SEVENSEAS Marine Conservation & Travel Issue 18, November 2016 | Page 131

expand the operation building little dikes of dirt to cordon off ponds for different water plants.

Shaw’s hobby grew into a highly successful business shipping water lily bulbs to gardeners throughout the United States. He also developed a number of hybrids which are still grown today. In the process, his daughter Helen became a lover of his plants. She would later travel the world to collect species from different continents, including the tropics where many water lily varieties are found.

At the height of its popularity in the 1920s and 30s, Helen would open the garden to the public on weekends when hundreds of visitors would stream through. The visitors included many notables such Presidents and their families. As the 20th century progressed, however, so did pressure to eliminate the wetlands surrounding the nation’s capital. In 1938, the Army Corps of Engineers tried to condemn the property in order to drain the wetlands, but thanks to lobbying by Helen and her powerful allies, Congress purchased the land for $15,000 and created a National Park.

Today the park includes 700 acres consisting of the tidal marsh, woodlands, the lily ponds and dikes, greenhouses (where water plants and other tropical plants are propagated), and the visitor’s center. There is a boardwalk where you can enter the marsh and view the native plants and animals up close. You can also enter by canoe or kayak from the Anacostia River, but be wary since at low tide it’s a mudflat.

Kenilworth is a haven for local biodiversity including many species no longer found in the surrounding, more developed areas. The Patuxent Wildlife Research Center estimated that there are 650 species of insects, 150 species of land plants, 76 species of birds, 18 species of fish, 9 species of mammals and 8 species of reptiles living there.

The day I visited I saw numerous water birds, including egrets and a Great Blue Heron. I was told the park is a dumping ground for beavers that the park service has had to remove from other places. There are also deer, muskrats, minks, foxes and coyotes.

Insects live here, too- I observed butterflies and dragonflies in the wet meadows as well as a wood frog. The woodlands are damp and full of rotten logs and a variety of fungi. The Annual Lotus and Water Lily Festival boasts the garden's signifigance to the international community.

It is interesting to me that the decision of a man to buy a small piece of land in the 1880s could lead to a thriving business, the creation of new plant hybrids, the importation of water lilies now found in America’s gardens, and the rescue of the single patch of tidal wetlands in Washington, DC.

Looking back its’s easy to say that maybe we should have left more of these wetlands intact. The benefits are things we now miss. Water drains quickly into our area rivers from the lawns and paved surfaces that have replaced the marshes and woodlands. The wetlands would have slowed this flooding and absorbed the load of nutrients, mud and pollution. As an example, the Anacostia River was full of mud that day, and I snapped a photo of plastic debris floating beneath one of the bridges that connects the Anacostia neighborhood to the rest of the city.

The loss of the wetlands also means we have permanently fewer fish than we would have had if they had been retained. At least, though, we were able to save this small haven for biodiversity in the middle of the nation’s capital. At Kenilworth, you can get away from the bustle of D.C. and find moments of rare solitude. There is one exception to this: the military flies through to avoid bothering people in more populated parts of the area. I was shocked by the sight and sound of a fleet of military helicopters disrupting my peaceful day, but when the silence returns you appreciate it even more.

SEVENSEAS - 131