Simpson Garden Wins Beautification Award

By Marsha Mercer, Extension Master Gardener

More than three decades after a visionary Master Gardener dreamed of transforming an ugly area that once had been a road and parking lot in Alexandria, Simpson Park Demonstration Garden has won the city’s 2024 Community Beautification Award.  

“You are being recognized for your exceptional contribution to the City’s beauty through distinguished design,” Eleanor Trice, chair of the Alexandria Beautification Commission, wrote Extension Master Gardener Denise Dieter, who has volunteered at the garden continually since she was a Master Gardener intern in 2009.

“The Commission acknowledges the hard work put into your property, providing an excellent model for others to emulate!” Trice wrote.

Dieter was part of the leadership team at Simpson Garden from 2015 to 2023 and rallied volunteers and supporters to nominate the garden for the community award. The commission also gives beautification awards in residential, architecture, and commercial categories. A celebration honoring 2024 beautification award winners will take place Oct. 17.

“One of our big things is we early on recognized the importance of native plants in our demonstration garden,” Dieter said on an August morning as she admired the blooming oasis neighbors and visitors enjoy. “Our beloved Simpson Garden – where we demonstrate, educate, inspire.”

Announcing the Simpson award in August, the commission said:

“These gardens are maintained by the Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia. They heroically inspire and educate visitors about native and ornamental plants and trees, and sustainable gardening practices. There are many native plants throughout the garden along with distinctive trees and perennials. The garden showcases all four seasons and provides a habitat for local wildlife in the park. They even have a scavenger hunt for the public to learn about the native plantings!”

The garden’s 13 beds showcase best practices useful for home gardeners, including planting for pollinators, conserving water, and thoughtful landscape design. Among the beds are a berm, scented, pollinator-friendly, shade, waterwise, winter interest, and tufa rock areas. They feature a range of native plants and trees, ornamental perennials, and unusual specimens.

Simpson Garden was the dream of Master Gardener Audrey Faden and her husband Robert Faden, a botanist at the Smithsonian Institution, who believed an area that had been a road and parking lot in front of their neighborhood Y could be beautiful. In 1993, Audrey began the project by designing a waterwise garden (xeriscape) next to busy East Monroe Avenue and, with the help of Master Gardeners, installed plants that tolerate heat and dryness in a raised bed of sandy soil and gravel.

In 1998 and 1999, Master Gardeners planted other demonstration gardens adjacent to the Y and Eugene Simpson Stadium Park. Audrey Faden enlisted fellow Master Gardeners to help with design plans, including stone walls and paths around some of the beds.

Over the years, the city contributed soil, planted some trees, and installed irrigation in the garden, which is on city property. The tufa rock is highly porous limestone that was a gift from the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington.

“It’s not only a part of Eugene Simpson Park but it’s part of the community of Del Ray and the city of Alexandria,” Dieter said, adding that artists sometimes use the garden for inspiration.

Among several longtime Master Gardener volunteers at Simpson is Anne Lassiter, who became a Master Gardener in 2005 and has been volunteering ever since. Even before she took Master Gardener training, Lassiter said, she would see Audrey Faden in the garden, “often alone, every single day, and she watered into the night.”

Audrey was legendary for her devotion to the plants, which she called precious.

“If you put your big foot on one of the plants, you heard about it,” Lassiter said.

While the plants in the beds have changed over the years, Lassiter said, “the trees, I think, are original to Robert and Audrey’s vision.”

“There are so many reasons Simpson got the award,” the beautification commission’s Trice said in a phone interview. “It’s fantastic – a gorgeous, stunning garden.”

The commission’s mission is to encourage, promote and educate people about sustainability, Trice said, and Simpson “checked all the boxes.”

“We love that it’s a community space in conjunction with the city, and that Master Gardeners have a demonstration garden so close to the Y, playground, and ball field,” Trice said.

Simpson Garden, one of eight gardens maintained by Master Gardeners of Northern Virginia, is located at 420 East Monroe Ave. between the YMCA and the Eugene Simpson baseball field in the Del Ray neighborhood. Master Gardeners work in the Simpson Garden and welcome visitors and their gardening questions Tuesday mornings and alternate Thursday and Sunday mornings.