At the center of the "Gardens & Groves: George Washington's Landscape at Mount Vernon" exhibit is an 8'x 9'x 11' model of the estate as Washington knew it in 1799, the last year of his life. Mount Vernon was smaller than the grand estates of England, but Washington was still able to incorporate the English landscape design influences he sought for his estate.

Many people who visit George Washington's Mount Vernon Potomac estate don't realize the father of our country carefully planned its landscape design. When General Washington returned from soldering during the American Revolution to his estate, explains exhibition curator Adam Erby, the property had been neglected for eight years. In 1784 Washington began to design the landscape around the mansion, an area he called the "pleasure grounds." Before that, the grounds had utility in mind, not esthetics. In 1785, Washington detailed in his journal how he scouted the property to select the trees he would transplant to border the serpentine path on the west front of the mansion. Rarely a day went by between 1785 and 1787, the later date being when he left for the Constitutional Convention, when he was not out and about in the landscape making sure his landscape design was carried out.

Now for the first time comes an exhibition that specifically focuses on Washington's landmark achievements as a landscape designer. It's called "Gardens & Groves: George Washington's Landscape at Mount Vernon" www.mountvernon.org/gardensandgroves. The exhibition debuted February 2014 in the Donald W. Reynolds Museum and Education Center, and runs through Jan. 10, 2016. The exhibition examines each element of his design, combining rarely seen original documents, artworks and books with period garden tools, landscape photography and a scale model of the Mount Vernon estate as it was in 1799.

The exhibition includes five 18th-century artworks of Mount Vernon"?uoil paintings of both river and land fronts of the Mansion (Edward Savage); two detailed drawings of the layout of the grounds (by English admirer Samuel Vaughan); and a recently-acquired image of the Washingtons relaxing on the piazza in 1796, by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, architect of the U.S. Capitol Building. The artworks record details of the landscape that we would not otherwise know, notes Mr. Erby. Because of the fragility of the Vaughan and Latrobe drawings, those will be on view in the exhibit through August 17, 2014.

Also on view are the president's spyglass, watering can, garden roller and his notes and instructions for the Mount Vernon landscape. At the center of the exhibit is an 8'x 9'x 11' model of Mount Vernon's landscape as Washington last saw it in 1799. The model was developed by Mount Vernon historians, archaeologists, and curators for the traveling exhibition, "Discover the Real George Washington: New Views from Mount Vernon." The model incorporates scenes from daily life, from laundry drying to a ship sailing on the Potomac and just-planted trees along the bowling green.