Landscape Information
Formerly known as Columbia Island, Lady Bird Johnson Park is a commemorative landscape and riverside park located on the Potomac River along the George Washington Memorial Parkway. In 1968, the island was renamed to honor the First Lady’s campaign to beautify both the capital city through her Committee for a More Beautiful Capitol, and the nation’s interstate highway landscapes. The site was selected by Lady Bird Johnson for its panoramic view of the city skyline. Landscape architect Edward Durell Stone, Jr., who served as consultant to the Committee, developed a tree planting scheme for the park, which contains groupings of weeping willows and other deciduous trees, hundreds of dogwoods, 11,000 red tulips, replaced annually, and more than a million daffodil bulbs. The park also includes two commemorative landscapes: the 1922 Navy and Merchant Marine Memorial, designed by architect Harvey Wiley Corbett and sculpted by Ernesto Begni del Piatta, which features an aluminum sculpture of seven gulls over a breaking wave and the 1973 Lyndon Baines Johnson Memorial Grove, designed by landscape architect M. Meade Palmer, a grouping of white pines surrounding a red granite megalith inscribed with quotations by the 36th President of the U.S. The Mount Vernon Trail runs along the river side of the island, creating a connection for cyclists and joggers to Theodore Roosevelt Island. Owned by the District of Columbia and maintained by the National Park Service, Lady Bird Johnson Park provides opportunities for passive recreation and contemplation.
