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    Presidents’ Gardens
    Presidents’ Gardens
    Presidents’ Gardens
    Ebook106 pages49 minutes

    Presidents’ Gardens

    By Linda Holden Hoyt

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    About this ebook

    The White House is the most famous house in the world – yet its 18 acres of perfectly manicured grounds and magnificent gardens, much beloved by the Presidents and their families, are rarely seen by the public. This book is a horticultural celebration of all the Presidents' gardens, beginning with George Washington's beloved Mount Vernon and looking at the development of White House gardens over two centuries. Rare photographs perfectly illustrate highlights from the best of the presidential gardens, including Jackie Kennedy's Rose Garden, the Roosevelt wartime White House greenhouses and Michelle Obama's sustainability-inspired vegetable garden, which now produces food that is served to the First Family. The text is peppered with lively comments and useful tips from gardeners who contributed to White House beautification projects under many different Administrations.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateAug 10, 2013
    ISBN9780747814078
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      Book preview

      Presidents’ Gardens - Linda Holden Hoyt

      AMERICA’S EARLY PRESIDENTS

      GEORGE WASHINGTON , the gallant patriot known in America as the Father of our Country, lived with his family at Mount Vernon, his plantation home situated high above the banks of the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia. Mount Vernon, called the Home Farm, was one of five adjacent working farms inherited from his father.

      Throughout his adult life Washington’s ambitions, strong sense of duty and patriotism took him far from home for extended periods of time. He apprenticed as a surveyor through the Appalachian wilderness, soldiered on the Ohio Valley frontier, led the Continental Army in America’s Revolutionary War and served as the first president of the United States of America. Yet, he was always here, always here, insisted Dean Norton, director of Horticulture at Mount Vernon. Even on the brink of the British attack in the summer of 1776, General Washington’s thoughts turned towards his gardens. He wrote to his estate manager:

      There is no doubt but that the Honey locust if you could procure Seed enough, & that Seed would come up, will make (if sufficiently thick) a very good hedge—so will the Haw, or thorn, and if you cannot do better I wish you to try these—but Cedar or any kind of ever Green, would look better; howr, if one thing will not do, we must try another, as no time ought to be lost in rearing of Hedges, not only for Ornament but use.

      The pleasure gardens of Mount Vernon initially included on the north side near the mansion an Upper Garden filled with fruit trees, vegetables and exotics. Here in this garden are Washington’s cherished greenhouse and his botany garden. Symmetrically to the south he built what he called the Lower Garden and filled it with plots and squares of vegetables for the table, rimmed with fruited espaliers and cordons, and in one corner he located the cistern, a holding tank for watering the garden. Nearby there is an orchard of pear, plum, apple and peach trees and an experimental garden for observation and seed collection. At the axis stood the expanding mansion house created in the neoclassical style, balanced symmetrically in a tidy and efficient English-style working village.

      The gardener’s house was originally used as a slave hospital; it later housed a farm manager and eventually became the home of the head gardener and his family. Washington’s head gardeners were required to be hands-on workers and to put in a full day’s work.

      After the Revolution, a victorious General Washington returned to his own Vine and Fig, his oft-used term of endearment for the shelter, nurture and peace he longed for at his beloved home. With America on a new path of freedom, he marched the same magnificent theme straight into his farm and gardens. He sought horticultural advice from John Bartram of Philadelphia and ordered large shipments of plants from Bartram on several occasions. He became a fan of English garden writer Batty Langley. Langley’s 1738 bestseller, New Principles of Gardening, rejected strict formality in the garden and suggested a softer, more natural approach. Washington busied himself creating everything he read about in Langley. In his introduction Langley wrote:

      George Washington brought his new wife, the widowed Martha Dandridge Custis, and her two children, Patsy and Jacky, to their new home, Mount Vernon, in April 1759.

      for since the pleasure of a garden depends on the variety of its parts, ’tis therefore that we should well consider of their dispositions, so as to have a continued series of harmonious objects, that will present new and delightful scenes to our view at every step we take, which regular gardens are incapable of doing…

      He installed a deer park to the east on the slope along the river’s edge, built ha-ha walls (a hidden, low retaining wall aside a trench) to contain his livestock and deer, filled pleasure gardens with exotics for amusement, planted shrubbery along a serpentine path leading to the house entrance with a supply of trees to diversify the scene, and cleared an unobstructed open view of the forest across the west lawn. As Dean Norton explained:

      A garden nursery sited on the southern slope was used for experiments in

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