finally, this is a camera that was used to take a photograph which is referred to generally as the backyard photo, because it was a photograph of oswald in his backyard taken by his wife with this camera. yet another artifact that's among the collection. and in that he is holding a rifle and in his other hand he has pamphlets -- political pamphlets. it's a pretty famous photograph. this was an inspection that was done of the original 8 millimeter film. so the film had been in our custody for a number of years. during the time of the review board, there was an official government taking of it where they were provided with a payment for the value of it.

so now it is officially part of the custody of the national archives, the original. the copy right is retained. and i believe that the family has given the copyrights over to the -- sixth floor museum, in the old texas school book depository. if someone were to come here, they could look at it. it's just that if you were to choose to duplicate it and publish it, that you would need to get the copyright in order to do that, permission under the copyright. if you were to come in to see it, you would be watching a duplicate of the original. which is true for any of our films. because we want to make sure films are preserved when you come to lock at films here at the national archives, you are looking at a reference copy of the film. we have motion picture sound and video here within the national archives. which, of course, is exactly

what it says it is. it's the portion of our agency that takes care of all motion pictures and sound recordings. they have custody of this item. it's interesting, you can see some of the images which probably look familiar to me. i believe the film is available through commercial resources, commercial outlets as well. >> the original artifact itself, how would that be stored and how often does anybody do what she's doing? >> very, very rarely. this was done for a special effort, is my understanding. as a color film, it is my understanding that this is stored in cold storage, because cold storage will help to retain the preservation of the color. so in a lot of ways, we treat the film itself like an artifact where we are trying to conserve it for all time. so it is in cold storage and not taken out. >> from your perspective, all this effort put into preserving

things, why is that important? >> well, that's our mission here at the national archives. our job is to make sure that the history of the u.s. government is preserved for all time. there's only a very small percentage of records, 2% to 3% that are considered important enough to come here to the national archives. if it's important enough to come here, we need to preserve it for all time. we work with our conservators. we have access policies to work with our researchers. and increasingly, we're trying to digitalize our records and make them available on the web so anyone, anywhere can have access. you have been watching c-span's american history tv. we want to hear from you.

we would like to tell you about some of our other programs. join us sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern for reel america, featuring films by government and institution al groups. sunday at 4:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. here is a look at some of the programs you will find christmas day on the c-span networks. a lighting of the national christmas tree, followed by the whitehouse christmas decorations with first lady michele obama and the lighting of the capitol christmas tree. just after 12:30 p.m., celebrity activists talk about their

causes. at 8:00, the bill of rights and the founding fathers. venture into the art of good writing and at 12:30, the feminist side of a super hero. at 7:00, the reading habits. and on american history tv, at 8:00 a.m., the fall of the berlin wall with footage of president george bush and bob dole with speeches. at noon, fashion experts on first ladies' fashion choices and how they represented the styles of the times. at 10:00, tom brokaw on his more than 50 years of reporting on world events. that's this christmas day on the c-span networks.

each week, american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn what artifacts reveal about american history. the smithsonian's national museum of the american indian opened in 2004. we visit the nation to nation exhibit, focusing on treaties between the united states and native americans. the curator explains that in the late 1700s, the federal government made treaties with six nations of the indians. she explains how it has changed and endured. >> i'm a founder of the national museum of the american indian. i'm guest occcurator of the nat

to nation exhibit and editor for the book of the same title. i first proposed the nation to nation exhibit in 2003. i was thinking just a few months ago that we would just never get to the end of it. and today i'm thinking, it's only been 11 years. amazing. nation to nation exhibit and book is really a gift that we're returning to the united states through knowledge of its citizenry about its own history. because that's what this tells. this isn't the indians' view. this isn't just as the treaties aren't the indians' treaties. the treaties are between the united states and native nations. and the treaties and this

exhibit reflect that reality about the treaties. all of the nations had land. no one brought any land with them when they came across the atlantic ocean. no one brought any european land. there was no american land. there was only native land. and that land belonged to the native nations and to the peoples who were the citizens of the native nations. the european nations entered into treaties with the native nations, who had been making treaties amongst each other for millennia. this was a continuation of that for native peoples. and it was a continuation of treaties that the europeans had. although, in europe, mostly the

