I love the stories of famous gardeners\u2014past and present–and read as many of them as I can.\u00a0 When I noticed that veteran pop biographer Meryl Gordon had written a biography of Bunny Mellon, I had to get my hands on it.<\/p>\n
Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend<\/em> is about a woman known in her lifetime for incredible wealth, peerless taste and gardening acumen.\u00a0 I knew that she had designed the White House Rose Garden during the Kennedy era and had a vague idea about her gardening library, but that was all.\u00a0 As the 516-page biography illustrates, there was much, much more.<\/p>\n Bunny\u2019s birth name was Rachel Lambert.\u00a0 She was the daughter of Gerard Lambert, a merchandising\/PR genius who made millions by convincing us all that bad breath was a major societal problem for which Listerine was the only cure.\u00a0 By doing that, Lambert took his small family pharmaceutical company and made it a business powerhouse that became the Warner-Lambert Company.<\/p>\n Gerard Warner and Listerine provided the Lambert family with great wealth and gave his younger daughter an enviable start in life.\u00a0 The nickname \u201cBunny\u201d came early on and stuck with Rachel Lambert through childhood, two marriages and a very long life.<\/p>\n Bunny also developed an early passion for gardening and nature, thanks largely to her grandfather, who filled a nurturing role that did not seem to interest anyone else in Bunny\u2019s life.\u00a0 She began gardening early, at the same time that an artistic bent compelled her to sketch things that she saw and, perhaps just as important, things that she dreamed of.\u00a0 She continued the sketching habit throughout her life.<\/p>\n Bunny\u2019s first marriage produced two children, but was interrupted by World War II.\u00a0 The separation and anxiety caused by war, added to suspected infidelity, contributed to the subsequent divorce.\u00a0 Bunny then married Paul Mellon, a widower who was heir to a banking fortune and, for a time, the fifth richest individual in America.\u00a0 The marriage to Mellon made many things possible for Bunny, but also brought her a large measure of grief.\u00a0 Through all of that, gardening was her salvation.<\/p>\n The Mellons were jet setters from the beginning of their marriage and eventually had homes in Upperville, Virginia, New York, Paris, Cape Cod and Antigua.\u00a0 Bunny decorated all of them and made substantial gardens at each one.\u00a0 The gardens at the Mellons\u2019 home base in Upperville were widely considered some of the most perfectly designed and exquisitely executed in the United States, if not the world.\u00a0 Bunny, a self-taught gardener and garden designer, was responsible for all of them\u00a0 Maintenance was largely handled by a very large, well-trained staff, but when Bunny was in residence at any of her homes, she would put on her designer gardening clothes and go out with her clippers in hand. \u00a0She reportedly had a strong grip until she was well over 90 because of that perpetual pruning.<\/p>\n During the nineteen fifties, the socially prominent Mellons met another socially prominent pair, the John F. Kennedys.\u00a0 Bunny and Jacqueline Kennedy became close friends and the couples socialized, even though Paul Mellon was a staunch Republican.\u00a0 The relationship, and Bunny\u2019s reputation as d\u00e9cor and garden style-setter, led President Kennedy to ask her to redesign an outdoor space on the White House grounds into a rose garden that would be both useful for public events and beautiful.\u00a0 After first turning down the assignment, Bunny agreed, and the Rose Garden was created.\u00a0 To the end of her life, Bunny considered this her crowning achievement.<\/p>\n Though she never accepted money for garden designs, she went on to work on other significant landscapes.\u00a0 When tragedy struck, she also organized and arranged the flowers for John F. Kennedy\u2019s and Robert Kennedy\u2019s funerals.<\/p>\n Bunny Mellon was all about flowers\u2014arranged throughout her living spaces and furnished lavishly in her landscapes.\u00a0 Despite the artifice necessary to produce those wonderful floral and horticultural effects, she aspired to the \u201cnatural\u201d look.\u00a0 Her mantra, often repeated during her lifetime, was \u201cnothing should be noticed.\u201d<\/p>\n As every serious gardener knows, it takes an awful lot of work to make things look simple.<\/p>\n Throughout her life, Bunny did what we now call \u201cprofessional development\u201d, reading everything she could get her hands on about horticulture, nature and plants.\u00a0 Her wealth made it possible to amass an incredible collection of garden literature, from which she created a horticultural library at her Upperville home.\u00a0 Under the terms of her will, the library, now professionally cataloged, housed and staffed, became an endowed resource for garden researchers.<\/p>\n Bunny Mellon died at the grand age of 105 in 2007, but not before she made some unwanted headlines.\u00a0 In old age, she believed that presidential candidate John Edwards might be the next John F. Kennedy.\u00a0 After much personal attention from Edwards, she was persuaded to contribute millions to his campaign.\u00a0 Much of the money was used to support Edwards\u2019 mistress, a fact that was unknown to the aged widow.<\/p>\n The Edwards imbroglio was a sad coda to a life that was full of peaks and valleys, beauty and purpose.\u00a0 Bunny Mellon had many flaws, but I find her inspiring because she never stopped looking for inspiration\u2014in flowe<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I love the stories of famous gardeners\u2014past and present–and read as many of them as I can.\u00a0 When I noticed that veteran pop biographer Meryl Gordon had written a biography of Bunny Mellon, I had to get my hands on it. Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend is about a woman known … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1917,863,1922,1919,1918,1921,1920],"class_list":["post-2479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-bunny-mellon-rachel-lambert-mellon","tag-garden-design","tag-garden-libraries","tag-jacqueline-kennedy","tag-john-f-kennedy","tag-meryl-gordon","tag-white-house-rose-garden"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2479"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2480,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2479\/revisions\/2480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}