Washington -- Landscape at the National Air and Space Museum

The seven-acre landscape that surrounds the massive National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in Washington, D.C. features multi-tiered terraces planted in plains of lawn and shrubs. It was installed to coincide with the museum's opening on July 1, 1976.

Congress first appropriated funds for NASM's construction in 1971, and architect Gyo Obata was hired to design a building large enough to display the huge exhibits (including airplanes and rockets) without dominating other nearby buildings, especially the U.S. Capitol. Obata accomplished this with two major techniques. First, he designed the long building to alternate between cubes of pink Tennessee marble and smaller, dark atria made of steel and glass. Second, he called for a walled terrace garden along the building's perimeter, softening the building's edges and obscuring the line between it and the ground plane.

The sheer size of the museum divides the garden into north and south microclimates, making it especially challenging to maintain. In 1996, landscape architects Paul Lindell and Karen Swanson of the Smithsonian's Horticulture Services Division (later Smithsonian Gardens) replaced the terraced lawn beds with hearty perennials, and also planted numerous trees. These stronger plantings made the maintenance of the enormous landscape more manageable, and further-obscured the line between the ground and building.

A "Flight Garden" for the Air and Space Museum is planned to demonstrate principles of flight by attracting flying animals. Interpretive signs will explain the flying abilities of insects and birds as well as methods of aerial seed dispersal by plants.

Plantings include catnip (Nepeta cataria), eastern redbud (Cercis canadensis 'Forest Pansy'), river birch (Betula nigra), dwarf palmetto (Sabal minor), Japanese banana (Musa basjoo), shrubby cinquefoil (Potentilla fruticosa), lily turf (Liriope muscari), palm sedge (Carex muskingumensis), Japanese apricot (Prunus mume), Siberian squills (Scilla siberica), star magnolia (Magnolia stellata), yellowwood (Cladrastis kentukea), smoketree (Cotinus coggygria), prairie dropseed (Sporobolus heterolepis), and bottlebrush buckeye (Aesculus parviflora).

People associated with this garden include: Gyo Obata (architect, 1971-1976). Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum (architectural firm, 1971-1976). Paul Lindell (landscape architect, 1996). Karen Swanson (landscape architect, 1996).