UPDATE: The map I should have included
Comments are making it clear there’s confusion, best avoided with a map.
This illustration by BBC reflects the first day of demolition – just the eastern facade of the East Wing. By the next day, we saw how extensive it was.
The Rose Garden is just off the West Wing. Along the East Wing colonnade is the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, formerly known as the East Garden and then the First Ladies Garden.
Credit for the illustration, without garden names I added, is BBC. But it quickly became outdated, as the demolition actually included the entire East Wing (not just its east facade), the colonnade leading from the main building to the East Wing, and the Kennedy Garden.
Jacqueline Kennedy Garden is Gone
My photo of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden in April of 2016.
No doubt you’ve seen the news this week of the demolition of the East Wing of the White House, to make room for a 90,000 sf ballroom, so no need for me to comment on all THAT.
My photo of the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden in October of 2016.
But getting much less notice is the demotion of this historically significant garden – the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden situated between the main building and the East Wing.
With the East Wing demolished this week, all the plants in the Kennedy Garden are gone, too. As expected.
Satellite photos of before and after, with arrow pointing to Kennedy Garden, formerly known as the East Garden.
For garden-history buffs:
When the Kennedy administration came to office, the ill-kempt state of the gardens drew the focus of First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, who worked with Rachel Lambert Mellon and Perry Wheeler on the redesign and replanting of the entire Rose and East Gardens. By the time of President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, the Rose Garden had been completed, while revitalization on the East Garden was still a work in progress. To further honor Jacqueline Kennedy’s contributions to the White House and its grounds, her immediate successor, First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, renamed the East Garden as the “Jacqueline Kennedy Garden” during a ceremony on 22 April 1965. (Source: Wikipedia, which updated the page to include the garden’s destruction the very day it happened.)
Rose Garden
My photo of the Rose Garden in April of 2016.
I’ve seen a lot of misreporting about recent changes to the Rose Garden, so let’s get it right.
In the summer of this year, the lawn was removed and replaced with a stone patio. (PBS gets it right in their report.) Commenters seem united in their dislike of the result, often referred to as a parking lot or Panera outdoor dining area. No other changes to plants (besides the turfgrass) were reported.
It’s changes made to the Rose Garden by Trump in 2020 that are so often mischaracterized as removal of the roses, which isn’t so. (Sickly roses were replaced with new ones.) Other changes included walkways for better accessibility, unspecified “upgrades” to the flower beds, and removal of the crabapple trees, which were shading the roses (and to many eyes, including mine, didn’t look appropriate there anyway).
And importantly, I’ve never found evidence of Melania’s involvement beyond making the announcement.
I covered the 2020 changes in “Even garden writers who hate Trump are defending the Rose Garden upgrade.” And I linked to the report of the committee – including some well known horticultural experts – that studied the garden and recommended the changes made.
So hopefully now GardenRant readers can be among the very few well informed people deploring all the changes to the White House gardens. Be smarter than the others!
It’s sad to see it go. On the other hand, perhaps an interesting new garden can be planted out after construction is finished. Maybe an opportunity for some 21st century gardening talent.
Thanks for the photos and the informative commentary from a gardener’s perspective.
So, Susan, ALL the plants are gone now? The changes to the rose garden, whatever we thought of them, are gone? The recommendations of garden experts – gone? The Panera patio – gone? Gone, gone, gone. All gone.
As you rightly say, “as expected.”
What’s next? A putting green, maybe, with Astroturf, maybe? To complement that ballroom, which may last as long as Trump’s Plaza Hotel and Casino, or about 40 years.
It’s a style of gardening, you think? Rip everything out and replace with something new. Works in flower pots, and you can then avoid hassles simply by replacing growing plants with plastic flowers.
Trumpery gardening?
No info available about what, if any, garden will replace the kennedy garden. Plants in the Rose Garden are as they were in the 2020 renovation, except the lawn is gone.
Susan, according to a WaPo article this morning, the old ballroom was 12,000 sf, and the new one will be an astounding 90,000 sf! It will dominate the property, and one can only imagine what it will be like there when it starts being used.
THx for the correction – what a diff between the 9,000 i first wrote and the current size – 90,000!
I read two days ago that they removed two, hundred year old trees. True or not true? If true, how very sad for the garden history of the White House.
The total destruction of the beautiful Rose Garden and the historic East Wing of the White House are the perfect metaphors of what he is doing to our democracy/country.
I stand corrected…He didn’t totally destroy the Rose Garden, just the lawn. But give him time…his wrecking ball is swinging g wildly.
Why don’t we stick to gardening and refrain from trashing the President of the United States in this forum.
