Awbury Arboretum: the quiet free alternative in Germantown

Take everything people like about a ticketed arboretum — open meadow, enormous old trees, a stone house, mown paths — remove the admission fee, the visitor crowds and the closing time, and move it to Germantown. That is Awbury.

What is there

A historic estate in Germantown, kept as an arboretum and, unlike the ticketed gardens, free to walk into.

The pieces that matter:

The great meadow. A big open sweep of grass with mature trees standing alone in it. This is the reason to come. Single specimen trees on open lawn are the most reliably good portrait background there is, and Awbury has several.

The stone house. Nineteenth-century stone, substantial, with the kind of weathered texture that photographs beautifully in flat light.

The pond and wetland ground. Water, reeds, a different texture from the meadow.

Mown paths through rougher grass. A path cut through long grass is a gift: it gives people somewhere to walk, it leads the eye, and it makes a frame look composed without anybody posing.

The English landscape thing

Awbury was laid out in the English landscape style, and knowing that explains why it photographs the way it does.

That style is built on deliberate contrast: broad open grass, then a stand of trees, then a view opening up between them. It was designed to be walked through and to keep revealing new compositions. Which is precisely what you want from a location for a two-hour session. You are not standing in one spot finding angles. You are walking, and the ground keeps offering you things.

Compare it with a formal garden, where the beds are the subject and you arrange people beside them. Here the landscape is the subject and people stand in it. Softer, less decorative, and it ages better.

Light on an open meadow

Open ground with scattered trees is the easiest light in this whole guide to work with, because you have both options in the same place.

• Late afternoon into the last hour is the sweet spot. Low sun rakes across the meadow, the long grass lights up, and the individual trees throw long shadows.
• Under the big trees is your midday answer. A single wide canopy gives you a large pool of even shade with bright meadow behind it.
• Overcast days work all day and the greens go rich rather than washed out.

Because Germantown sits higher and more open than the river valleys, the light lasts closer to actual sunset than it does in the Wissahickon, which is ten minutes away and behaves completely differently.

Autumn is the obvious season. The less obvious one is late spring, when the meadow grass is up but still green and the trees have full leaf without the summer haze.

Parking, ground and facilities

Free on-site parking, and it is not usually contested. After the circling involved in Rittenhouse Square, this alone makes it worth the drive.

The ground is real ground: rolling, uneven in places, and mown grass rather than paved path. Fine in flat shoes, harder in heels, and a stroller will manage the wider mown paths but not the rough grass.

Assume there are no public restrooms and plan accordingly. This is an estate, not a serviced park.

Crowds are the great advantage. On an ordinary weekday afternoon there may be a handful of people on the whole site. For anyone who finds being watched while photographed excruciating, that is worth more than any view.

Free entry, still ask first

Free public access does not mean a professional session is automatically fine. Awbury is looked after by an association that maintains it on a limited budget, and organizations like that commonly ask portrait photographers to book and to contribute a fee.

I would rather pay a modest fee to a small organization that keeps a place like this open than turn up and treat it as free. Either way, I arrange it before we book.

The rest of Germantown

Germantown has a concentration of eighteenth and nineteenth-century stone architecture that is unusual anywhere in America, and several historic houses sit within a short drive. Cliveden and Wyck are the obvious ones. Each is independently run with its own rules, so each is a separate conversation rather than somewhere to wander into with a camera.

Worth knowing if you want stone and history rather than meadow, and worth knowing that the neighborhood rewards being specific about which property you mean.

Who it suits

Extended family groups: excellent, and underrated for this. Open meadow, free parking, room for twelve people and nobody else in the background. If Valley Forge is too far, this is the city answer.

Families in Northwest Philadelphia: obviously. Germantown, Mount Airy and Chestnut Hill are all close.

Kids of any age who need to run: ideal. A meadow with nothing to break.

Anyone on a budget: the strongest free alternative to Morris Arboretum, fifteen minutes away, at no admission cost.

Engaged couples: good if you want pastoral and quiet, wrong if you want city.

Anyone needing bathrooms and paved paths: weaker. This is an estate, not a serviced park.

A family session here runs the way it should: posed portraits under one of the big trees, then everyone walking the mown paths while I stop directing.