Placed with permission from Tregaron Conservancy.
This is a wonderful chance for you to explore once of D.C.'s beautiful, historic green spaces. Keep your eyes open on the Bridle Path for a cache container that blends in with its surroundings. The Bridle Path is the main trail inside the fence at Tregaron Conservancy--it's not the Klingle Valley Trail which runs along the outside of the conservancy. Please DO NOT STEP OFF THE PATH to reach this container. We've placed it so that you should not have trouble reaching and opening this container without stepping on or damaging any plants or trees.
Please note there is street parking near both the Klingle Road and Macomb Street entrances. It can be a fairly quick park and grab, but we recommend spending some time in this lovely space. Count the bull frogs in the pond during warmer months, enjoy a picnic, look for foxes and other wildlife at dawn and dusk, and enjoy each unique vista as you explore different paths.
Tregaron Conservancy is open dawn to dusk and is dog-friendly as long as your furry friend stays on its leash and you pick up after it. Be sure to bring your own writing utensil to log this cache.
Below we've shared some wonderful historical background from tregaronconservancy.org. Check out their website for more detailed info, maps, and other information about the Conservancy.
The Tregaron Estate is a national landmark, a remarkable aesthetic achievement and treasured part of Washington DC history. As owner and steward of its historic landscape, the Conservancy is dedicated to preserving this important part of our history, recapturing its beauty and continuing to share its story.
The Estate, built in 1912, was designed by renowned architect Charles Adams Platt and landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman, a pioneer in her field. Together, they transformed 20 forested, steeply-sloped acres into a magnificent estate featuring a naturalistic yet intensively designed landscape. This dramatic landscape was by far the largest woodland garden designed by Shipman, and is one of the very few remaining gardens of its type.
TWIN OAKS
In the 1880s, around the time that President Grover Cleveland was seeking refuge from the city by buying a summer home in what is now known as Cleveland Park, other Washingtonians were doing the same. Gardiner Greene Hubbard, a wealthy lawyer and founder of the National Geographic Society, purchased a tract of land between today’s Woodley Road and Macomb Street on which, in 1888-89, he built a splendid early Georgian Revival-style summer house which he named Twin Oaks.
Modeled after the grand estates of Newport, Rhode Island and designed by the Boston architectural firm of Allen and Kenway, the 26-room estate commands its site high on a hill above the residential neighborhood. Set on a wooded knoll, dropping steeply to two branches of Rock Creek, Twin Oaks was named after a large twin-trunked oak tree on the property. (The Twin Oak eventually landed on the portion of the property now owned by the Tregaron Conservancy.)
Twin Oaks Estate served as a summer gathering place for the extended Hubbard family. One of Hubbard’s two daughters, Mabel, married Alexander Graham Bell, inventor of the telephone. Hubbard’s other daughter Roberta married Charles J. Bell, the banker and cousin of the inventor. Gardiner Greene Hubbard played a significant role in the invention and subsequent distribution of the telephone. Upon his death, Hubbard’s property was divided between Roberta and Mabel. Roberta kept the Twin Oaks Estate, while Mabel inherited the undeveloped 20 acres to the east of Twin Oaks.
Roberta kept the Twin Oaks estate in her family for quite some time. Finally, after renting the property for 10 years, the Government of the Republic of China purchased the Twin Oaks Estate... in 1947 to make it the official residence of each successive ROC ambassador.... The house has been owned by the government of Taiwan since 1982. In 1986, Twin Oaks was placed on the National Register for Historic Sites.
CAUSEWAY ESTATE
Next came the Causeway Estate, designed by architect Charles Adams Platt and landscape architect Ellen Biddle Shipman:
Meanwhile, in 1911, Mabel Hubbard Bell (Mrs. Alexander Graham Bell) sold her undeveloped share of the Twin Oaks property to James Parmelee, a financier from Cleveland, Ohio. Parmelee was looking to build a year-round country house with views of the then-new National Cathedral. (Parmelee and his wife Alice Maury were major benefactors of the Cathedral and are buried in its crypt.) The Parmelees hired Charles Adams Platt, the premier architect of the American Country House Movement, to design their new home.
The estate was originally named “The Causeway” by Parmelee, in reference to the handsome stone bridge and entry drive to the estate from Klingle Road. Platt designed the buildings and gardens to relate to each other as an integrated whole, carefully planning vistas from the buildings to specific landscape features, and vice versa. In so doing, Platt was inspired by Italian villa design, which promoted the concept of the house and environs as an integrated whole.
At the time the Parmelees purchased the property, the landscape was primarily woodland of varying topography, two streams and a cow pasture bordering Klingle Road. Platt drew on these features, taking full advantage of topography and vistas. He chose the summit of the hill for the new house, designing a brick Georgian Revival mansion to crown the hill, in keeping with many of the District’s larger homes.
ELLEN BIDDLE SHIPMAN
In 1912, Charles Platt hired Ellen Biddle Shipman for landscape design work at the estate. Shipman is widely recognized for her contributions to the field of landscape architecture, particularly as a horticulturalist. Tregaron was the second collaboration between Shipman and Platt (and is the only surviving one). While Platt planned the circulation pattern for the site along with the formal gardens–it was Shipman who completed the plans in 1914. She provided planting plans for the gardens and 20-acre grounds. Tregaron is by far the largest woodland garden that Shipman designed in her long and illustrious career....
Platt’s landscape centered on using the existing bridle path as a spine, bringing together the various parts of the landscape. The bridle path’s careful plantings marked it as a highly designed environment. The design invited the visitor to be actively engaged with the site: there was no single vantage point from which all views could be enjoyed. As professor and author Thaisa Way writes: “The Parmelees could ride horses or walk along the path, which began in the woodland garden following the edge of the hill to the opposite end of the estate. The path predated the Shipman/Platt design, having originally circumnavigated the entire hill. Shipman and Platt used the path to bring together the parts of this larger landscape, like gems on a necklace.”
In 1915, Shipman designed plantings around the pond, causeway, bridle path and brook. Her December 1915 plan, presented to the Parmelees as a Christmas gift, incorporated the cow pasture, existing canopy trees, the stream, and the bridle path, the design carefully woven into the landscape. Looking at the 1915 plan (which the Tregaron Conservancy follows closely for its restoration work), it is noteworthy how the existing topography and waterway are used to create a naturalistic woodland of native and naturalized plants.