Lady Bird Johnson’s Beautification Program: Flowers, Trees and Fountains Across Washington

Beautification, as Lady Bird Johnson conceived it, was not a garden club project. During her years as First Lady (1963-1969) she championed conservation, advocated for new National Park Service units, lobbied for environmental legislation and campaigned for better highways. The Beautification Project was her answer to urban ills: renewal projects and highway expansion had fractured communities, downtowns and neighborhoods were emptying and blighted, and inner-city waterways were heavily polluted.

She defined the word broadly. In her view it covered clean water, clean air, clean roadsides, safe waste disposal and the preservation of old landmarks as well as great parks, and meant concern for the physical and human quality of what is passed on to children.

A pilot city and a coalition

Johnson picked her adopted hometown, Washington, D.C., as the pilot city, where national attention would highlight the progress. She built a coalition of public and private partners: Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall, the Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, local officials, philanthropists, architects, planners, landscape architects and, most importantly, private citizens, including school groups and neighborhood beautification committees.

The committee wrote reports on its findings, plans and accomplishments, and design guidelines were drawn up for neighborhoods. A national public relations campaign produced articles such as "The ABC's of Beautification," and the White House made two documentaries, Mrs. Johnson Goes to Washington and Showcase for the Nation.

Beautification in action

The first group of projects aimed at the environment. Neighborhood and school groups were mobilized, and Johnson set up Project Pride to cut litter. Task forces worked to repair the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers, and groups cleaned the shorelines and the tributary creeks and streams. The program also pushed for expansion of the city's mass transit, brought nature into the urban core and renovated historic buildings. Pocket parks were built in neighboring districts, trees were planted along avenue medians, sidewalks and small park reservations, and vacant buildings were rehabilitated into community and recreation facilities rather than demolished.

The second group focused on looks: rehabilitating parks, planning unimproved parcels, setting design standards and improving pedestrian circulation.

• Mass plantings. Johnson believed in "masses of color where the masses pass." Tightly spaced plants in organic-shaped beds formed blocks of color. Daffodils lined parkways and monument grounds, and clusters of azaleas brightened Pennsylvania Avenue, NW.
• Floral displays. In small parks and triangular reservations, the National Park Service rotated tulips in spring, a mix of perennials and annuals in summer and chrysanthemums in autumn. The best-known example is the Floral Library south of the Washington Monument, which also serves as a demonstration garden for tulips and other plants.

Mid-summer blooms of the Floral Library. NPS Photo / NCR Photo Library.

• Trees. Flowering trees and shrubs were planted at the city's gateways, including Rosslyn Circle and the Baltimore Washington Parkway, and dogwood and redbud went under the trees along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. Johnson added cherry trees around the Tidal Basin to fill gaps and planted cherry trees around the edge of Hains Point, following the example of First Lady Helen Taft. Deciduous magnolias were planted along the median of Pennsylvania Avenue, SE, and F Street NW and M Street SW became tree-lined pedestrian malls.
• Built features. The Park Service added benches, trash receptacles, information kiosks, paths and plazas, plus water features for movement and sound, from the modern Haupt Fountains in President's Park to the former large water jet at the end of Hains Point. New playground equipment went into Capitol Hill parcels such as Lincoln Park and Stanton Park.

The Haupt Fountain is an example of the landscape features that were introduced to activate city spaces. NPS Photo / NCR CLP.

Beautification today

The source describes the legacy as still visible. Daffodils soften hillsides along the Rock Creek and Potomac Parkway, the George Washington Memorial Parkway and Lady Bird Johnson Park; cherry trees line the road at Hains Point; and the Floral Library blooms each spring. Street trees line avenues across the city, with efforts to expand the canopy, and cleanup of the waterways has continued, with plans described to develop a river walk along the Anacostia River.

Daffodils at Lady Bird Johnson Park in Washington, DC. NPS Photo / Maureen Joseph.

Sources

• National Park Service, Beautification: A Legacy of Lady Bird Johnson; rewritten in hubnx's own words.