treaties meant an end to the war. here, even though there were in most instances no wars, it meant peace and friendship that you would be allies going forward. you would have this friendship as a continuum. and the treaties really represent that relationship. they're the evidence of that relationship. they're a marker in time. but the relationship and the treaties still exist today as legally enforceable and binding documents, agreements, that both the united states and the native nations honor. but more importantly, it is the relationship that everyone is honoring. and it means peace, friendship forever. the parallel lines go on forever. and the parallel lines represent the non-native person and the

native person, the two sets of nations that must exist in a parallel way and exist through time and through history as distinctive. i don't mean separate but distinctive, one from the other. and we maintain that distinctiveness even today. the first act of congress having to do with native peoples was the first of the trade and intercourse acts. in september 1890 -- july of 1790. what that said and what it says today -- because it is as amended still on the books, it means that no transaction for land or property by a state or by a person is any good, is

legal, without the specific involvement or consent of the federal government. so the treaties could only be made with the federal government. any land transaction was void, no good at the get go, according to this law and according to what the native people wanted. and this was something that george washington explained personally to the seneca nation delegates by saying, this means you will never be defrauded of your land again. now, would that have been true, it was true at the time, he meant it at the time. president george washington, in making the treaties of 1790 with

the nations of the southeast and the treaty of canandaigua, the six nation confederacy, that was new york at the time. so what george washington wanted as president of the united states was some territory for the united states to govern over and wanted a definition of the state boundaries and a clarity of the nation and the peoples' lands. what the president was trying to do was stop any possible encroachment by european nations, stop any overreach and harm to native people by the

states and to enter into secured peace and friendship forever arrangements with the peoples. he was trying to secure the northern and southern, western borders of the united states. and these were buffalo, savannah. we're talking about really eastern western borders at that time. and that was the united states. so the nations had similar goals. they wanted peace and friendship with the united states as a matter of necessity as well as a matter of inclination. they wanted someone to be in charge of stopping the aggressiveness and the lawlessness of the people who were flooding into their lands

from europe. and these were europeans and new americans, settlers of all kinds who were encroaching on the native lands. so they wanted that to stop. and they wanted the agreement strictly with the united states. hence, nation to nation. that's the way the law developed at that time in the 1790s. and that's the way the law is today. it's still nation to nation. our ancestors really knew these presidents, washington and lincoln and other notable and in many cases rightly so beloved people. the delegates, when they arrived by canoe and over land but mostly by canoe from savannah,

they docked at the bottom of manhattan and were greeted by 300 white men dressed like indians who were members of the society which had been named for a chief, the chief who first made the treaty with william penn for the british colony known as the william penn colony for parts of philadelphia. so this society people were dressed as they thought indians were and mostly -- and they were cheering the arrival of the delegates. and then they carried them, they escorted them as in a parade to congress. later on the delegates were dining with george washington at

his home, and an artist was there. and he had just completed the iconic portrait of washington, the life-size portrait of him in his military outfit. and washington wanted a visual joke to be played on the delegates. and he had him put the painting on one side of a door that washington then opened so the delegates could see him and see him in his outfit in the painting. they loved it. everyone had a good laugh. they felt it and didn't like the way it felt. so the artist asked if he could paint them and they said no. but he did draw them sover that evening and throughout the week that they were there.

those drawings are in this exhibit. they're just beautiful drawings. and unlike anything that he really ever did. and that's because he was doing it in secret. i'm so glad he did that, even though the delegates didn't want that to be done, because it's the closest thing we have to a photograph of who the native negotiators were. and i love the story, because no one ever thinks of washington as being a jokester or having a sense of humor. they think of him being very stiff. this is a nice way to think about how he was trying to communicate. and he was improvising with what he had at hand. i just think it's an interesting story about the casualness of the relationship at the same

time that it was a formal relationship nation to nation, it was a casual, personal relationship about developing friendship, about keeping the peace, about this lasting forever. that we're in it for the long haul. our nations are in it for the long haul, far beyond our time. and that's what they were doing at a town in new york. that's what they were doing there when the six nations people and the clan mothers and all of the chiefs and the people were -- the representatives were there at the treaty camp with the representatives of the united states. and they were all negotiating this past their own time. we do have these beautiful

portraits of chief cornplanter, handsome lake, others who were cig cig cignatorees to the treaty. we show their images. we show the images of the non-native negotiators. that treaty was sent to philadelphia when it became the capital of the united states. and the big news out of -- in the american newspapers in 1795, i know because i have one of them and i have looked at a lot of facsimiles of others, is that president washington signed the treaty and the newspapers carried the entire text of the treaty. that's how important it was in

