Where should the ‘American Heroes’ garden grow?

One of the components of America’s Semiquincentennial celebration planned for implementation by President Donald Trump in 2026 is a “National Garden of American Heroes,” featuring statues of 250 “notable American figures” in U.S. history.

This fellow has an entire monument. Does he qualify for a garden statue, too?

Hopefully, the garden, which carries a hefty $30 million price tag, could be completed by July 4, 2026, just in time to commemorate the 250-year anniversary of America’s Declaration of Independence.

The garden concept is part of a broad celebration being ballyhooed by “Task Force 250,” a White House initiative chaired by President Trump himself. Lots of ideas have been circulated as to “where should the garden grow?”

Let’s go with the recommendation from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) of Washington, D.C., a public policy think tank committed to achieving “solidarity with those at the periphery of our society.”

 

Michael Brickman (shown above) of AEI said the “perfect location” for such a project is “one of the most underrated places in the nation’s capital. That is the U.S. National Arboretum.” The facility was authorized in 1927 by President Calvin Coolidge.

 

The 450-acre site is just three miles from the Capitol building. The land is mostly forested with collections of azaleas, dogwoods, holly, magnolias, roses, boxwoods and herbs that are especially noteworthy.

 

The arboretum “possesses well-maintained gardens, old columns from the Capitol building, an impressive bonsai museum with trees maintained continuously for generations and frequently nesting bald eagles,” Brickman asserted.

 

From the highest point in the city, Mount Hamilton (at an elevation of 240 feet), visitors to the arboretum enjoy commanding views of the Capitol as well as the Anacostia River, a tributary of the Potomac River. (Mount Hamilton is named for Alexander Hamilton, a “founding father” of the United States and the first Secretary of the Treasury.)

 

Yet, the arboretum remains underutilized and underappreciated…and is quasi-neglected, in Brickman’s view.

“Now, President Trump, a former real estate developer, has the opportunity to transform this site in a patriotic and productive way,” Brickman said.

Developing the heroes’ garden on the arboretum grounds would “align with the president’s goal to ‘beautify public spaces’ managed by the federal government and his efforts to work with the D.C. government to make the capital safer and more attractive.”

Currently, the arboretum is managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It needs to be elevated to “national park” status and become a unit of the National Park Service within the U.S. Department of the Interior, Brickman suggested.

He said that locating the “National Garden of American Heroes” at the arboretum would be a fitting tribute to “one of America’s most unsung heroes, Dr. Norman Borlaug of Chickasaw County, Iowa (shown below), an agronomist who is considered the ‘father of the Green Revolution,’ which many credit with having saved two billion lives from starvation” in the early 1940s.

Although Dr. Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize (1970), Presidential Medal of Freedom (1977) and Congressional Gold Medal (2006), “few Americans learn about him in school,” Brickman said.

As the gardens are intended to depict 250 American heroes from the nation’s founding to the present who come from all backgrounds and all walks of life, Dr. Borlaug’s selection should be a slam-dunk.

Trump is being lobbied hard by South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden to locate the heroes’ garden in the Black Hills in the shadow of the iconic Mount Rushmore memorial near Keystone, S.D. Rhoden has arranged to have a chunk of privately owned land donated to the federal government for the project.

 “The Black Hills mark the perfect location to…honor America’s heroes,” Rhoden said.

 He’s serious. His office has already prepared mockups of the proposed garden.