Ironically, “roses have a tough time surviving in that garden,” Holden explains, citing the heat and humidity of Washington, D.C., as well as the site’s lack of air circulation, thanks to the West Wing’s embrace. Other Rose Garden inhabitants have come and gone over the years too, including the boxwood hedges, which have been replaced as many as four times, most recently a few weeks ago. Especially so given that Oehme, van Sweden’s White House Rose Garden Landscape Report offered two attractive alternatives-both of which incorporated crab apples rising from the parterres as intended by Mellon, an exceptionally gifted amateur, and landscape architect Perry Wheeler, with whom she worked on the project.
Architecture buffs such as Eric Groft of Oehme, van Sweden are delighted to see the colonnade, designed by Benjamin Latrobe and Thomas Jefferson, so fully visible now, but the crab apples’ disappearing act remains perplexing. (Keep reading you’ll find out why.) In addition to lending height, the crab apples, which are members of the rose family, also helped mask the West Colonnade’s stark white columns, white walls, and odd floating fanlights. Treeless beds flank the central lawn like the borders of a carpet rather than reaching for the sky like a cathedral the 10th of an acre seems deflated, even though the attendant roses haven’t yet grown in and indeed might never do so. The Rose Garden revision strikes me as the epitome of deluxe-hotel graciousness. Trump’s supporters have praised the refreshed Rose Garden, calling it elegant, appropriate, and, as one tweeted, “clean and classy.” Guillot, a Hamptons-based talent whose clients include Aerin Lauder and Tory Burch, told me via email, “The project has been the honor of my career.” Still, if Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram bear accurate witness, it must be said that many of President Donald J. The Rose Garden team nevertheless should have anticipated the firestorm by posting the plans and their developments on the White House website, welcoming comments (good or ill), and talking about it in interviews instead of announcing the renovation just weeks before it was to start.
That’s an argument with which I happen to agree, though the transparency might have proven unwieldy and resulted in even more blowback. Photo: Robert Knudsen / Courtesy of White House Photographs / John F. Another early 1960s view of the garden shows the West Wing Colonnade in the background.
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