1795 that the senate had ratified and that he had signed the 1794 treaty that had been negotiated in upstate new york. both treaties were developed in various ways. the 1790 treaty was more of a direct negotiation between the president and the delegates. one of the places that they had come from was hickory ground, which was the capital of the n confedera confederacy. they had two daughter towns. they had the same name, which was common. one of them needed a new name. so the delegates liked what had happened in new york and they wanted to commemorate the treaty. and they had a ceremony in new

york before they left renaming one of those daughter towns ne newyarkor. it's the sound that the delegates heard when they heard people say new yorker. when they heard people say, i'm a new yorker, they heard -- the people said that. that's what they heard. and that's the name that they gave our tribal town. part of the evidence of the ongoing relationship between the united states and the six nation confederacy peoples is found on every november 11, the day the treaty was signed, where the

united states delivers cloth and treaty cloth and salt to the native nations who signed that treaty in 1794. so every -- that's done every november 11. and someone might ask, is that what it's come down to is a little bit of cloth and a little bit of salt? well, actually, it's a lot of cloth and a lot of salt. but that's not the point either. the point is that those are the symbols of the validity of the treaty, a brightening of the covenant chain is the language that was used at the time, that the covenant chain has those three links of the -- of peace, friendship forever and that from time to time because it is a

relationship, because it is an ongoing treaty, that the covenant chain may tarnish, and it may need to be brightened up from time to time. so you need to polish the covenant chain. you need to renew your friendship. you need to meet face to face. you need to have discussions face to face. and all of that is part of maintaining the relationship is renewing your friendship. and that's what happens on treaty anniversaries. the united states does something. native nations does something. people observe and mark that time. and they try to do it with some symbolic interaction. when people come to this exhibit or when they look at the book, at the images in the book, i

hope that they understand that we didn't just select pretty things. what we selected were things that stand for signatories to the treaties. the pipe bags and pipes that are in the treaties' exhibit are beautiful things. but i selected those beautiful things from -- mostly from the national museum of the american indian collection. and they were present in 1851 at the time of the treaty making. so these were pipe bags and pipes that actually were part of that treaty for the great plains as part of the great plains

nations, that the treaties -- that the nations made amongst themselves and with the united states. amongst themselves for boundaries and then provided safe passage for the united states to go across their territories in wagons just with the wagon. now, who knew that that would mean the railroad down the line? that that was the width of the wagon. it must have sounded like such a modest amount of space, just a tiny trail across this vast land that you couldn't see an end to. what it turned into was something else. and that story we don't flinch from either in bad acts, bad papers.

what disrupted the treaty spirit? that's what happened. betrayals and things that later dishonorable presidents like andrew jackson who agreed with states' writers and force marched native people out of their homes, wrenched them from their homes and sent them to indian territory. so we explore that as well. but everything in here has been selected. the pipe bags and pipes are selected because they represent the native nations who were present in 1851 at the treaty, which is called the great smoke. and why? because there were so many people making sage offerings or

offerings of other kinds of medicine or smoking pipe, which meant they were pray iing for t good day and for the well-being of all the people. so the great smoke treaty of 1851 had many native nations as parties to it along with the united states. and these pipes and pipe bags represent each of those nations. and when you look at them and say they were there, they were witnesses, they're the evidence of what happened in 1851 and how wonderful that we can show that in all their beauty but in all their authority and in all their presence and in all they bring to us in a spiritual way, in a cosmic way and in a historical way from so long in the past. and you look at that and say,

well, it's not so long. they are still holding up. they still look beautiful. one thing that i would like for native people who come here to have this gift of information and to know the range of treaties that exist to the non-native people, i hope the non-native people are able to go away from this saying, oh, i didn't know these were my treaties, too. they're not just the indians' treaties. these are my treaties, because i'm a citizen of the united states. that is a huge lesson. this is american history. and i think people don't really

understand that. a lot of people don't understand that coming into this exhibit. and this is that lesson, that this is american history and this is a party of american history that if you don't know it, then you really don't know american history. if you don't know about treaties, you don't know how the united states acquired a territory over which to govern. you don't know how the -- how the united states -- how the states are shaped the way they are, how the united states is shaped the way it is. you don't know any of these things without understanding the history of treaties. and you don't understand a lot of the place names, a lot of the names of states that we have pshgs dakota is a name of a

native nation. oklahoma is red person. blood person, relative person. there are lots of things to know about the united states that if you don't know what's called indian history or indian treaties, you don't know american history. >> watch this and other american artifacts programs any time by visiting our website at c-span.org/history.

