“A Garden of American History at the White House,” by Valentine Lawford, was originally published in the February 1967 issue of Vogue.
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"The first formal flower gardens genuinely worthy of the name" in the history of the White House are the Rose Garden and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden. President Kennedy, who arranged to have both redesigned, was "admirably impatient" of their progress. Now Mrs. Johnson watches over the gardens as they grow. Two rows of crab apples border the long sides of the Rose Garden which in autumn blazes with chrysanthemums, and at each of the four corners stands a magnolia soulangeana planted by President Kennedy. In the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden topiary hollies, set in squares of blue-grey dusty miller and flowers interrupted by herbs, lead to the grape arbour where, in sweet weather when the air is freighted with the smells of rosemary, thyme, and clipped grass, Mrs. Johnson likes to serve tea.
"Altho the times are big with political events, yet I shall say nothing on that or any subject but the innocent ones of botany and friendship…"
The words are Thomas Jefferson s written in 1803 from the White House to General Lafayette s aunt in France, in a letter announcing that he was personally shipping to her a selection of the plants and seeds of the United States: magnolia, sassafras, tulip-poplar and dogwood, chestnut oak, box oak, white oak, and wild rose.
The style and substance of President Jefferson s correspondence recall an idyllically leisured, irretrievably lost, official America. Yet there could hardly be an apter text or guideline for any attempt to describe one American official phenomenon, the White House garden, not only as it has been but as it is today.
The late President Kennedy, to whom the garden owes as much as to any other single President, was steeped in the Jeffersonian tradition. Crises notwithstanding, he found time during his brief passage to improve the White House grounds almost out of recognition, by providing them with their first formal flower gardens genuinely worthy of the name. The present First Lady, Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, by taking a personal interest in the continuation of President Kennedy s gardening plans, by initiating her own program for the creation of a more beautiful national capital, and by stimulating enthusiasm for the preservation of nature throughout America, has shown a spirit that would have evoked the sympathy of the third President, for whom pride in one s country was synonymous with love of its natural beauty and for whom good husbandry—one might almost say good gardening—was the most congenial and enduring form of good works...
Of all the gardens one knows, the White House garden yields its secrets least easily. Only on a close acquaintance can an outside observer hope to surprise a few of them. Theoretically the garden belongs to the nation. But in effect it has been the temporary property in turn of close to three dozen individuals—and their wives and children—in the century and a half of its existence. Its story is the story of those who have occupied it and left their mark on it: sometimes for better and sometimes for worse, but doubtless always with some sense of their responsibility and a thought of their successors happiness as well as their own.
Yet oddly, its official status has endowed the place with an added poignancy, seldom possessed by private gardens. One senses how little time most of its occupants have had to devote to it and how rare and cherished have been the hours when they could enjoy it fully. One s preliminary dismay at its superficial lack of personality gives way to a highly unexpected longing to know something more about even the most shadowy former American presidents.
The history of the garden is not uniformly well documented. There are sizable gaps in the nineteenth-century records. Fortunately the present White House Curator, Mr. James R. Ketchum, has taken the trouble to collect every available scrap of information. Mr. Irvin Williams of the National Park Service has kept a diary of the garden s progress through the last few years. The National Park Service has prepared a map giving the position and species of every one of the five hundred odd trees on the grounds and listing some thirty authenticated examples of Presidential commemorative planting. With the help of this invaluable document, a walk through the grounds today is less like a tour of some moderately interesting park than a visit to an unusually original national museum or pantheon where the great figures of the past, as in some myth or daydream, have been transmuted into shrubs and trees and flowers.
George Washington, a dedicated horticulturist, chose the site for the White House on the ridge that had attracted his attention on a tour of inspection in 1790 with the architect L Enfant. President Washington laid the cornerstone of the House in 1792 and continued to take a patriarchal interest in the development of its surroundings after his retirement. He planted nothing here himself. But today there are several trees in the South Grounds that descend from his own hardy orange trees at Mount Vernon.
John and Abigail Adams were the first Presidential couple to move in. The building was still unfinished, and they had much to put up with, indoors and out. Abigail Adams said so. But even she admitted that the situation was beautiful.
The grounds were first fenced during Adams s Presidency. But it was President Jefferson who began to landscape the garden, plant trees, and lay down walks. Though his mind was notoriously more often at Monticello than in Washington, he was sufficiently interested in his successors privacy to cause two miniature hills to be raised between the south front of the house and the outside world. Still known as Jefferson s Mounds, they are one of the saving graces of what would otherwise be a flat and prosaic piece of parkland, widely exposed to the public gaze.
Yet even in Jefferson s day, funds were a limitation. For years the grounds were riddled with large craters, where clay had been taken to make the bricks for the House.
