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First Gardens—An Election-Year Primer on the White House Gardens
Plants & Gardens News | Volume 23, Number 2 | Summer 2008
by Emily Votruba
The White House Rose Garden in spring is a riot of tulips and blooming crabapples. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.)
In January of 2009, a new president will inherit 18.2 District of Columbia acres, the oldest continuously maintained landscape in the country. The press scrutinizes our leaders' daily exercise routines and favorite television shows, but we hear less about their gardening habits. It was not always so. Over the years, the state of the First Gardens has mirrored the nation's horticultural tastes, beginning at a time when new methods of cultivating plants were much on the minds of a young nation of small farmers, until today, when people crave an impressive backdrop for world events. When George Washington and Pierre Charles L'Enfant mapped out the "President's Park," in 1791, Washington sketched reflecting pools and terraced gardens buttressing an executive residence to rival Versailles. Today, the mansion itself is about one fourth the size Washington dreamed of, but he would likely smile on the variety and perfection of the surrounding greenery.
A Living Museum of Trees
President Thomas Jefferson (1801–09) and his surveyor of public buildings, Benjamin Latrobe, undertook the first extensive landscaping at the site. They were faced with a scraggly, unpromising expanse of tobacco-depleted hard clay soil scattered with abandoned workers' cottages and bordered by a malarial swamp. Presidential landscaping attention would be consumed with grading and filling projects throughout the 19th century and into the 20th, both to accomplish Washington's vision of a grand prospect to the south and to eliminate what Jefferson called the "sickly season," born of the marshy area now called the Ellipse. (James K. Polk, 1839–41, was popularly believed to have been slowly killed by summering in Washington.) The hundreds of trees Jefferson planted are long gone, lost to the rolling cannons and fires set during the British sack of the city in 1814, but the third president's north and south partition and his plans for ornamental and edible parterres on the South Lawn remained the guiding principle for the grounds until after the Civil War.
Marine One landing on the South Lawn. White House groundskeepers are on hand to fix any damage the presidential helicopter may cause to the grass. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Department of Defense.)
Picture the White House in the 1850s, still towering over juvenile trees, most of them planted by John Quincy Adams (1825–29) and Andrew Jackson (1829–37). An unpopular president with an unfabulous personal life, Adams had thrown himself into horticulture. He solicited plant specimens from consulates around the world and made sure to plant the five varieties of oak native to D.C.—it was Adams's idea to establish a collection of uniquely American species on the grounds. The oldest surviving trees on the property now are two southern magnolias (Magnolia grandiflora) planted by Jackson at the east end of what is now the Rose Garden.
Rutherford B. Hayes (1877–81) began the presidential tradition of planting trees in honor of home states or past presidents. About four dozen such commemorative trees are now labeled on the White House grounds; each president makes at least one contribution per term. The largest commemorative at the time of planting was an American elm (Ulmus americana) ten inches in diameter, inserted with "Big John," a gas-powered tree spade operated by Bill Clinton, to replace a fallen elm hand planted by John Quincy Adams in 1826.
Orangeries to Rose Garden Pardons
James Monroe (1817–25) named the first "Gardener to the President of the United States," Charles Bizet, and gave him a salary of $450 a year. John Quincy Adams's gardener, John Ousley, would remain in his job for about 30 years, setting the precedent for long-employed head horticulturalists. The current gardener in chief, Dale Haney, is in his 35th year at the White House.
Andrew Jackson enjoyed naked morning dips in the Potomac, followed by weeding in the garden. He spared no expense in providing house gardeners with the best grub hoes and mole traps, and it was during Jackson's term that the grounds began to look presentable. Jackson had the first White House orangery installed, in 1835. Citrus fruits for medicinal and culinary purposes shared space with pots of camellias (then the rage), which were brought in to decorate White House parties. It was an era of feverish cultivation of exotic species and the urbanizing nation's fascination with cut flowers. Beginning in the term of Franklin Pierce (1853–57), the president's expanding hothouses were emblematic of the indoor gardening craze, eventually spilling over with the botanical spoils of Commodore Perry's adventures in China and Japan.
Theodore Roosevelt (1901–09), who gave the White House its lasting nickname, created 150 national parks, founded the National Forest Service, and preserved 230 million acres of U.S. wildlands. Ironically, he was hamstrung in his presidential garden plans by lack of space. With regret he dismantled the vast greenhouse complex to make way for office space—today's West Wing. The presidency had become a fulltime job and the country was growing, but the White House property was not.
During the Kennedy administration (1961–63), the White House grounds got ready for prime time. Kennedy placed the Park Service in charge of garden maintenance in 1961 and ordered the Rose Garden lawn to be expanded to accommodate 1,000 people, beginning the tradition of gardenside presidential addresses. Today the Rose Garden and East Garden, dedicated as the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden by Lady Bird Johnson in 1965, remain mostly as originally planned by Jackie and her design partner, Rachel Lambert Mellon. The displays are changed three times a year, with chysanthemums taking over for the roses in the fall.
