File:Arlington House - looking N at potting building - 2011.jpg

English: Looking north at what used to be the "kitchen garden" of Arlington House, the Robert E. Lee Memorial, at Arlington National Cemetery.

This area was originally a steep ravine, but George Washington Parke Custis had the area filled in and regraded to accommodate a garden here. Extending north of Arlington House for about 200 feet was a kitchen garden, which grew fruits and vegetables for consumption by the family and slaves. The kitchen garden was roughly 90 feet wide, and a central path (aligned with the central path in the flower garden to the south and visible here, to the left where the dirt pile and construction equipment are) lined with fruit trees ran along its north-south long axis. Originally, a line of cedar trees ran along the path to the right, to screen the kitchen garden from visitors coming to the front of the house.

The kitchen garden was also originally surrounded by a post-and-rail fence, and a picket gate guarded on either side by barberry bushes was centered in the south side (just to the left-bottom of this image).

When Arlington House was seized by the Union Army in May 1861, the kitchen garden suffered. The fence was removed, the cedar trees chopped down, and the garden trampled out of existence (although the fruit trees along its center path and the hedges around it survived).

A potting building and a greenhouse were built in the eastern half of the kitchen garden in the 1890s. The 110-by-30 foot greenhouse (which used to exist on the green lawn seen here) had a brick foundation and glass walls. The two-story potting building was made of brick and wood, had a hipped roof decorated with dentils along the underside and ventilation cupolas on each of the hip roof's four sides. A road was built along the western and northern sides of the kitchen garden to provide access to these facilities. At some point, a grape arbor was placed on the eastern edge of what was once the kitchen garden to screen the greenhouse from visitors.

In 1929, a joint body composed of members of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and the U.S. Army Quartermaster General Office agreed that the greenhouse should come down. First, new brick walks were built to reconnect the house with the kitchen garden. Then, boxwood, lilac, and yew were planted to screen the greenhouse and comfort station from the brick path in the center of the kitchen garden. In 1934, $12,000 was spent to remove the greenhouse on the north and restore the kitchen garden.

Today, the "potting building" -- which still stands, as you can see here -- serves as a museum and shop for Arlington House.

Beginning in 2008, Arlington House began a major conservation and restoration effort. This included restoration of the flower garden south of the house to an approximation of its 1861 status, and turning the grass lawn where the kitchen garden once stood back into a true kitchen garden. This landscape program is due to be completed in 2012.

Arlington House was built by George Washington Parke Custis, adopted son of George Washington, in 1803. George Hadfield, also partially designed the United States Capitol, designed the mansion. The north and south wings were completed between 1802 and 1804. but the large center section and portico were not finished until 1817.

George Washington Parke Custis died in 1857, leaving the Arlington estate and house to his eldest daughter, Mary Custis Lee -- wife of General Robert E. Lee.