Weeding Washington

Abstract

After Congress passed the 1899 Weed Removal Act, the District of Columbia Health Officer struggled to enforce it. The discourses around the legislation reveal a disconnect between visions for order, beauty, and dignity and the uncontrollable conditions on the ground. Planning visions were for an ordered built environment flanked with orderly “nature,” but the weedy materiality of the city thwarted attempts to keep nature in its human-intended place. Through archival research of government reports, newspaper articles, photographs, and cartoons, this article explores how urban weeds complicate discourses of “urban nature” through a case study of early-twentieth-century Washington.