WASHINGTON — Summer has slowed to slog and drag. The heat churns high — scorching, stifling — and green grass cowers. Midsummer is a vampire.

But not here.

Here, just beyond northeast Washington public housing, beyond broken bottle glass scattered like mosaics of alienation and anger — here lies Eden.

The lotus are blooming. In the worst months of Washington's summer, as other flowers wither in the exhausting sun, the lotus stretch 5 feet and higher, reaching for the sky.

Thousands of water lilies are unfolding in Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens. Nearly 45 ponds fill with Red Flare and Afterglow, Josephine and Madame Walska, all soft pinks and pure whites, each keeping a promise made by Claude Monet. Here, amid urban struggle and neglect, lies an unexpected oasis of rarely seen blossoms, an almost secret sanctuary.

Arriving brings such a vivid surprise that there seems only one reaction:

"It's amazing!" exclaims Kathy Calhoun, visiting from Detroit.

"It's amazing!" echoes her husband, Dennis Calhoun.

"It's amazing!" exults their host, Helen Penberthy of McLean, Va., when she walks up moments later.

"This is an incredible place. I tell everyone," gushes Sue Callahan of Boston as she paces a grassy dike. "It's a miraculous place."

The gardens are nestled between the Anacostia River and the Anacostia Freeway, just south of New York Avenue traffic that drones like a guilty conscience. They're the creation of a one-armed Civil War veteran. Walter Shaw, who in the 1880s worked as a clerk at the U.S. Treasury Department, bought 30 acres along the Anacostia and planted a few wild water lilies in an unused ice pond. Soon, he and his daughter were importing lilies from the Orient, Nile and South America and developing varieties. After the ugliness of war, he created a life of beauty.

By the 1920s, thousands of visitors were regularly stopping by to see the waxy blossoms and wide saucerlike lily pads. In 1938, the federal government bought the land and turned it into a park, preserved to this day pretty much as it was. It's a refuge for birders and weekend photographers, wetlands aficionados and college students who periodically come to study.

But today, driving to it means passing mounds of discarded tires and worn-out buildings. The ponds may be circumscribed by signs of poverty and neglect — some visitors call the surroundings "a tough neighborhood" — but the gardens are valentines of hope. Lotus blossoms inspired stories of Buddha, the architecture of Egypt, Chinese culture. They may start from mud and grow up through the murk, but they unfurl into the air brilliant and spotless.

By August — the month that seems to swamp even the most stalwart of Washington ambitions — the Victoria water lilies will look like they're vying for a Guinness World Record. Their colossal lily pads will stretch 5 to 6 feet across, like they're plates on a table set for Jack and the Beanstalk's giant.

The gardens, really, are like fairy tales come to life.

Two men from New York, Michael Mai and Philip Wu, have driven down overnight with large-format cameras, eager to catch the lotus at first light. Word of the gardens has spread north: Other photographers tell them there's nothing else like it, anywhere, on the East Coast. Behind them, Callahan is wandering the dikes, taking close-ups with her pocket camera.

Last summer was her first trip, after a friend suggested they go "look at the water lilies." Callahan, who teaches elementary art, silently rolled her eyes. "I was like, 'OK. I'll go take some pictures of water lilies.' "

Then she saw them. "I was floored. It was like looking at the sunflower fields in Europe."

Callahan is already planning for next summer, asking gardener supervisor Doug Rowley when in July she should return.

Most years, mid-July is prime blooming season, Rowley answers, but the chill in May slowed things by two weeks this year, so you've still got time to book a flight.