Why? Because he is a disgrace to this nation and our history and traditions, that’s why. The demolition of the East Wing is perfectly symbolic of what this shoddy real estate developer is doing to the United States of America and all that it stood for before Jan. 2016.
S M H in disbelief.
S i g h …
Because he is trashing our House and doing it by using his privilege to circumvent the established process for doing so. He is trashing us, so who says we can’t trash him? He is after all, a prez not the king, eh? All that crap about ‘respect the office’ – I’ll do that when the office respects the people.
Absolutely perfect. Agree
Gardens, esp prominent ones, are exactly on topic for this blog. But do continue! We just love being told what to write about by people who’ve never read this blog.
Don’t have to read the blog we know who the fool is in the Whitehouse
He’s pretty easy to trash
Quite right. Thank you, Tom. I wish I hadn’t opened this particular rant. Sorry to our brave reporter Susan H.
Consider reading “All the Presidents’ Gardens” by Martha McDowell. The White House gardens and grounds have been continuously renovated and revamped throughout history. Some results were beautiful, others not so much. Most Presidents and First Ladies have different tastes when it comes to art, architecture, landscape design, etc. and that is reflected in their remodeling projects.
I believe the East Wing was to be incorporated into the ballroom construction. (There is no existing ballroom, nor was there ever.) But when they got into the area that needed to be accessed they found asbestos in the amount that to remediate it would be more expensive than removing the area. Asbestos containment is ridiculously expensive. When a 1/2″ hole was drilled into the flooring of a middle school in Annapolis and asbestos dust was released the clean up took 2 weeks and $25,000.00. Which of course was ridiculous in itself! That was about 25 years ago so you can imagine what the ‘removers’ are charging now when they have us by the short hairs with the overly bearing laws regarding removal. A wet rag would have handled the gym floor clean up and the rag sent to hazardous waste!
At least 3 presidents in the past have wanted to add a ballroom, which will be used for all large gatherings whether dancing is included or not. The other presidents couldn’t find free financing and congress wouldn’t allocate monies for it.
I attended an event in the tents that have been used for large dinners/gatherings when it was raining and I can tell you NO ONE there was happy about the situation. About 1,000 people walked across the grass to get to their transportation and grass quickly became a sea of mud, cold and wet as it was in December when they had hoped to ground would have been frozen. It wasn’t!
I find this fascinating! People are so fascinated by all that is eruopean, the endless state parties and the ballrooms and then invariably will comment we have nothing comparable sadly. People whine over rosebushes that were utilized elsewhere but the Kennedy center that is shabby not a word I guess we like the shabbiness. We want our government to be ecco frindly but want a water sucking lawn, something I might add we are all discouraged from having, Flowers in pots!? Heaven forbid we use what little water we have wisely. This group has given me whiplash. If Trump told people roses were his favorite flower there would be mountains of them on trash heaps tomorrow.
there is a nice selection of golden colored flowers and blooming shrubs that can be planted to carry on the gilded theme so dear to Trump’s heart. At least the White House is white–for now.
Forgive me if I’m being redundant, but it’s rather confusing. I had to look this up to understand: Jackie helped design the famous Rose Garden off the West Wing. The Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, a more subdued landscape, is off the East Wing. That’s the garden that has been destroyed, as you said, Susan.
To be fair (sadly) this is on-trend… Search ‘landscape design’ and you get ‘outdoor living’ full of ‘hardscape’ and hardly a plant to be seen. It’ll be interesting to see where they’ll put any plantings after the football field sized ballroom is completed. (90,000 sq ft is approx 300′ x 300′. If we got our calculations right)
You are right. It’s a small percentage of the public that cares about gardens and even fewer that care about gardens with an environmental purpose. When my town has it’s private gardens tour every summer half the yards I visit are featuring their luxurious hardscape designs over any ‘garden’ I can make out. It’s gross. But that’s what people want.
Interesting back and forth – that there’s a lot of anger in our divided nation is clear, even here. We, however, do gather on gardening’s common ground. So we need to keep talking and ranting, and above all listening as we do. It’s as fundamental as composting, though having a breakdown belong there more than here.
Anyway – thanks for the clarification, Susan. So, the roses are still there on the construction site? Some from the original Kennedy garden, some from the recommendations of experts in Trump I. Is anyone organizing a plant rescue, you folks near D.C.? (I’d adopt one…) Are the roses taped and behind a no-dig barrier, like designated trees on a construction site? I like the overview, but we need that Google Earth ground level view.
