Dumbarton Oaks Gardens

Author's Comments

There is a gate on R Street that most people walk past without noticing, and behind it sit sixteen acres that should not, by any reasonable accounting, exist in the middle of Georgetown. Dumbarton Oaks is one of those places that rewards the instinct to turn off a familiar street and see what is there. I have been coming for years and I still find terraces I had forgotten about. The gardens are formal in the European sense - Beatrix Farrand designed them in the 1920s and the bones of her plan are still entirely legible. The Rose Garden peaks in mid-May and it is genuinely worth arranging your week around. The Fountain Terrace is the photograph everyone makes and it deserves to be made. But the Pebble Garden is the one I keep returning to, and it is the reason I tell people to bring a macro lens. The patterns set into the stone are almost Byzantine in their intricacy, and at midday when the light comes straight down, the shadows disappear and the design reads cleanly. Come on a Tuesday afternoon after 2:30 when admission is free, or a Sunday if you prefer company. The crowds are low by Washington standards at any hour, which is to say you will often find yourself alone on a terrace for minutes at a time. Spring is the obvious season and summer holds up better than people expect, the shade gardens coming into their own when the roses are past. This is not a place to rush through. Give it two hours. Sit on one of the benches and let the light move across a hedge. The photographs will come.

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