In an Homage to Lady Bird, How Green the Gardens Grow

Outdoor Legacy Broadens to Include Children

She loved beauty.

Lady Bird Johnson, who died last year, undoubtedly would have loved this, too: a garden for children in the spot along the George Washington Memorial Parkway that she picked out for her husband's tribute.

The National Park Service, which manages the parkway and its 25 memorial sites, plans to build a children's garden this spring in the park on Columbia Island named for the wife of the 36th president. Planning for the garden at Lady Bird Johnson Park is underway, Dana Dierkes, a park service spokeswoman, said last week.

"This is a special project that is being done to honor Lady Bird Johnson and the many legacies she left the United States," Dierkes said.

The park occupies a prominent location on the Potomac River near Arlington National Cemetery and the Pentagon. President Lyndon B. Johnson and his wife, Claudia (known universally as Lady Bird), would stop there on occasion to admire the District's landscape from across the river.

As first lady from 1963 to 1969, Johnson created a First Lady's Committee for a More Beautiful Capital and then expanded her program to include the nation. She is largely responsible for the wildflowers along the highways in her native Texas.

The parkway is one of several sites chosen to start the National Park Foundation's First Bloom project. Others are in or near Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York and Austin. First Bloom was launched in October 2007 by first lady Laura Bush, honorary chairman of the National Park Foundation, to commemorate Johnson's conservation legacy.

"Mrs. Johnson was an environmentalist before anyone thought of the environment," said Flo Oxley, director of plant conservation and education for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin.

Through First Bloom, children from major cities who might have limited access to natural outdoor experiences may experience planting and gardening for the first time in their neighborhoods and national parks, Dierkes said.

"The project plants the seeds for a stronger conservation ethic in this country, beginning with our youngest citizens," she said.

First Bloom partners include the National Park Foundation, National Park Service and local Boys and Girls clubs. A park foundation Web site, linked to http://www.nationalparks.org, indicates that the project has $1 million in funding secured with help from Aramark Corp. First Bloom, the Web site says, "invites city kids to get their hands dirty. Through First Bloom they will learn how to protect fragile ecosystems by planting native species in our national parks and how to create and tend gardens in their own neighborhoods."

The GW Parkway's First Bloom project will reshape some areas on the grounds of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove in Lady Bird Johnson Park, consistent with the original design for the presidential memorial. The project will include development of a children's garden with native plants in existing flower beds.

In addition, the public will be invited to a First Bloom celebration in the park in early June. Further details on the project were not available.