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Figures of good taste often become synonymous with the objects they acquire – couture, art, decor – and the homes in which they display these pieces can seem like museums. Sometimes they even become one. As a result, the space around their house – the gardens – becomes a refuge. And while the lunching and fundraising that these stylish society types take part in is well documented, their gardens are largely kept private; they are places where they can ditch the fussy duds and get their hands dirty.
Thanks to author Martha McDowell's spring release, All the Presidents' Gardens, a whole new generation of green thumbs is learning about one of the more influential examples of a prominent persona with a secret (and glorious) outdoor space, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. Along with other like-minded society gardeners, past and present,
Mellon proved via the landscapes she created at the White House and in her own backyard that a garden can truly be one's greatest escape.
The wife of Paul Mellon, co-heir to Mellon Bank, one of the more substantial banking fortunes in the U.S., Bunny was also a friend of President John. F. Kennedy, and became a sort of aesthetic advisor to his wife, Jacqueline. Many believed that it was Mrs. Kennedy who called upon Mellon to redesign the White House's Rose Garden in 1962, when in actual fact it was President Kennedy who, according to McDowell, tapped her for a redesign after seeing the grand gardens of Europe on a trip to meet Nikita Khrushchev, the former Premier of the Soviet Union.
Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, Taken from All the Presidents' Gardens © Copyright 2016 by Marta McDowell. All rights reserved. Published by Timber Press, Portland, OR. Used by permission of the publisher
"John Kennedy thought that the gardens at the White House were really shabby," McDowell says over the phone from Washington on the eve of the launch of her book. "Bunny was a personal friend of theirs and she was already known as a garden designer and, defiantly, a horticulturist. She loved the plants." It was a book on President Thomas Jefferson's gardens given to President Kennedy by Mellon that drove the inspiration for the revamped outdoor space at the White House.
A key discussion between Mellon and Kennedy was about the placement of the steps that would become a focal point for official ceremonies, "a space where he could stand with the people who were being honoured," McDowell says. While researching her book, McDowell discovered a passage from a scrapbook that was put together by Mrs. Kennedy for Mellon
that states the President was so proud of the steps, he wanted to lead everyone up them.
Mellon's own gardens on her Virginia estate leaned toward the style of the French, with defined spaces, prim hedges and marvelous courtyards. It was austere at times, but always appropriate. "It's all in the details," McDowell says of Mellon's approach to everything she touched. "I think that really sums up her design philosophy." She was dressed by Balenciaga, a designer who also loved flowers and expressed it during the 1950s with pieces cut from distorted blossom prints. It was after Balenciaga's sudden retirement in 1968 that Mellon switched her fashion allegiance to Givenchy, who dressed her for the rest of her life. Somewhat decadently, he is said to have created not only her gardening clothes in his couture ateliers in Paris, but also the uniforms for her army of staff.
Like Mellon, Barbara "Babe" Cushing Paley, the wife of CBS founder William Paley, is considered one of the most stylish women in history and had her own secret garden. She called on preeminent garden designer Russell Page (the mastermind behind the garden at the Frick Collection museum in New York) to help create an oasis of epic proportions at Kiluna Farm, the Paley's 80-acre Long Island weekend estate. For Vogue's December 1964 issue, Paley was photographed by Horst P. Horst near the black ponds sans the social armour for which she was known. She looked as much in her element on the immaculate lawn in cropped pants, flat shoes, a straw hat and her shirt sleeves casually rolled past the elbows, as she did sporting a ball gown in the grandest salon on Park Avenue.
In Canada, one of the greatest lovers of gardens of her time was Adelaide McLaughlin. Born in the late 1800s, she was the wife of General Motors co-founder R.S. McLaughlin. An active socialite of her époque, McLaughlin oversaw all happenings on the family's Oshawa, Ont., estate. Its lawns and greenhouses were created alongside top landscape architects of the day including Harries and Hall in the 1910s and, in the 1930s, architect John Lyle. To this day, the McLaughlin garden attracts visitors, and is one of many sites across Canada where the public can now view great green spaces that were once private.
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Today's society-set gardeners continue to use their outdoor spaces as an essential escape. "I squeeze something in every spot, it's not terribly planned," says Harriet "Sis" Bunting Weld, a real-estate agent and regular on Toronto's social scene who takes a less formal approach to the outdoor space at her weekend home in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Like Mellon and Paley, Weld's garden reflects her sense of fashion. "One half of the garden is a croquet lawn. It's perfectly straight, so that's my daytime," she says. "All the rest of it – and around the pool – is all flowers. In the evening I wear more colour, so my garden is very colourful."
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Though she has some help now, she's quick to note her involvement goes deeper than calling in a professional: "I used to sit on the tractor and mow the lawn myself," she says. If that's not proof that even the grandest dames of society like to wind down by getting their hands dirty, what is?