The Washington Post - 23.08.2019

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THE WASHINGTON POST

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FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2019

From the Cover

BY PHILIP KENNICOTT

If the weather is perfect, say a

temperate day in spring or fall,

with a gentle breeze and a few

clouds in the sky to break the glare

of the sun, then the Mall is a lovely

place. But look at how locals use it

the rest of the year: People flock to

benches along the edges, pedestri-

ans and joggers tend to the shady

paths under the trees, while peo-

ple coming to visit the museums

move promptly from the Metro to

their destination, avoiding the

Mall altogether. The Mall can be

beautiful, and it offers postcard

views of the city’s most recogniz-

able buildings. But it is also open,

barren, exposed and terribly for-

mal. It is a powerful landscape but

not a charming one.

For charm, you must cleave to

the edges of the great greensward,

where there is a horticultural

memory of what the Mall once

was, and might have been. Clus-

tered along the Mall and its sur-

rounding parkland are small gar-

dens. Some fill interstitial spaces,

others are attached to museums

or institutional buildings, and

others are part of a new genera-

tion of memorials that have been

redirected by planning rules off

the Mall itself. The best of them

break with the early 20th-century

imperialistic grandeur of the Mall

to offer amenable urban escapes,

quiet spaces with shade and a

sense of leafy enclosure. And in

that, they recall what much of the

Mall looked like in the 19th cen-

tury: a romantic landscape of

trees, flowers, curving paths and

carriage ways.

Today, these gardens feel like

pockets of resistance. To under-

stand their power, walk the Mall

for a half-hour on a hot day, then

duck into the Mary Livingston

Ripley Garden, which fills a nar-

row strip of land between the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculp-

ture Garden and the Arts and

Industries Building. Opened in

1988, this space was slated to be-

come a parking lot. But instead, it

became one of the city’s most love-

ly hidden gems, a short, serpen-

tine path of greenery that is the

aesthetic opposite of the Mall. The

Mall is straight and open, while

this little parcel is full of curves

and nooks. The Mall is monocul-

tural, while the earth here teems

with a diversity of plant life. The

Mall focuses the eyes on a few big,

symbolic architectural monu-

ments, while the Mary Livingston

Ripley Garden is all about the

small details of organic life.

The monumental core of the

city could be full of gardens like

these, but all too often the default

to parking, especially around the

Capitol, wins the day. On the

slopes of Capitol Hill, and around

its base, parking has corrupted

civic space that could be green,

CONTINUED ON NEXT PAGE

Visit gardens without leaving the Mall

The city’s best places are green, small and not monumental

MARVIN JOSEPH/THE WASHINGTON POST

Located at the Smithsonian Castle, the Enid A. Haupt Garden contains a large, formal square and provides a colorful place for visitors to unwind and relax.