If nothing else, Donald Trump has a sense of grandeur. He has seen the great palaces of Europe and of Asia, the impressive edifices of the royal courts, the trappings of kings and emperors. He looks proudly at the magnificence of his palace at Mar-a-Lago, and then looks at the White House with disappointment.
He wishes to reimagine the White House, to bring to it the sense of grandeur that he believes is missing.
And so he has begun, with the reimagining of the Rose Garden. Like many of Donald Trump’s ideas, the disappointment is in the lack of details and the actual end result.
It is understood that the grassy lawn of the previous Rose Garden did not lend itself well to press conferences, speeches, ceremonial events and the like. Folding chairs placed on the lawn can have a tendency to be uncomfortable and often somewhat precarious. A lawn that is still wet from rain can be slippery and soft, difficult to walk on for many.
The functionality of the pre-Trump Rose Garden was not great, and I imagine that the appeal of the crab apple trees and other plantings was more sentimental than aesthetically pleasing. Landscaping is a living canvas and it can become old and dated, in need of refreshing, and perhaps this was the case with the Rose Garden.
It is all to easy to criticize Donald and Melania Trump for wanting to change the nature of the Rose Garden, to assert that this was somehow disrespectful to American tradition. It is easy to overlook the fact that the Rose Garden in its previous form as imagined by the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy was in fact a replacement of a Rose Garden that had existed before.
The new Rose Garden with its grand patio of white stone pavers is clearly more functional than the grassy lawn that was previously there. It is hoped that the expanse of white stone will not prove to be too glaringly bright on summer days.
But there is no sense of grandeur in the new Rose Garden. The space looks incomplete and poorly realized. There could have been water features, fountains, raised planters, some vertical elements to take the place of the crab apple trees that were removed during the first Trump administration. Instead, the space feels austere, sterile, and uninviting. There is no sense of place, no warmth, no aesthetic appeal.
In this regard, the new Rose Garden could serve as a perfect metaphor for the President and First Lady – no sense of warmth, only a veneer of beauty that cannot hide the emptiness within.