As for what come next, well, think there is any way to influence that? Anybody know one of those 2016 invited experts? The current president doesn’t appear to be much of a gardener (as a golfer and course owner, I’ll bet he knows something about turf), but maybe his wife is? I know his daughter, Ivanka, has posted about how she loves gardening. I dunno. Gardening is a mirror of who we are, with all our divisions and disputes, but it’s also a bridge linking us. I hope at least they use SITES or something like that to guide the greenscape, if any remains. The size of that ballroom sounds more like a football stadium.
Cedric, I agree 100% about hardscaping trumping (small T) landscaping. Capability Brown had his “ha has” making things appear bucolic – now we have, what?, “tweet tweets” that make everything look like a video screen.
I don’t think there were roses in the Kennedy Garden, just in the Rose Garden. And they’re fine – there were some additions in 2020. Trump’s second-term change to the Rose Garden – so far – is removing the lawn. Which I’d support if the patio and furnishings that replaced it didn’t look so awful.
So removing the lawn is OK even if it’s replaced with impermeable paving because all lawn is bad? I am surprised to hear you say that.
To clarify, I’m not one to demonize lawn as all bad. However in this spot, where dressed-up or professionally attired groups of people gather, a permeable patio or terrace would be best imho
I love all the changes, as we gardeners know, constant changing is the way of a garden. I’m sure the end result will be beautiful.
Still confused. Maybe I inadvertently made things worse – by “Kennedy garden” (shorthand for Jacqueline Kennedy Garden) I meant the Rose Garden. However, taking a closer look (I don’t live in D.C. and hardly know the White House gardens) – forgive me for stating what you, Susan, and other gardeners understand better than me – but there are TWO gardens. The “Rose Garden” is near the West Wing. It’s unaffected (except for the patio.) That garden was first created at the dawn of the 20th Century as a colonial garden by Teddy Roosevelt’s wife, redesigned for roses during the Kennedy presidency, and redone in 2020 under (First Lady) Melania Trump. That’s where the neo-Mar-a-Lago patio is. That’s the “Rose Garden”. The affected (destroyed?) garden by the now demolished East Wing is a different garden (though also started by Edith Roosevelt at the turn of the previous century). It isn’t a rose garden. Informally known as the ‘First Lady’s garden”, it is the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, named by Lady Bird Johnson. That’s the one that’s gone (I think) due to work on the ballroom. So, the two gardens may have tangled historical roots, but they are completely different and in two different places. Do I get it?
Some good news for me as mostly a veggie gardener (and proud of it) – the White House veggie garden on the south lawn evidently is still going strong. Michelle Obama celebrated it, but many others, including Melania Trump and Jill Biden, also gardened there. Can folks up that way confirm? It does seem well out of the current construction zone.
I live near DC. Pretty sure you are correct about all of that. By the way, though, none of these gardens are open to the public. They are for the private use of the first family and of course invited guests and heads of state, etc. There is a garden tour offered twice per year for the general public, but I think the fall tour was probably canceled. When it’s finished and open, it will be interesting to see if it’s as tragic as so many with TDS predict.
Yes I think you’ve got it!! But you’ve shown me that a map would sure help, so I just updated the post with a map at the very top. It’s hard to find one showing the garden names, so I added arrows to the ones we’re talking about.
About the kitchen garden, I haven’t seen any info about it since 2021 just after the Bidens moved in and Jill sent a basket of produce from the garden to Michelle Obama – nice! So we know the garden survived Trump’s first term.
But I seriously doubt any of those First Ladies actually gardened there. More like “having a garden.” (And no criticism intended.)
I greatly appreciate the new photo and the way you laid out the information, Susan. Thanks! It was a successful rant in any event – it stimulated discussion (some pointed, like rose thorns – all part of the package) and certainly helps us understand the history of those two gardens and what’s happening to them now.
Thank you for the clarifications. I was curious as to whether any of the original plants were left. As someone who lives in the northern Virginia area, I can just say that I question whether anybody is going to want to hang out in that new patio during the summer. You will probably be able to fry an egg on that concrete.
Oh. Teena. Don’t forget about burning your retinas! That’s a Lot of reflected light let alone the sun! Sad to see more green space gone. A lovely place for quiet contemplation for any of the first families to use. Can you imagine Obamas girls playing tea party with their studies and friends! 🙂
In the same way that every garden that gets paved is lost and gone forever, I mourn the partial loss of the People’s House carried out by an ego that knows no boundaries. Gardens teach us to begin again and have faith in the future. But all the same, *(%$)!!!
Susan, thank you for letting us know that Lady Bird Johnson named the east garden for Jacqueline Kennedy. Ladybird was a thoughtful, kind and generous person, and this is just one more example of that. After all, she could’ve named it the Johnson garden!