Talking It Over

It's impossible to be in Washington in the spring without thinking of Lady Bird Johnson.

Every time I see daffodils on the parkways, I think of Mrs. Johnson. Whenever I see cherry trees blossoming along the Potomac River or tulips dotting the monument grounds, I think of Mrs. Johnson too.

I think of her because, more than anyone else, Lady Bird Johnson was responsible for planting hundreds of thousands of flowers and trees in our nation's capital and inspiring millions of Americans to do the same in their communities.

Now that I find myself in the role she filled so gracefully three decades ago, my admiration for her only grows.

When I talked to Mrs. Johnson recently, she told me about her love of nature and the environment, and her belief that our natural surroundings play an important role in our lives.

Flowers, she said, kept her company as a girl growing up with few playmates in the East Texas countryside.

"To walk through the woods and see the understory of dogwood, it was like fairyland," she said. "To see the first violet — it was big news for me."

Thirty years ago, during President Johnson's administration, Mrs. Johnson decided to share her love of nature with the nation. "Beautification," as it was called, became her special cause.

Parks, town squares, playgrounds and even highways across the country came alive with newly planted trees and flowers. Garden clubs enjoyed new clout. Litter became a national enemy.

As Mrs. Johnson explains it, beautification was not just about gardening and landscaping. Conservation, city planning, waste management and urban renewal were all part of her effort to encourage Americans to make their environment more pleasing to the eye and to the spirit.

Mrs. Johnson traveled across the country, giving speeches, visiting local beautification projects and touring national parks.

"I hoped this would be a rippling wave — all this feeling and talk and work about enhancing the environment — that it would spread out across the land," she said. "Raising the level of awareness was most important."

The federal highway beautification bill, which focused on cleaning up junkyards and removing billboards along highways, was so strongly identified with her efforts that it was nicknamed "Lady Bird's bill."

President Johnson made no bones about who was the driving force behind it.

When he signed the measure, he handed the pen to the First Lady.

Transforming the nation's capital was one of her most energetic campaigns. When she first arrived in Washington, she remembers, the city's landscape was "pretty bare." There were "a few shrubs here and there, a few random tufts of grass, a sagging bench."

Through her Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, Mrs. Johnson worked with philanthropists and the Park Service to re-landscape, plant trees and flowers, and clean up parks, streets, schools and other public areas.

Mrs. Johnson wasn't only interested in beautifying the tourist spots but also the depressed inner city. The committee's motto was: "Plant masses of flowers where the masses pass."

"You want (flowers) to be seen and enjoyed. You want them to be used, to give pleasure," Mrs. Johnson said. "I hoped to add color to the city."

In all, nearly 2 million daffodil bulbs, 83,000 flowering plants, 50,000 shrubs, 137,000 annuals and 25,000 trees were planted in Washington. Ten thousand azaleas lined Pennsylvania Avenue. Mrs. Johnson planted a new group of cherry-blossom trees, a gift from the Japanese Embassy.

At the White House, she always enjoyed looking at the trees that different Presidents had planted on the grounds, especially the Andrew Jackson Magnolia that she could see from the second-floor Truman Balcony.

"I did so want to plant one that was a resident of our own part of Texas for Lyndon to name," she said. "The live oak doesn't grow that far north, so I chose a willow oak and planted it right close to Lyndon's office."

Mrs. Johnson has lived in the Texas hill country for many years now, but she says she still misses spring in Washington.

"It is just a great long symphony. The progress of spring always just lifted me a good bit. At the first faint green of the willows along the Potomac ... you knew it was not fall," she said. "Then pretty soon, there'd be that graceful yellow forsythia in people's yards. I miss it. It was a sort of a signature of Washington. It was a story that never grew old, and I loved every chapter."

Now 83, her passion for beautification has never waned. She founded the National Wildflower Research Center in Austin, which, she says, is "my last hurrah." And she continues to encourage Americans to do more to protect and enhance the natural environment we all share.

"It is joy giving," she said. "One can think of it as an inheritance for your children and grandchildren and the future of our nation.

"It's a plus for your town, a plus for your heart. It's just a good thing to do."

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