we would like to tell you about some of our other programs. join us saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern for a look at history bookshelf. watch as the best known american history writers of the past decade talk about their books. that's history bookshelf every saturday at 4:00 p.m. eastern here on american history tv on c-span3. each week american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places. from the founding of the united states, george washington encouraged the creation of a garden in the nation's capital that would inspire and educate citizens on plants and their uses. this vision was realized in 1820 when congress created the u.s. bow tannic garden on the capital grounds. the most recent addition, the national garden, features plants of the mid-atlantic.

plant occur ator explained the history and use of some of the plants by native americans and others. >> welcome to the national garden. this is the most recent garden to open on our property. it opened in 2006. it's a wonderful place to look at native plants. bus that's n but that's not where it got its start. it got its beginning when the rose became our national floral emblem in the 1980s. shortly after that, the senate wives committee started looking for a way to commemorate the rose. they noted this land had been vacant. it had some grass, a broken irrigation system, a few trees but nothing formal. so they set about privately raising money to build a garden on this site.

it took quite a few years, fund-raising ban in the '90s and in 2006 it opened. there was a design competition held for almothe elements of th garden. they left a large space in the middle that we see here. this is the heart of the national garden. this is the regional native plant garden. i have worked here since 1986. 19 years as a gardner and since 2005 as the curator. i oversee our plant content and have to say that native plants are a specialty of mine. i'm happy to show you around. as we enter the regional garden, you are actually walking on a pathway that has two different soils, one on either side. the reason we chose to portray these two different soils is because washington, d.c. lies on the fall line, the fall line is

a rough divide between the piedmont, which is to the north and west, it's rocky and hilly, the foothills of the appalachian mountains. to the east is the coastal plain with flat soil with material from the rivers and overlaid with marine deposits. it's very loose, sandy and a bit different from the hard soil of the piedmont. some of the coastal plants that we show are things like the wax myrtle. if you go north, you will find more and more bayberry, which is its cousin. both of them are famous for making waxy fruit. bayberry and max myrtle got their name from early use. there was no electricity there. so they were boiled. the wax would come to the top of the pot. they would skim that off and make candles. this was a source of light in

our early days. it's very air mattic and actually sometimes the foliage is used as a pun gent seasoning in some dishes. watch myrtle and bayberry very important. the nice part about it is it smells pleasant. so bayberry candles have been a standard associated with new england, perhaps. there are lots of golden rods native in the united states. the odor part of it comes from the fact that the foliage is scented of licorice. this was actually made into an herbal tea and exported until the 1930s, even to china. actually, it's got a little bit of history because after the revolution and the boston tea party, americans looked for native sources for herbal beverages. this was one of the favorites. what you were doing was copying

the native americans who had discovered it was tasty, very nice for the stomach. so they use it to get down harsh harsher medicine teas. another plant is witch hazel. that can become a small tree in our eastern woods. many of you are familiar with it from the drugstore. this is a very mild astringent. the primary center for production of witch hazel is connecticut. i think about 90% of the world's output is from connecticut. it's got an economic use. it's also an intriguing plant in that there are seed pods on it during the summer and flower buds being developed on it at the same time. those flower buds will keep developing and open up this fall right around the time the leaves begin dropping. this was a striking plant for

colonists to see blooming at an odd time of the year. they believed twigs make the best dousing rods to find water under ground with this plant. witch hazel meant it was bewitching and that it bloomed in an off season. the seed capsules later in the winter or early fall even when the weather is getting quite dry will turn brown. if you are in a woodland dominated by witch hazel, you will hear what sounds like buck shot. that's this seed being forcibly expelled out, about ten to 30 feet from the plant. it has a propulsion for distributing the seed. a great plant for a shady backyard where you don't want something too large. we talked about golden rod. this is another plant that was used very widely for tea.

