Many of America’s former First Ladies supported wellness through seasons of change in American history. Alongside a cadre of skilled landscape designers, hundreds of hardworking gardeners and thousands of dedicated volunteers, they have nurtured the White House grounds and public gardens in our nation’s capital. As they have cared for the gardens, the gardens have cared for Americans in return.
Each of the First Ladies has contributed a touch of her own beauty to our nation’s floral bouquet in the White House garden as well as in public gardens. The vibrant colors of delphiniums, lavender and roses the gardens exhibit give credence to the belief that the United States really is “America the Beautiful.”
While America’s former First Ladies advocate for a wide range of issues, they find common ground in their love for gardens — the beauty they inspire and the healing they promote.
The Bunny Mellon Healing Garden
Melania Trump continues the First Ladies’ legacy of promoting health through nature’s beauty, healing gardens and healthy eating. In 2017, Trump joined the unofficial Former First Ladies Garden Club when she opened the Children’s National medical center’s “Bunny Mellon Healing Garden.” The garden, an outdoor space for young hospital patients, is dedicated to America’s First Ladies who serve as honorary chairs of the garden.
“This garden will be a quiet space for children to benefit from nature’s most important elements: fresh air and beautiful views,” Trump said at the dedication. “Here they can relax and experience peace. It has always been my belief that a nurturing and positive environment is vital to the health and well-being of all children.”
The newest healing garden is named after Rachel “Bunny” Mellon, the late philanthropist and gardening aficionado who helped President John and Jackie Kennedy design the White House Rose Garden. Mellon’s daughter, Eliza, was severely injured in a car accident, and Mellon understood how a healing garden promoted wellness as she spent many moments with Eliza, sitting outside together in her garden.
The White House Rose Garden
Completed in 1962, the Rose Garden’s borders of boxwood hedges, flowering saucer magnolia trees, vibrant tulips and roses all add to its allure. “The White House Rose Garden was truly President Kennedy’s garden,” Mellon once said. “It fulfilled John F. Kennedy’s vision of a garden that would endure and whose atmosphere, with the subtlety of its every changing patterns, would suggest the ever-changing pattern of history itself.” After his death, the White House Rose Garden became a place to remember America’s 35th president.
While the Kennedys only enjoyed the garden for a short period of time, Jackie Kennedy held the memories her family made in it close to her heart. “A few years after President Kennedy’s assassination, Mrs. Kennedy gave Bunny Mellon a handmade scrapbook documenting the Rose Garden’s journey from conception to its completion. Within the scrapbook, Jackie Kennedy shared how much the Rose Garden pleased her husband, saying it was where he spent his happiest hours in the White House,” according to the White House Historical Association.
The Center for Health and Nature
Three of America’s Former First Ladies hail from Texas, a state where beautiful wildflowers overflow in fields of vivid color. Their state’s large expanse filled with red poppies, bluebonnets and orange Indian paintbrushes showed
Lady Bird Johnson, Barbara Bush and Laura Bush that nature’s beauty can promote healing. In her remarks at the Houston Methodist Hospital’s inaugural Center for Health and Nature Symposium, Laura Bush honored Barbara Bush, who died in 2018. “Like many of you, I was inspired by the conservationists and naturalists in my life, including my mother-in-law, who was proud of her cottage garden in Kennebunkport, Maine,” she said.
The Center for Health and Nature’s mission is to drive research to study the impact of nature on health with evidence-based programs that complement the full continuum of health-care prevention. Their initiatives include creating a rooftop healing garden at the Houston Methodist Hospital. Gardens in health-care settings provide sanctuaries for caregivers, patients and their families. This access to nature has been shown to reduce stress and support wellness and healing.
Lady Bird Johnson’s Floral Legacy
“Former First Lady and fellow Texan Lady Bird Johnson had a lifelong love of nature, fueled by childhood memories of her mother walking in the woods barefoot, carrying a bouquet of flowers. After her mother died, when she was just 5, the forests of her east Texas home became her balm,” according to an article in People magazine. According to Jan Jarboe Russell, who wrote “Lady Bird: A Biography of Mrs. Johnson,” “Nature mothered her.” While nature nurtured Lady Bird as a child, it also gave her a purpose when she became First Lady.
With the support of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Lady Bird Johnson passed laws related to the environment, including the Wilderness Act of 1964 and the Highway Beautification Act of 1965. She also established the First Lady’s Committee for a More Beautiful Capital, which was dedicated to planting trees, tulips and daffodils throughout Washington, D.C. She believed that “our peace of mind, our emotions, our spirits — even our souls — our conditioned by what our eyes see,” according to the White House Historical Association.
The White House Kitchen Garden
First Lady Michelle Obama shared her dedication to healthy eating in “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America,” which documents the creation of the largest White House vegetable garden in history. The fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs that sprouted in the White House Kitchen Garden inspired a national conversation about the food we feed our families and the impact it has on the health and well-being of our children.
The White House Victory Garden
Michelle Obama’s garden was of a similar accord to Eleanor Roosevelt’s White House Victory Garden. According to “Gardening for the Common Good,” “Victory gardens first appeared during World War I when President Woodrow Wilson asked Americans to plant vegetable gardens to ward off the threat of food shortages. In 1943, during World War II, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden on the front lawn of the White House.”
FDR’s presidential advisor, Harry Hopkin’s 11-year-old daughter Diana, was its first gardener, hoeing beans, carrots, tomatoes and cabbage. While planted at different periods in history, Michelle Obama and Eleanor Roosevelt produced bountiful gardens that transformed the lives and health of citizens.
The White House Children’s Garden
In 1968, with his achievements in civil rights overshadowed by the heartbreak of the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to run for reelection. With the end of his presidency looming and his family’s time in the White House coming to a close, Lady Bird Johnson created a children’s garden on the south lawn.
The White House Children’s Garden represents a symbol of the connectivity of presidential families. Since it was established, 19 presidential grandchildren have pressed their handprints into the White House Children’s Garden paved pathway. Tucked away in a wooded, park-like area with a goldfish pond, the Children’s Garden was President and Mrs. Johnson’s parting gift to the White House. This secret garden remains a special place where the beauty of nature supports a sense of well-being. As Lady Bird Johnson once said, “Where flowers bloom, there blooms hope.”
The functions of gardens are endless. From promoting healthy eating to relaxing in a quiet outdoor space, gardens foster a sense of well-being. They also express exquisite artistry in every season. From the winter snow-covered White House lawn to the fiery colors of fall foliage framing the Lincoln Memorial, to the lovely summer flora at the U.S. Botanical Gardens — Washington, D.C., is a place of breathtaking beauty. Yet it is the season of spring that heralds a renewal of life and engenders hope.
As the Song of Solomon 2:11-12 says, “… the winter is past; the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.”