding plants, and intentionally framing important views around the building, and it was during this time that he created the Summerhouse. In designing the walled space, his top priorities were to provide seating, shade, and drinking water for visitors to the capitol. Visiting the structure today, it is impressive to see how cleverly Olmsted achieved these goals.

Visitors step down onto the sunken, shady floor of the Summerhouse and can immediately sense a drop in ambient temperature. A large bubbling fountain, formerly for drinking water, stands at the center of the space, and cooling, stone seats line the perimeter walls of its hexagonal floorplan. An oval window in one of the brick walls provides a view to the man-made grotto, and through this portal, sounds of rushing water drift into the space. The Summerhouse not only provides seating, shade, and water, but by offering the refreshing sights and sounds of falling water, it creates a psychological cooling effect.

Images: Sam Valentine

Olmsted’s Summerhouse is one of the best examples that I have seen of designing a landscape that is to be enjoyed at multiple scales. Olmsted understood the value of keeping the capitol grounds open and spacious, thus visually connecting it to the National Mall’s sunny, grand axis. But he also knew that there had to be areas of the Grounds that would be shaded and more intimately scaled.

The Summerhouse is another testament to the unsurpassed design genius of Frederick Law Olmsted, but due to its size, it is also quite capable of informing the design of a high-quality, residential-scaled project. I do find it somewhat comical that, out of the entire 27,000,000 square-foot national landscape, I am such a fan of a 900 square-foot speck, but it is the attention to detail, the psychological cooling effect, and the intimate scale that calls me back to this special place every time I visit Washington.

Next time you find yourself in D.C., especially if you are there on a sweltering summer day, I recommend that you stop by the Summerhouse. You will find yourself quickly cooled and refreshed, and perhaps you can borrow some influence from “America’s Front Yard” to take home to your own backyard.

Image: Sam Valentine

By Sam Valentine, BLA, LEED AP