Free White House garden tours planned for Oct. 17-18

Curious about the gardens of the White House?  You’ll get a chance to visit them for free Oct. 17 and 18 during the annual White House Gardens and Grounds Tours in Washington, D.C.

New this year is the Kitchen Garden, a patch of vegetables, berries and herbs that First Lady Michelle Obama and local schoolchildren planted in March on the South Lawn of the White House. The garden, which yields produce for the first family’s meals and formal dinners, will be “viewable from a distance along the tour route,”  the White House said in a news release last week.

The main route will include the South Lawn, the Rose Garden, the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden and the Children’s Garden.

Although there’s no charge for the tours, visitors need tickets, which will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis starting at 8 a.m. each tour day at the Ellipse Visitor Pavilion, at 15th and E Streets.  The gardens will be open 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 17 and 10 a.m. to 3 p.m  Oct. 18.

Caveats: In the event of bad weather, the tours may be canceled, so call to check. And there will be no regular White House tours on Oct. 17-18.

Contact: National Park Service, President’s Park; (202) 456-7041 (White House Visitors Office).

— Jane Engle, assistant Los Angeles Times Travel editor

[Photo: Kevin Tennyson, a gardener for the National Park Service, tends the Rose Garden on the grounds of the White House while President Obama, background left, walks toward Marine One. Credit: Tim Sloan / AFP / Getty Images]

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 21, 2009 at 5:55 am by Jane Engle and is filed under East Coast, Fall, Family & Kids, National Parks, News, Tips & Advice, Washington D.C.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.