American cities usually tire me with their scale. Washington, D.C., however, managed to surprise me.
To me, Washington feels a little like Rome, but more human.
I expected monuments, museums, wide boulevards, serious façades and that official American atmosphere. A city planned as a capital cannot help but carry the weight of its symbols.
But what surprised me came from somewhere else. Not from the large buildings, the monuments or the museums.
The surprise came from the streets.
From the way greenery is woven into the city. From the raised planting beds, the planters, the trees, the ornamental grasses, the clean pavements, those small green islands that suddenly make concrete feel softer, glass less cold, and modern architecture more gentle.
And I realized that this is not simply “beautiful landscaping”.
It is culture.
The street is not leftover space between buildings
We often think of the street as something that exists between other things. Between buildings. Between entrances. Between the parking lot and the restaurant. Between the place where you are and the place where you are going.
In Washington, the feeling is different. At least in the areas I photographed and observed, the street felt like a designed stage. Not in a theatrical or artificial sense, but as a carefully imagined place through which a person can move with pleasure.
A raised planting bed in front of a glass façade. A tree planted in a large concrete planter. Flowers that are not piled up chaotically, but are part of a clear composition. Ornamental grasses moving in the wind and making strict geometry feel more alive. Clean pavements, places to sit, wide pedestrian areas, green lines that guide the eye.
Nothing looks accidental. And this is precisely the difference between “putting some plants somewhere” and “creating an environment”.
In Washington’s official planning language, this is called the public realm — the public environment. The entire space where a person walks, waits, looks, sits, meets others, rests and moves. DDOT describes a well-designed public realm as something that should be safe, sustainable, enriching and able to create a sense of place.
Not “where should we put the planters?”, but “how do we want a person to feel here?”
Raised planting beds — beauty that works
At first glance, a raised planting bed is something simple. A container, soil, plants. But in the modern city, it is much more than that.
It is decoration, but also architecture and infrastructure.
The last part is especially important.
In American cities, such planting beds and planters are increasingly used not only for beauty. They are part of what is known as green infrastructure. This means that plants, soil, drainage and pavements help solve real urban problems: stormwater, overheating, pollution, lack of shade and too much concrete.
Beauty
Raised planting beds soften concrete, bring seasonality, texture and human scale into the modern urban environment.
Function
They can retain water, cool the space, reduce dust and create natural boundaries.
And here comes the part that is not visible from above: a beautiful urban planting bed can also be a small hydrological system. A planter with a tree can also be a cooling element. A row of ornamental grasses can hold water, dust, noise — and the gaze.
Washington and the old idea of the beautiful city
Perhaps this attitude toward public space is not accidental. From the very beginning, Washington was conceived through axes, vistas, green spaces and symbolism.
As early as 1791, Pierre L’Enfant designed the capital with wide diagonal avenues, public spaces and a grand central axis. Later, in the early twentieth century, the McMillan Plan developed this vision further and transformed the National Mall into one of the most recognizable green urban axes in the world. This plan is connected to the City Beautiful movement, which believed that a beautiful, orderly and well-designed urban environment matters not only for the eyes, but also for society.
This seems very important to me.
Because we often underestimate beauty in the city. We treat it as a luxury. Something to be done if there is money left. First sewage, then roads, then parking lots, then buildings, and then — if there is any budget left — a few trees.
Of course, infrastructure matters. But Washington shows that beauty is also infrastructure. A more subtle one.
It affects behavior, the feeling of safety, the desire to walk, to stay outside, to sit down, to meet people, to not hurry away from the city.
A city that is not built only according to an investor’s taste
There is one more detail that explains why Washington looks so different from many other American cities. It does not develop solely according to the logic of “whoever bought something can build whatever they want”. Of course, there are interests, debates and compromises there as well, but there is also a strong system of rules and institutions that protect the overall image of the capital.
