Margaret Truman Read Online Free PDF

machine” and a hand-pushed roller, the White House lawn became a perfect shade of green and so smooth it looked sculpted.
    In 1835, President Jackson supervised the installation of an orangery—a hothouse where plants could be cultivated year-round so that residents of the White House could enjoy fruit and flowers during the winter months.
    Jackson’s orangery went up just in time to save a Malayan palm tree that had been cultivated from seed in the orangery at Mount Vernon by another enthusiastic horticulturist, George Washington. “Old Hickory,” who was an admirer of the first president, took great satisfaction in rescuing the tree after the Mount Vernon orangery burned down. The exotic specimen survived until 1867, when it was destroyed in a second fire, this one in the White House orangery.
    IV
    John Ousley retained his job as White House gardener through the next four administrations. Among other things, he developed an ingenious scheme for cutting the grass at no cost. When it got knee-high, he let a local livery stable owner cut it and feed it to his horses as hay. Then he called in a farmer, who pastured a herd of sheep there for a few days and reduced the grass by another few inches. By then the lawn was ready for Ousley and his roller to flatten it into a smooth green carpet.
    On the east side of the house, Ousley maintained a colorful flower garden. Among his favorite plants were roses, which he trained to climb along a white wooden arbor. Their fragrance undoubtedly contributed not a little to presidential pleasure, especially if you consider the other less lovely odors that swirled in and around the house from the swamps of the Potomac Flats to the south.
    Oddly, the presidents and first ladies of Ousley’s tenure seldom brought cut flowers into the house. The quacks who passed for doctors in that era had convinced the public that fresh flowers would poison the air indoors. It may surprise you to learn (it did me) that until the 1850s most of the flowers in the White House were wax.
    V
    The death of President Zachary Taylor in 1850 brought the White House its next amateur horticulturist of note— handsome silver-haired Millard Fillmore. President Fillmore hired Andrew Jackson Downing, the most famous landscape designer of his day, to relandscape Washington’s public grounds, including the President’s Park, Capitol Hill, and the Mall that stretched between the two.
    Downing boarded a Hudson River steamboat at his home town of Newburgh, New York, with drawings of his final plans for the Mall, the Capitol, and the White House. The ship caught fire and Downing died in the flames. His drawings perished with him. In Washington, the president and his aides were too stunned to do anything but lament.
    In any case, Millard Fillmore participated in one White House beautification project. He presided at the unveiling of the equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson in Lafayette Square, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House. The square is on land that was originally set aside for the President’s Park and it is still considered part of the grounds.
    VI
    By this time, John Ousley’s position as chief gardener was held by John Watt. He persuaded the new president, Franklin Pierce, to let him expand Jackson’s rebuilt orangery into a greenhouse. Four years later, Watt’s greenhouse had to be demolished to make room for a wing of the Treasury building, but not before plans were made for a replacement. It was to occupy the White House’s western terrace and would be connected to the mansion itself to make it easily accessible to presidential families and their guests.
    James Buchanan became the first president to use this pleasant patch of indoor greenery when it was completed in 1857. Boasting lemon and orange trees plus dozens of different plants and flowers, the conservatory was furnished with chairs and benches and was gaslit for evening visits.
    By this time,