Tudor Place Gardens

Author's Comments

Five and a half acres in Georgetown that almost no one visits, and the boxwood has been holding its shape since James Madison was in office. That is the thing I keep turning over when I walk Tudor Place. Continuity on this scale is rare in American gardens, and you can feel it in the hedges, which have that slightly irregular density that comes from two centuries of pruning by hand. I prefer it in late May, when the cutting garden is just starting to come into its own and the boxwood parterres are still dark against the new green elsewhere. Midday is not usually my hour, but here it works. The light flattens out across the bowling green and the geometry becomes the subject - long rectangles of lawn, the axis of the path, the way the hedges frame everything into clean compartments. It photographs almost like a drawing. The house itself is Federal and quiet, pale stucco against whatever the sky is doing. I have made portraits here in the shade of the south lawn that have held up better than most of my work in more dramatic locations. There is something about the scale of the place - formal but not grand, intimate but not small - that lets a person stand comfortably in the frame. You pay to get in and it is worth it. The crowds are almost nonexistent even on a Saturday in June. Bring something that sees detail well. The parterres reward a closer look than most visitors give them.

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