White House Rose Garden

Prior to 1902, the area of the present-day Oval Office, Cabinet Room, and Rose Garden contained extensive stables housing horses and coaches. There was also a conservatory rose house in the area. During the 1902 Roosevelt renovation of the White House, First Lady Edith Roosevelt established a "proper colonial garden" in place of the conservatory.[2]

The White House Rose Garden was established in 1913 by Ellen Louise Axson Wilson, wife of Woodrow Wilson.[3] In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt commissioned Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. to redesign the garden, and he installed cast iron furniture pieces.[4]

In 1961, during the John F. Kennedy administration, the garden was largely redesigned by Rachel Lambert Mellon[2] concurrently with extensive repair work to the East Garden. Mellon created a space with a more defined central lawn, bordered by flower beds that were planted in a French formal garden style while largely using American botanical specimens. Although individual plantings are changed frequently according to the wishes of the incumbent administration, until 2020 the garden followed the same layout first established by Mellon, where each flower bed was planted with a series of pale pink 'Katherine' crabapples and Littleleaf lindens bordered by low diamond-shaped hedges of thyme. (The 'Katherine' crabapples were replaced in 2019 with a white-flowering variety called Spring Snow, which did not do well.[5]) Additionally, the outer edges to the flower bed which faced the central lawn were edged with boxwood, and each of the four corners to the garden were punctuated by Magnolia × soulangeana; specifically, obtaining specimens that were found growing along the banks of the Tidal Basin by Mellon.[2] Mellon tasked White House Head Gardener Irvin Williams with planting the trees. Initially blocked from doing so by the National Park Service, Williams secretly removed and transported the trees from the Basin to the White House under cover of night.[6]

Ever since then, roses have served as the primary flowering plants in the garden, including large numbers of 'Queen Elizabeth' grandiflora roses, along with the tea roses 'Pascali', 'Pat Nixon', and 'King's Ransom'. A shrub rose, 'Nevada', also served to add a cool note of white coloration to the landscaping. Seasonal flowers are further interspersed to add nearly year-round color and variety to the garden. Some of the Spring blooming bulbs planted in the Rose Garden include jonquil, daffodil, fritillaria, grape hyacinth, tulips, chionodoxa and squill. Summer blooming annuals are changed on a near yearly basis. In the fall, chrysanthemum and flowering kale bring color leading all the way up until the early winter days. In a tradition, every summer sees garden gnomes placed throughout the Rose Garden on July 1 - the number representing the number of living presidents at that time.

First Lady Melania Trump commissioned an August 2020 renovation of the garden by Oehme, van Sweden and Perry Guillot. In the flower beds, white and pale pink rose bushes are intermixed with seasonal bulbs and annuals, including the Pope John Paul II Rose in honor of the first time a pope visited the White House in 1979.[7] A new limestone walk, 36 inches (91 cm) wide to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, was laid around the borders of the garden.[5] The crabapple trees, added during the Kennedy redesign, were relocated elsewhere on the White House grounds as the newer trees were failing to thrive.[1]

The renovation was controversial, with many observers describing it as "sterile, bland, and devoid of any joy".[8] Presidential historian Michael Beschloss[9] opined that the renovation was an "evisceration" of the Rose Garden, and that "decades of American history [was] made to disappear." The Washington Post, however, stated that the renovation was "long overdue" and noted several problems with the Rose Garden's pre-renovation landscaping, including a poorly-drained lawn which required annual replacement, the die-off of multiple rose bushes "to the point where only a dozen or so remained", and the parterres' susceptibility to boxwood blight. [10]

White House interior designer and Grounds Committee member Thammanoune Kannalikham described the decision as a "collective" one, made “by the entire team to respond to the changed environment of the garden ... It allows the roses to thrive (having increased in quantity from 19 to over 200), while bringing in the greater narrative of the colonnade into the design of the garden."[5]

The phrase "Rose Garden strategy" (such as a re-election strategy) refers to staying inside or on the grounds of the White House as opposed to traveling throughout the country.[14] For example, Jimmy Carter's initial efforts to end the Iran hostage crisis (1979–1981) were a Rose Garden strategy because he mostly held discussions with his close advisers in the White House rather than traveling to elicit public support.[15] Four years earlier Carter had accused then-President Gerald Ford of the same thing, saying Ford was using White House actions to garner free publicity while challenger Carter had to struggle for press coverage.[16]