Christine Price-Abelow ensures museum gardens tell museum stories

If you have been to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., there is one Smithsonian “museum” you might have walked through without noticing. It has no walls or giant columns. No airplanes, gemstones, postage stamps, or paintings. It is the Smithsonian Gardens, composed of more than 180 acres of outdoor gardens on nearly every Smithsonian property.  

Many of the gardens reflect the themes of the museum where they are located. For example, the National Museum of the American Indian’s landscape features plants that flourished in the Piedmont region—which runs along the eastern side of the Appalachian Mountains and includes Washington, D.C.—prior to European contact. The curator of this native landscape is horticulturist Christine Price-Abelow. She has been managing this garden since shortly after the museum opened in 2004. Today, the garden features about 30 trees, 30 shrubs, and roughly 60 to 70 perennials and seasonal plants, all of which are native to—and still grow in—the Piedmont. 

“I like the connection our museum creates between people and the plants. The plants are like an exhibit themselves,” Price-Abelow explains. She and her team take great care to ensure the garden at the National Museum of the American Indian reflects the story of Native communities. The garden features ethnobotanical plants, or plants used for food, dyes, medicine, ceremony, and other human uses. “Each plant has a story to tell about how it relates to our collection [inside the museum], or the food in the café,” Price-Abelow said. “We get to connect with the public and reinforce how these plants play a role in our lives.” 

Her team works with plant varieties found in nature, not varieties produced through selective breeding. She sources these plants either from nurseries that specialize in native plants or from the Smithsonian Gardens’ greenhouse facility in Suitland, Maryland, where the plants are propagated.  

Although the garden has had two decades to establish itself, the work is never over. The plants have changed over the years. “[Due to climate change,] we’re certainly able to bring in plants that were sort of marginal on the hardiness scale years ago. Some of the stuff that, in the past, wouldn’t normally overwinter, but instead would only survive year-round in the tropics, are overwintering now and coming back in the spring more robustly,” Price-Abelow said. Further, the trees have changed over time, putting new pressures on the garden. Some have grown as much as 25 feet and have cast new shadows, while some have lost their lives to disease and their absence has exposed new ground to sunlight. 

Price-Abelow’s favorite tree in the garden is a large, hardy American Elm tree, which resides in the landscape’s meadow habitat section. “It’s one of the largest trees in our collection, and it’s a true American Elm, which is kind of rare in D.C. because of Dutch Elm disease,” she said. The team gives the tree treatments to prevent disease; across the garden, they use various natural treatments, including beneficial insects. “You can use integrated pest management techniques where you release a good insect to go after a bad insect, which is something I usually do around our cropland and vegetable plants,” she continued. 

On your next trip to Washington, D.C., remember to stop and look at the gardens, both at the National Museum of the American Indian and our other museums. You just might see Price-Abelow in her little green golf cart, tending to the garden and keeping it healthy for all of us to enjoy.