its common name is new jersey tea. there are lots of other plants like this out west. but this is the sole representative here in the mid-atlantic region. this is unusual in that it grows in the mountains and piedmont as well as the coastal plain. it covers all of the regions that this garden is portraying. the leaves were brewed into a tasty tea, a very beautiful looking tea that very much looks like the black tea from asia. only bummer is, it has no caffeine. while it was tasty, it didn't quite have the effect that some people were looking for in a tea. one of the visitors favorites you will enjoy looking at this, because it really looked out of place. this is paw paw. the paw paw is in a plant family called the custard apple family. we can see fruit in it right

now. they are on their way. they look like a little bit like blunt bananas. they have different common names, one of which is indiana banana. paw paw, while it's tasty and the pulp can be used to make everything from muffins to ice cream, you won't find it in the average supermarket because it's very thin skinned. bruises very easily. more or less has to ripen on the plant. it has limited commercial potential. this is something to go look for at your local farmer's market in the mid-atlantic. this is north american's largest fruiting plant. as you walk through the garden, you will notice that we're looking at a rocky area that's on a slope. then on the right is the water feature. this garden was made with the idea that it wouldn't be overly irrigated. plants that are up on higher

ground are plants that you would expect to find in upland situations where they don't need a lot of water. a great example of that is the small tree, the common hop tree or wafer ash tree. the little wafer-like fruits that itk enough on their own right. but they were used as a substitute for making homemade brews back in colonial times. it was used as a hop substitute and hence the name hop tree. a lot of people find this plant to be unexpected here. it looks good along the boardwalk. this is actually a native bamboo. most people think of that as an asian plant. but there are three or four species here in eastern north america. this one usually goes by the common name river cane. it once existed in huge swaths along riverways from maryland south and up into the ohio and

mississippi river valleys. it's now down to a very small percentage of its original holdings. american colonizers tended to follow the same track that native americans did. they noticed native americans turning the land over that this grew on for crop growing. we did the same thing afterwards. by the 1930s, a lot of the lands that these grow on had pretty much disappeared. this tree is more familiar to people that are walking bare foot and have that ouch moment. often times what they are stepping on are these fruit capsules. this is from the sweet gum. it can exude a nice amber sap and actually native american children apparently would chip the bark of the tree and wait for the sap to harden for a few day and then harvest it for chewing. it's in the same family as witch

hazel. it has a mildly pleasant fragrance. what i like is its dramatic fall color. fall color is something not to be taken for granted. all the people that line up for miles at skyline drive to see fall color really taking part of something quite special, because only eastern north america and eastern asia have mass displays of fall color. that's why a lot of our trees and asia's trees are very popular in gardens worldwide. we looked at a golden rod that's used to brew tea. a little earlier. most people think of golden rod as rogue plants for the roadside. many of them are too aggressive for gardens. they run the gamut. this species hails from north carolina and was thought to be extinct for a long time. it was noted and not rediscovered until recently.

sweet gum is not the only north american plant with great fall color. this is one of the shad blow. it grows in rather moist thick ets. it's a multi-stem shrub. tasty blueberry-like fruit occur after the spring early flowers. we have this planted on low ground where it can get moisture. a little bit elevated above it we have this tree service berry one interesting thing about the common name or common names for this plant, it's a locally common name because these trees tended to bloom and have the flowers shattering around the time the shad run up the river. the name service berry supposedly comes from the fact that where it grows in the far north, the bloom time signifies the time for spring services for

those who died over the winter. bodies couldn't be buried until the ground was not frozen. the flowering of this tree coincided with the time tree bl the time the ground thawed also. this is the black oak. it was actually an important plant in colonial times. notice where the bark is starting to crack, notice a tan-orangish color beneath and reminds me that the product that was made from the bark of this tree was called corcitron, the latin name for the tree itself and corcitron was a very important leather tanning agent, very acidic and high in tannic acid. this combined with some of our native sumacs were really the primary agents for tanning leather until more modern times. though not every human being loves per simmons, our native per simmons in particular, i think they are fantastic trees. the fruit are just starting to

develop on it now. and after a true frosts, it becomes edible. before that, it is really astringent and puckery. but it is a favorite fruit of wildlife, possums and raccoons in particular. and those are the animals that disperse it. but the leaves can be brewed into very nutritious tea high in vitamins and in the ebony family and a lot of the ebonies we know are used in very fancy inlay work and wood working. this native plant in the ebony family also has use but it was a little more practical. the wood was used for things like the drive irgolf club back when that was made of wood and for bill yard cues. we are going to be entering an area of the garden that's all coastal plant soil, so, all the plants in here are the kinds of things that aid expect to see in the coastal plain and acid soil, so, blueberries, white cedar,