The height of buildings, for example, is limited by the Height of Buildings Act of 1910 — a federal law that defines maximum heights according to the width of the street, with a general limit of up to 130 feet for commercial streets, 90 feet for residential streets and up to 160 feet for parts of Pennsylvania Avenue. This is one of the reasons why Washington does not have the typical American skyline of skyscrapers, but preserves a lower, more horizontal urban image in which monuments and important public buildings remain visible.
Added to this are bodies such as the National Capital Planning Commission and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, which participate in the review of important federal projects, public spaces, monuments and architectural interventions. In historic areas such as Georgetown, the control can even extend to the appearance, material, color and texture of buildings when they are visible from public space.
This does not mean that the city is frozen in time or that everything is perfect. But it does mean that there is a clear understanding: a building does not exist only for itself. A façade is not merely a matter of personal taste. The color, the height, the material, the tree in front of the entrance, the planting bed by the sidewalk — everything participates in the larger picture.
And when you later see the raised planting beds, the clean pavements, the carefully chosen materials and the respect for old façades, you begin to understand that this is not simply a question of money. It is a question of rules, culture and consistency.
A beautiful city does not happen by accident.
The Wharf — when water becomes part of the city again
The photos strongly reveal this new waterfront urban culture that Washington is developing in areas such as The Wharf.
The Wharf is an example of a major rethinking of the city’s relationship with water. Architectural and landscape sources describe the project as a complete public environment that reconnects Washington with the Southwest Waterfront through streets, squares, parks, promenades and open spaces. It is not simply about constructing new buildings by the water, but about creating a place where people can walk, sit, meet, look at the river and take part in urban life.
Perhaps this is the word that best describes strong urban design: experience.
Not just a view. Not just a promenade.
But the feeling that you are invited to be there.
Greenery as memory and future at the same time
Washington offers one more very interesting lesson: the old and the new do not need to fight each other.
The city preserves its historic axes, monuments, museums and classical façades, while gradually building a new culture of public space around them. Greenery is the mediator between these two worlds.
It can make old architecture more accessible. It can make modern architecture warmer. It can create a smooth transition between monument and everyday life. It can turn a place that might otherwise be only a “sight” into a space where people actually stay.
This is a valuable lesson for cities like ours, where we often either leave old buildings to decay or “renovate” them in a way that erases their soul. Between these two extremes, there is a third path: a thoughtful urban environment that preserves the old while giving it life.
Sometimes no aggressive intervention is needed.
What is needed is a tree. A planting bed. A bench. A good material. Maintenance. Thought.
The hope that we can learn
When I look at such urban spaces, I do not look at them with that provincial admiration of “everything works there, nothing works here”. That is useless.
I look at them with hope.
Because many of the lessons are not unreachable. Not every Bulgarian city needs to have the scale of Washington. We do not need to copy The Wharf. We do not need American boulevards or grand waterfront developments.
But we can learn the principles.
- To think of the street as a place, not as leftover space.
- To plant trees with enough room for their roots.
- To use raised planting beds where there is no good soil.
- To combine beauty with function — shade, water, cooling, direction.
- To choose plants not only for the first month, but for the seasons.
- To maintain.
- To stop treating the public environment as if it belonged to no one.
And above all — to stop thinking that beauty is unnecessary.
Beauty in the city is not a whim. It is a sign that someone has thought about people. That someone has imagined how they will walk, where they will sit, what they will see, where they will hide from the sun, how they will feel.
Washington showed me exactly that — urban greenery can be much more than decoration. It can be a way for a city to show respect.
For its history. For its architecture. For its climate. For its water. For its people.
And perhaps this is the most important thing we can take from these garden-cities: not the idea of imitating them, but the courage to believe that our own streets can also become an experience.
Not simply a path from one place to another.
But a place where a person wants to stay a little longer.
More images from Washington’s urban gardens
Washington impressed me not only with its monuments, but with the way greenery is present in the everyday urban environment — in planting beds, along streets, by the water, around museums and between modern buildings. In these images, I gathered small details from this culture of public space.