The Olmsted Oasis
It has been 40 years since a significant design change was made in the White House landscape—the addition of Lady Bird Johnson's Children's Garden, with its fishpond and bronze–hand–print pathway. Talk to any Parks or White House official about the grounds today, and they'll be sure to invoke the unassailable Olmsted plan. Commissioned by Franklin Roosevelt in 1935, Frederick Law Olmsted Jr.'s design provided a flexible but unified overall concept. The South Lawn would remain parklike, with flower beds and gardens sequestered against the house. Trees on the South Lawn would be cut down or moved and driveways sunken to create a view of the Jefferson Memorial, with dense, protective groves of trees on either side.
Jimmy Carter entertains Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1980 amid magnolia trees in the White House gardens. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
More and more, the gardens have served as a refuge from the burden of leading the nation rather than a place to dig in the dirt—like Daphne fleeing Apollo, first families take sylvan cover here to escape the attentions of the public and the press. (And on occasion they use the grounds to stage very public "private" moments, such as when Bill, Hillary, and Chelsea Clinton walked hand in hand across the South Lawn to Marine One during the Monicagate scandal.) Most presidential garden requests these days are for recreational features that can be enjoyed without a too-evident security entourage. Gerald Ford (1974–77) had a heated outdoor pool installed off the West Wing in 1975. Dwight Eisenhower's (1953–61) putting green has been commandeered by many, as has been Harry Truman's (1945–53) horseshoe pit. Bill Clinton (1993–2001) ordered a recycled rubber track after his morning runs started to become a traffic hazard in the city. George W. Bush hosts T-ball games for Little Leaguers on the South Lawn in the summertime.
The annual Easter egg roll and hunt has long taken its toll on the White House grounds. This image shows children and adults enjoying the event in 1889. (Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.)
Sheep mowed the grass under John Quincy Adams; now 13 full-time National Park Service staff (plus additional crews as needed) are on 24-hour fescue watch. When a presidential pet "thinks outside the box," they spring into action. In the summer, the thrice-weekly mowings that keep the grass at three inches take eight hours each; partial automatic irrigation is supplemented with handheld hoses. Protecting the White House's historic trees from disaster is a top priority too. They are regularly fed a cocktail of fertilizers and have lightning rods in their upper limbs; many, such as the Jackson magnolias, are secured with cables. In 2003, two Park Service employees stayed up all night during Hurricane Isabel, chain saws at the ready; luckily, the only casualty was a hundred-year-old linden tree, struck down on the North Lawn. The motion detectors, infrared sensors, and hidden microphones and video cameras intended to thwart security breaches present lawn—and tree-care challenges—no rider mowers are allowed.
But the impact of monitoring for the uninvited has nothing on the welcomed marauders who stomp through here annually. Thomas Jefferson ordered the executive residence to be open even to unexpected callers, and subsequent presidents have been loath to appear disrespectful of that democratic attitude. Free public grounds tours were initiated by First Lady Patricia Nixon in 1972; today tens of thousands of tourists arrive for the spring and fall garden displays, plus several thousand children during the Easter egg roll and hunt. It's the maintenance crew's job to pick those bits of shell and yolk out of the grass each year (7,200 eggs were used in 2008 for the roll alone). All in all, it takes a massive outlay of energy—human and fossil fuel—to keep the tulips perky and the crabgrass at bay.
A Green White House?
Calls for ecological responsibility at the White House have come from several quarters over the years. The Rodale Institute exhorted the Clinton administration to ban synthetic pesticides in the Rose Garden and build a compost bin near the house.
A plan showing all 18.2 acres of the White House grounds and gardens. What features might the new president add to the map? (Image courtesy of the White House Museum, whitehousemuseum.org.)
The restaurateur Alice Waters offered to come and plant some seeds herself, to make an organic garden for the White House chefs. In a letter back to her, the president begged off, citing the unimpeachable tradition of the Olmsted plan. Instead, security snipers tiptoed through the conventional garden of tomatoes, cucumbers, and peppers the First Lady had the Park Service install on the roof.
It may surprise some to hear that the first solar electric system used as a supplemental power source for the White House was instituted by none other than George W. Bush. Jimmy Carter (1977–81) had installed the first solar thermal system, to heat water for the West Wing during the Arab oil embargo, but it was removed during the Reagan administration (1981–89); perhaps it obstructed Nancy's stargazing. In any event, the current energy shortage may again prove the best advocate for a sustainable White House, as cutting costs is on the National Parks Service agenda.
"Change" has been a buzzword in the 2008 presidential campaign, but it's hard to imagine any but minor alterations being made to the First Gardens with the Olmsted plan so deeply entrenched. Change will probably come sooner from nature than from shifts in public taste. The White House currently finds itself in USDA Zone 7A and has been there since at least 1990. Who knows how climate change might yet affect the vast assortment of species nurtured behind Monroe's iron gates? (Ever prepared, the Park Service's propagation of historic trees is ongoing, to ensure genetically identical reinforcements for the White House's rich arboreal legacy.)
What is sure is that the next First Family will revel in their temporary Eden, whether it's John McCain swinging from the putting green's favorable slanted spot or Barack Obama's two daughters, now eight and eleven, spying on heads of state from Amy Carter's tree house, newly taken out of storage.
Emily Votruba is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in n+1 and Bookforum.