Margaret Truman Read Online Free PDF Page B

fears of being poisoned by having flowers indoors were beginning to wane. The fears all but vanished after Harriet Lane, James Buchanan’s niece and official hostess, discovered that vases full of fresh flowers were all the rage in England. She immediately introduced them at the White House, with the conservatory providing a steady supply.
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    Ulysses S. Grant made two notable additions to the Executive Mansion’s grounds. He had a pool installed on the south lawn with a water spray powered by steam, and, in a symbolic gesture signaling a long Republican reign, he had the statue of Thomas Jefferson that President James K. Polk had installed on the north lawn moved to the Statuary Hall at the Capitol. It was replaced by a magnificent circular flower bed with a pool emitting a jet of water at its center.
    With the arrival of Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876, the White House had a first couple who were seriously interested in landscaping. One of the president’s main concerns was the land to the south of the mansion. In the early days, this was a vast meadow. One section of it was fenced off to create the south lawn, but a large swath of land remained.
    Andrew Jackson Downing had hoped to plant trees and grass and turn the area into a large circular “parade” where public celebrations and military reviews could be held. Hayes, drawing on Downing’s plan, decided to create a seventeen-acre park called the Ellipse, which became a popular spot for Sunday and holiday outings. Separated from the White House by a curving road, the Ellipse still provides a splendid vista from the South Portico with unobstructed views of the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.
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    The conservatory continued to be popular during the Cleveland and Harrison administrations. It was still a ready source of floral arrangements for every occasion. The orchids that were a favorite during Grover Cleveland’s administration were eclipsed by roses during William McKinley’s presidency. His wife, Ida, adored them. Her husband was equally fond of red carnations and started a national craze for that flower. He considered them his good-luck charm and never went anywhere without one in his buttonhole.
    By 1901, when the Roosevelts moved into the White House, the conservatory had spawned so many annexes that the mansion’s west terrace was a veritable village of glass houses, each in a different size, shape, and style. When architect Charles McKim was called in to renovate the White House a year later, the village’s days became numbered.
    McKim thought they detracted from the White House’s formal beauty and would happily have smashed them all into shards, but First Lady Edith Roosevelt was reluctant to see them go. She finally relented, but only on condition that a few of the most attractive greenhouses be moved elsewhere and the most exotic plants be used as the nucleus of a botanical garden for the city of Washington.
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    Edith Roosevelt called on former White House gardener Henry Pfister to help her design a colonial garden on the west side of the White House where the Rose House had stood. She eventually put in a similar garden on the east side and proudly displayed them both at spring garden parties.
    Woodrow Wilson’s wife, Ellen Axson Wilson, was another first lady with a passion for plants and a good eye for garden design. Edith Roosevelt’s west wing colonial garden was just below Ellen Wilson’s bedroom window. As she gazed down on it on Inauguration Day in 1913, an alternative plan entered her mind. She told her daughters it would be “our rose garden with a high hedge around it.” A subsequent study of the garden on the east side of the White House marked that one for a face-lift, too.
    After consulting with professional landscape designers, Mrs. Wilson decided not only to change Edith Roosevelt’s colonial garden into a Rose Garden but to add a tree-lined walkway for the