pines. those are the kinds of things that dominate the coastal plain. this is loblolly pine and while it is not the most favored ornamental pine it is actually one of the most economically important plants in the mid-atlantic states some this is the source of most of the pine lumber that you will find at your local big box store, the type that you have got to look down to make sure it's not warped a little bit. it is very fast growing tree. sometimes called old field pine because it's one of the first successional plants to come into abandoned farm fields. fast growing and the timber people like this because you can get a turn around on it in 30 or 40 years and make some money. but certainly not the finest of the pine trees, in my view. as you go further south into the coastal plain from virginia to texas, you'll find very commonly

this little holly. this is called ilex vomitoria. doesn't have a lovely latin name. the landscape trade, they tend to call it yopan. but the leaves of this plant were made into a drink by native americans. colonists who first observed their using this drink nicknamed it the black drink and they saw it being used ceremonially and they mistakenly associate it with purging rituals, which native americans did with many different teas or even just plain water. what they were doing was using a beverage that was already familiar to them. and this happened to be the only safe source of caffeine in the southeast. so, they had stumbled on the one plant that could give them a little bit of a caffeine boost, so they tended to use it before important meetings, before hunts, when you needed greater mental acuity. it is a great ornamental as well and like most hollys, if you plant male and female, the females will make a fruit.

in this case, instead of turning a solid red, like our native american holly with the bigger leaves, this one makes a beautiful translucent fruit that just lights up in the low sun of the autumn and winter. so, a great plant for feeding birds late in the season. and a great history of native american use. its use is mirrored in south america by something that's more familiar to us today, yorba meta. we have included one willow, the coastal plain willow, as a representative of all of them. and they have a history of human use that's wonderful. this is the original source for aspirin. and so, you sometimes see the herbal remedy willow bark offered as headache cure. i don't recommend it, because in willow, you have lots of different compounds. aspirin takes one effective compound out of willow and doesn't bother your stomach so much. but both north american indians as well as europeans discovered

that use. so, it is a natural analgesic. now, we looked at the loblolly pine which grows very quickly on any abandoned piece of land, but the longleaf pine is probably the most elegant pine in the southeast. very long needles, up to 12 inches long. these used to be exported as far north as new york city for mantel pieces during the winter holidays. but really, it's got much greater history of human use than that. this tree was the center piece for the naval stores industry in the southeast. and so it was tapped for its sap, which was then boiled down into turpentine, pitch, tar and rosin. those were the naval stores and these really helped build nave advice. so a very important tree. the practice of tapping the trees in the woodlands is

exhibited here. we have a stump, that is what we call cat faced. it was standing up and it has been notched into a tin collection cup was placed below the main cut. that's where the sap gathered. it was then poured into kept.sand boiled. this was a very common practice, especially in north carolina, and cities like wilmington and maybe even savannah, georgia, are where they are today as a result of this industry. so, while they shipped it out as timber and naval stores to supply things like the british navy, the southeast had a real industry. even today, you can find logs that were cast -- that were sent down river, submerged underwater for 100 years and they are still perfectly good today because of the high resin content of this tree. the industry, particularly in north carolina, utilized rather poor labor forces who tended to

often wander the woods bare foot. the amounts of tar and pitch on the forest floor meant a that things stuck to their feet and the name carolina tarheel probably comes from the practice of harvesting from this tree. this really delicate and beautiful grass that is blooming is called too fake grass. the latin name comes around if you dig around the roots, you will find it has a really pleasant citrusy-orange sent and the name tooth ache grath comes if you chew on the root, your bhout will go numb. native american also a few plants that they could employ if they had very bad tooth aches, which i imagine were pretty common and this was one of them. the united states botanic guardson a rather unique institution in washington. while most people assume that we have something to do with

smithsonian, we are actually part of the capitol complex. and we are administered by the architect of the capitol that oversees all the grounds and buildings within the capitol complex. you come out to this garden and you will see not only plants that change for the seasons, so you have spring ephemerals early in the year. if you come back in the summer, it is very ver dant and lush and a real counter point to the rest of the city. and the fall, the fall colors, the late-blooming asters and fantastic fall foliage i think makes that my favorite season out in this garden.