In 1805, James Monroe, the future fifth President, wrote a respectful note to the Chief Executive about the inconvenience the holes constituted for White House visitors. An English traveller in 1807 was less respectful and more explicit. "The ground," he wrote, " … is in a condition that on a dark night, … you may, perchance, fall into a pit, or stumble over a piece of rubbish … This parsimony ... is a disgrace to the country."
Ironically, seven years later, the scornful tourist s compatriots made matters worse when they sacked the capital and, but for a providential rainstorm, would have burned the White House to the ground. A lithograph of the time depicts the House as the forlorn shell of a fine classical mansion, looming above some ratty saplings and poplars or cedars, but otherwise to all appearances dumped on the surface of the moon.
With the return of peace, the eerie void was gradually converted into a pleasure ground. In the 1820 s, according to a charming drawing by Latrobe, parallel flower borders led up to the South Portico. In a slightly later engraving appear a modest pattern of parterres, a serpentine fence, and a flock of sheep.
Planting started on President Jefferson s Mounds during his Administration. But the oldest documented tree alive today is an American elm, planted between 1825 and 1829 on the eastern mound by John Quincy Adams. It is still the pride of the place, a natural magnet and a focal spot. However mistily one may remember President John Quincy Adams s other claims to fame, his tree is enough to prejudice one in his favour. It is good to learn that he was one of those who "liked berries," that he scythed the White House hay himself, and went swimming at the bottom of the garden in Tiber Creek.
Adams s successor, President Andrew Jackson, in a moment of inspired melancholy, transplanted a pair of Magnolia grandiflora trees from his garden at Nashville, Tennessee to the west end of the South Portico in memory of his wife, who had died shortly after his election, allegedly from sorrow caused by the bitterness of the campaign. Birds sing all day in their branches. Two garden seats have been placed in their shade. Sitting there, one might imagine oneself enjoying antebellum hospitality at some Southern mansion, if it weren t that the black-green leaves, silhouetted against the blue sky and white masonry, even more insistently suggest a cutout by Matisse.
After President Jackson, there is a gap. Presidents Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, John Tyler, James K. Polk, and Zachary Taylor, whose combined incumbencies stretch from 1837 to 1850, must surely have made some changes and planted something. But up to date nothing has been discovered to indicate any significant gardening activity at the White House throughout those years.
Of all people it is Millard Fillmore—the shadowy thirteenth President frequently forgotten in quiz programs—who next comes, horticulturally, to life. President Fillmore commissioned the first great American professional landscape architect, A.J. Downing, to redesign the grounds. Downing duly did so, in the Romantic, or so-called English style: preserving their simple outline, but proposing to plant out the south vista and to encircle the South Lawn with a vast ring of trees. Most of his suggestions were not adopted, but some of his work still remains.
The second half of the nineteenth century coincides with a welcome revival of the habit of recorded, commemorative planting. President Rutherford Hayes planted an elm close to the North Portico. President Benjamin Harrison planted a scarlet oak beside each of the Pennsylvania Avenue gates. Mrs. Grover Cleveland s pair of matching Japanese maples, planted during her husband s second term, are a slight but enchanting fin-de-siècle embellishment of the lawn near the fountain basin in the South Grounds.
In America as in Europe, that period was the heyday of conservatories and greenhouses. In all likelihood there had been a White House greenhouse since earliest times. But the first documentary evidence of anything of the sort dates from 1857. Rebuilt after a fire in 1867, the nineteenth-century Presidential hothouse produced quite famous flowers for progressively more elaborate receptions.
"Life at the White House," according to Mrs. Ulysses Grant in later years, "was a gardenspot of orchids." Mrs. Benjamin Harrison had designs made in 1890 for an immense new conservatory on the South Lawn. A cross between the Brighton Pavilion and the Crystal Palace, her glasshouse would have extended the entire length of the Executive Mansion, if she had been permitted to build it— which she wasn t. Instead, she lavishly redecorated the interior of the Mansion itself, and lined her red velvet upstairs hall with potted ferns.
The greenhouse was finally abolished by President Theodore Roosevelt. On its site, that particular President—whom, for all his other remarkable qualities, one doesn t normally associate with architectural taste—began the building of the new Executive Wing, including the present President s office: a one-storeyed building with a charm of its own that none the less has a perfect compatibility with the splendid early nineteenth-century edifice that it prolongs to the west.
In the Green Room of the White House there is a portrait of Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt sitting on a garden bench near the South Portico, apparently backed by a fine wealth of rhododendrons. Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt is credited with the first recorded design of the East Garden. But the White House grounds of those years were by all accounts less celebrated for their plants than for their animals.
There have been famous White House pets at almost all times: from Jefferson s mocking birds, "Tad" Lincoln s goats, and Caroline Kennedy s pony, Macaroni, to the present President s collie and beagles. But in the days of the younger Roosevelt children the place was a minor zoo.
