Washington DC's Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens
The Marsh Saved by Water Lilies
By Bill Boteler
Interesting how history works, how a confluence of events can lead to a very different outcome than what might have been. This place could have been apartment blocks. There is a chance I would not be sitting here, looking out across a large expanse of water, marsh plants, and wading birds as a small fleet of canoes entered the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens from an outlet on the Anacostia River. One of the great things about canoes is that they enable people to come very close to nature in complete silence.
There are no other tidal marshes on the Anacostia River in Washington, DC- the rest were drained or dredged during the first part of the 20th Century. People say that Washington was built on a swamp which brings an unpleasant image, unlike what was really here – tidal marshes. I suspect we carry over negative connotations to what swamps and marshes really are from past generations that just wanted to get this stuff out of the way.
It was in the 1880s when Civil War veteran Walter Shaw purchased a small part of this park from his wife’s family. The adjacent marsh was viewed as worthless and 36 acres of the wetland was thrown in for free. Shaw, who lost the lower part of his right arm in the war, came to Washington to work for the Treasury Department. Part of him missed the Maine of his youth, however, and he decided to import bulbs of water lilies from that state and plant them in an ice pond on the property. When these flourished, he began to
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