Throughout both flower gardens, the green patterns are an essential architecture or bone structure rather than an intricate decoration for ornament’s sake. Grey foliage plants, boxwoods of varying textures, make their presence felt, but not insistently, in the flower beds. There are herbs—thyme, marjoram, rosemary, tarragon, basil, and chives—among the flowers. Nothing is on a very grandiose scale.

In each of the two gardens, two rows of five low-growing trees rise from the beds that flank an oblong central lawn. Crab apple trees were chosen for the Rose Garden; topiary hollies, similar to those used at the Governor’s Palace at Williamsburg, for the East Garden.

In the spring the beds of tulips in the Rose Garden are edged with a border of grapehyacinths, like a wide blue ribbon. In summer, heliotrope takes their place as a border for the roses. There are old-fashioned striped roses; rugosa, rambler, moss, and floribunda roses, as well as the white rose with a touch of green called the “John F. Kennedy,” and the rose, a sport of “Peace,” called “Speaker Sam.” In the autumn there are thick-growing chrysanthemums among the late roses, and at the end of the garden, near the South Portico, the scarlet berries of a Washington hawthorn flame in the sun.

After the completion of the Rose Garden, the replanting of the East Garden began. Its eighteen square flower beds are fragrant in spring with jonquils, hyacinths, narcissi, and Virginia bluebells. Here, too, there are grey foliage plants, formal patterns, and herbs among the summer flowers—heliotrope, dark-blue and light-blue petunias, red dianthus (a favorite flower of Mrs. Kennedy), blue Salvia pitcheri and white Salvia farinacea. Later there are single blue asters among the chrysanthemums, including the pretty “Rajah” chrysanthemum, with small dark-red, yellow-centred flowers.

A Japanese Maple tree, on the White House grounds in Washington D.C. It was planted by First Lady Frances Folsom Cleveland, wife of President Grover Cleveland. The yellow flowers and large water fountain on the South Lawn can be seen in the background.Photographed by Horst P. Horst. Vogue, February 1967