During the Woodrow Wilson Administration sheep, once again, cropped the South Lawn for a while. But their presence simply had something to do with the First World War effort. President Wilson did, however, plant a tree when the war was over: another elm in the North Grounds. Since that time, commemorative tree-planting has been a consistent White House habit.
But whereas in the 1920 s Mrs. Warren Harding planted her Magnolia grandiflora out near East Executive Avenue, and the spot chosen for the white birch commemorating the Calvin Coolidge Administration lies almost at the furthest extremity of the South Grounds, most of the subsequent commemorative planting has been concentrated in an area roughly hounded by West Executive Avenue, Jefferson s western Mound, and the President s office.
Perhaps, with the increasing pressure of work, recent Presidents have wished to have something attractive and something connected with them personally to look at from their office windows. The result has certainly been to give that particular corner of the grounds a peculiar fascination for the visitor of today.
One of a pair of sturdy white oaks planted by President Herbert Hoover stands there, next to one of a pair of spreading little-leaf lindens, planted during the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. President Truman is said to have pitched horseshoes from the foot of the linden. President Eisenhower—who planted no less than four commemorative trees in all—is represented here by a pin oak and a black walnut; and the velvety surface of his putting green is still clearly visible in the grass between Hoover s and Roosevelt s trees.
Not far off, near a Japanese white tree-lilac, the Kennedy children had their play area: sandpit, tree house, slide, and swing. The commemorative tree closest to the President s office is one of the four Magnolia soulangeana trees which President Kennedy chose for the corners of his redesigned Rose Garden. Nearby are the two most recent Presidential plantings: President Johnson s willow oak and Darlington oak...
During his first Administration, President Franklin Roosevelt commissioned a nationally known firm of landscape architects to submit plans for the improvement of the grounds and to make a note of all the historic trees. World events prevented any radical changes at the time; but the recommendations made then are of more than passing interest, since several of them have been followed, with advantage, under later administrations.
The landscaping firm advocated the planting of long-lived trees, preferably already well-developed, to replace the rather short-lived silver maples and overgrown conifers which then abounded. They called attention to the poor quality of the turf. They criticized the floral effects as makeshift and meagre and called for a greater richness and perfection in the two flower gardens.
Years later, President Kennedy read the report. Though he lacked previous gardening experience, he seems to have been potentially a gardener of no small promise. He found the grounds uninspiring and the grass frankly awful. Having recently returned from visiting several European heads-of-state, he felt keenly that the White House garden was unworthy of the President of the United States.
He was convinced that a good Presidential garden could be a serious psychological asset during diplomatic conversations. He liked to think, too, that a President was entitled to beautiful surroundings to meditate in, if such a luxury as meditation was still possible.
One summer day in the first year of his Presidency, he asked a close friend, whose gardening skill was well known to him, to help him with plans and suggestions for the redesigning of the Rose Garden near the West Wing, and later of its counterpart, then known as the East Garden. He made it clear from the start that he wanted unusual plants, above all "good" plants botanically. He hated garden clichés, especially magenta azaleas. He didn t object to an occasional luxuriant red cabbage slipped in among his flowers. Best of all would be "the sort of flowers that Washington and Jefferson would have known and liked in their lifetime."
On the evening of the day when he received the first drawings for the new Rose Garden, he telephoned his agreement. The planting, conforming generally to known eighteenth-century American gardening designs, was completed by the following spring. Though the space involved was not large, the work entailed proved to be considerable. Over the whole area, the earth had to be dug to a depth of four feet, through rubble dating from the Civil War.
There was a day—well remembered—when the diggers inadvertently cut through the main electric cable to the White House, with the result that a new cable, not scheduled for installation until two years later, was installed within forty-eight hours. And there were calmer days when, after sitting late into the evening alone in his office, reading, with the windows open to the gathering darkness, President Kennedy would come out to see what those who were still at work there were up to in his garden.
In the redesigning of the Rose Garden and the East Garden, President Kennedy concerned himself with every detail and was admirably impatient. His mind dwelled not just on the flower gardens, but on the grounds as a whole; and he planted a number of trees in the grounds—citrus, apple, deodar, and many others—that are not listed strictly as commemorative plantings but are none the less commemorative for that.
The lawns were his constant preoccupation. If there had been rain, or the grass was suffering, ceremonies must be conducted in the East Room or on the lawn to the south of the President s office. Sir Winston Churchill received his honorary American citizenship on the Rose Garden lawn, but the President had carefully checked the state of the grass beforehand.
President Kennedy was proud of his flowers and trees, and justifiably so. Immediately outside the window of the President s office there is an excellent example of the quality of the planting. The Magnolia soulangeana already mentioned grows in the centre of a formal pattern of artemisia, framed in successive square borders of hosta, epimedium, and Sedum Sieboldii. The magnolia was chosen as much for the fine appearance of its bare branches in winter as for the spring beauty of its blos- soms. The artemisia provides a silver-white foil for the blue flowers of the hosta in summer. The Sedum Sieboldii is known for its rosy autumn bloom. The spaces between the borders are blue in spring with scillas.
