Gardens
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Estate Overview
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French Parterre
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Rose Garden
Lunar Lawn
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Japanese-Style Garden
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Greenhouses
Cutting Garden
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Other Points of Interest
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Seasonal Interest
Marjorie Merriweather Post
acquired Hillwood in 1955 and began to create a series of pleasure gardens for her leisure
and the entertainment of her guests. The mansion was renovated to provide easy access to
the outdoors, with terraces and porches on all sides. The resulting
gardens flow from the house, with walks laid out in straight axes to separate the spaces,
providing respite and recreation in a tranquil setting. Assisted by prominent landscape
architects and garden designers of the time, Mrs. Post conceived of outdoor
"rooms" bounded by hedges or large plantings and containing statuary, fountains,
and pools as focal points.
Each garden is decidedly private yet connected to adjacent
gardens through subtle transitional features. The layout reflects not only the design
vocabulary of notable landscape architects, but it also includes the distinctive taste of
Marjorie Merriweather Post. The twelve acres of formal gardens and grounds are surrounded
by thirteen acres of woodland that are strategically nestled against Rock Creek Park,
creating a rural ambiance.
Marjorie Merriweather Post planted mature trees and
shrubs so that the gardens looked as if they had been established decades earlier, lending
an appropriate sense of scale and age to complement the house and the existing landscape.
She built extensive planting beds under established shade trees and filled them with
spring-flowering trees and conifers, as well as spring-flowering and evergreen shrubs.
Spring-blooming perennials, annuals, and bulbs were planted to peek out from the skirts of
the shrubs lining the walks.
Because
Marjorie Merriweather Post was in residence at Hillwood during the spring and autumn
seasons when the Washington climate is most pleasant, the gardens feature plants that
offer the greatest effect in spring and fall. Over 4,000 azaleas bloom in profusion
through April and May, accompanied by hundreds of rhododendron, spirea, lilacs, and
viburnum. The blooms of redbuds, cherries, magnolias, dogwoods, and crabapples add
splashes of color above, while tulips, daffodils, forget-me-nots, primroses, and pansies
sparkle below. The collection of plants reveals Mrs. Post's preference for the newest and
most unusual varieties available in the 1950s and 1960s. In September through November,
chrysanthemums join with the deciduous trees throughout the gardens to create a brilliant
spectacle against the blaze of colors from the hardwood trees in the adjacent forest.
Marjorie
Merriweather Post also sought to bring the beauty of the garden indoors, and she filled
every room in her home with fresh flowers. In addition to cutting boughs from trees and
shrubs in bloom, she established a cutting garden and expanded the greenhouses, providing
a ceaseless source of fresh-cut flowers and exotic blooms. The cutting garden continues to
bestow an abundance of flowers that embellish the mansion today, and the greenhouses still
support her collection of over 2,500 orchids, some of which are displayed in the mansion
throughout the year.
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