They Paved Paradise? A Closer Look at Trump's New White House Rose Garden

Vogue

2 days ago

In the spring of 1963, toddler John F. Kennedy Jr. was photographed in a powder-blue suit wandering the freshly mulched paths of the White House Rose Garden. Dwarfed by clipped hedges and tulips flashing red and yellow, he stood just beyond a pristine green lawn—its first spring since the garden's sweeping redesign the year prior by Rachel 'Bunny' Mellon, the patrician horticulturist charged with bringing order and poetry to the presidential grounds.
Commissioned by President Kennedy and guided by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Mellon's garden became a living emblem of the Camelot era, as fleeting as it was idyllic. Which is why, decades later, newly released images of that same lawn—now paved over with pale stone by President Trump—have left White House nostalgists and gardeners alike wondering: Why trade greenery for granite?
John F. Kennedy, Jr. (JFK, Jr.) in the Rose Garden, April 26, 1963.
Photo: Courtesy of the JFK Library
But the Rose Garden was never meant to be a static relic. Its defining layout—still largely recognizable six decades later—was tailored not only for beauty, but for utility. 'My grandmother was always open to treating gardens with the idea that you had to pull a tree out when it was too old, or you had to update a design element if it didn't make sense anymore,' says Thomas Lloyd, Mellon's grandson, a trustee of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and editor of Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon. 'Mr. Kennedy knew the advent of television was a huge new technology and a component of his success as a politician,' he continues. 'He wanted to have an outdoor area to do press conferences and really utilize that space in a very beautiful way.'
To that end, Mellon—introduced to JFK by Jacqueline Kennedy—transformed what had once been a loosely structured garden first planted in 1913 by Ellen Wilson. She widened the central step leading from the lawn to the Oval Office into a low platform, creating an outdoor pulpit for presidential addresses. Carefully plotted hedges in diamond formation softened the classical lines of the White House. Crabapple trees added seasonal drama. The grassy expanse was left uninterrupted, spacious enough to stage televised diplomacy and stateside pageantry.
'The president proposed to her: make a plan for this garden space where I can have a beautiful place to give a press conference,' Lloyd explains. 'That was her job. It wasn't, 'Hey, make me a beautiful rose garden that looks like your garden at Oak Spring in Upperville.' It was all about JFK's direction.'