Throughout both flower gardens, the green patterns are an essential architecture or bone structure rather than an intricate decoration for ornament s sake. Grey foliage plants, boxwoods of varying textures, make their presence felt, but not insistently, in the flower beds. There are herbs—thyme, marjoram, rosemary, tarragon, basil, and chives—among the flowers. Nothing is on a very grandiose scale.
In each of the two gardens, two rows of five low-growing trees rise from the beds that flank an oblong central lawn. Crab apple trees were chosen for the Rose Garden; topiary hollies, similar to those used at the Governor s Palace at Williamsburg, for the East Garden.
In the spring the beds of tulips in the Rose Garden are edged with a border of grapehyacinths, like a wide blue ribbon. In summer, heliotrope takes their place as a border for the roses. There are old-fashioned striped roses; rugosa, rambler, moss, and floribunda roses, as well as the white rose with a touch of green called the "John F. Kennedy," and the rose, a sport of "Peace," called "Speaker Sam." In the autumn there are thick-growing chrysanthemums among the late roses, and at the end of the garden, near the South Portico, the scarlet berries of a Washington hawthorn flame in the sun.
After the completion of the Rose Garden, the replanting of the East Garden began. Its eighteen square flower beds are fragrant in spring with jonquils, hyacinths, narcissi, and Virginia bluebells. Here, too, there are grey foliage plants, formal patterns, and herbs among the summer flowers—heliotrope, dark-blue and light-blue petunias, red dianthus (a favorite flower of Mrs. Kennedy), blue Salvia pitcheri and white Salvia farinacea. Later there are single blue asters among the chrysanthemums, including the pretty "Rajah" chrysanthemum, with small dark-red, yellow-centred flowers.
A white-painted wooden arbour at the west end of the garden is planted with a vine of the Concord grape. Sitting there, the First Lady, to whom by tradition this garden has always belonged, can enjoy a view that is neat, hedged, gently colourful rather than resplendent. As in the Rose Garden, the plan here is based on eighteenth-century American designs.
There is much here also to remind one of a typical French jardin de curé, or of some patterned corner garden in a mediaeval English castle-keep. Like the exceptional man who was primarily responsible for their re-creation, both of the White House flower gardens are exceptionally hard to forget.
Though President Johnson would make no claim to being a horticultural expert himself, he was known to enjoy showing visitors around his own garden in Northwest Washington, when he was a Senator; and he enjoys the White House garden now on the rare occasions when his work allows him to get near it. But of the present First Family, it is Mrs. Johnson who takes the most personal and constant interest in the Presidential trees and flowers.
She goes on frequent tours of inspection of the grounds with the Head Gardener and knows and cares for her trees. She is recognized and respected by the National Park Service as one who particularly hates to see any single White House tree condemned as senile or unfit. (If they must cut down a tree, the White House gardeners usually try to arrange to do so during the First Lady s absence from Washington.)
Mrs. Johnson has always loved her own gardens and she has made a point of becoming knowledgeable about the White House garden and its flowers. She has a garden at home in Texas, and has taken an enthusiastic interest in the propagation of Texas wildflowers and the establishment of a system of roadside parks in her home state. She is said to be fond of bright flowers—Mr. Williams, when pressed to describe her favourites, mentioned gaillardias, Rudbeckia gloriosa, zinnias, geraniums, and marigolds: all flowers of robust and joyful colouring that thrive in sun.
She likes to sit in the garden whenever she can and to entertain her friends there. Often the White House gardeners unexpectedly come across her as they go about their business. She is essentially a most practical woman, as much interested in the condition of the grass as in the shade of the trees and the colours of the flowers. It was on her personal insistence that the perennial lawn problem has been attacked afresh and may at last have been permanently solved.
She is deeply concerned with the historical integrity of the grounds, would do nothing conceivably to compromise it and everything in her power to preserve it. Shortly after becoming the First Lady, she asked the friend of President Kennedy who had helped him redesign the flower gardens and was still engaged in the replanting to continue voluntary work in the gardens under the new Administration. To the benefit of everyone, they have worked together ever since.
Most tellingly of all, Mrs. Johnson has demonstrated her respect for what can only fairly be described as her heavy inheritance by another early initiative. After obtaining Congressional assent to the renaming of the East Garden after the First Lady who had preceded her, Mrs. Johnson dedicated the completed garden as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden during the first spring of the Johnson Administration.
Historians of the future may possibly quote Mrs. Johnson s act as a minor example of twentieth-century political continuity. Gardeners and garden lovers already recognize it as a refreshing sign of human grace.