The controversy surrounding Melania Trump‘s destruction of the White House Rose Garden rages on (and on).
Last week, the ex-FLOTUS broke a month-long silence on Twitter to blast presidential historian Michael Beschloss for criticizing her for destroying the White House Rose Garden.
“.@BeschlossDC has proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy,” she tweeted. “The Rose Garden is graced with a healthy & colorful blossoming of roses.”
.@BeschlossDC has proven his ignorance by showing a picture of the Rose Garden in its infancy. The Rose Garden is graced with a healthy & colorful blossoming of roses. His misleading information is dishonorable & he should never be trusted as a professional historian. https://t.co/LU243SANF1 pic.twitter.com/PuVOSjxx5w
— Office of Melania Trump (@OfficeofMelania) August 8, 2021
It was her first tweet in over a month, and her 35th tweet since leaving Washington, D.C. in January.
How about we take this to the next level?
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Over the weekend, CNN tried to settle the argument when it published a 1,300-word article defending, or at least better explaining, Melania’s garden renovation. The only problem was it couldn’t actually find anyone to go on record to talk about it.
No gardening expert wanted their name attached to the story. So the article had to rely on “a person familiar with the Rose Garden’s renovation”, who offered this piece of generic gardening advice that sounds like it was lifted straight from a Martha Stewart magazine:
“The first year it’s sleeping, the second year it’s creeping, and the third year it’s leaping. Everyone knows that adage,” the person told CNN of the tempered expectation process, which those in the gardening world know to be true.
This person, who like three other people interviewed for this story, requested anonymity in order to discuss Washington’s most controversial plot of greenspace.
“There is no way with the work that was done it could be — ‘ta-da! Here you go!’,” said this person. “The entire garden had to be ripped out to be rebuilt.”
Tommy Christopher over at Mediaite sums it up best when he writes, “If the uproar over the garden illustrated the polarization that surrounds Melania Trump, the failure of a single gardener to defend her by name underscores it.”
Seriously, we’re never going to hear the end of this, are we?
Here’s what others are saying about it…
That’s what happens when you give tacky people keys to the castle.
— imaginethat (@imagine32743903) August 14, 2021
Restore Jackie’s Rose Garden 🌹.
— Bianca says, go get chipped! (@BiancaBick1) August 14, 2021
The roses are there to prevent cyber bullying………… 😳
— Mike Manalo (@m32sdaisy_1502) August 14, 2021
There is nothing beautiful about anything MT does or touches.
— Grandma Cookie (@GrandmaCookie8) August 14, 2021
What a weird crybaby story this is. It takes a fleeting tweet about a rather superficial topic, and while decrying it also greatly amplifies it. Hey, everybody, look at how victimized she is! Pity party for counterfeit Evita!
— UnpopularOpinionAtLowPrices (@OpinionLow) August 14, 2021
Melania famously had the iconic garden ripped out in 2019. It was one of the few projects, along with the tennis pavilion and picking out new fabrics for the Red Room, that she actually accomplished in her four years as First Lady.
The garden, which is often used by presidents to deliver speeches and hold outdoor press briefings, was the site of a “superspreader event” last September when it was used to celebrate Amy Coney Barrett’s SCOTUS nomination.
Three weeks after Melania unveiled her new garden, it had to undergo emergency repairs after the flowers started dying and the grass was destroyed during the Republican National Convention, when hundreds of people trampled all over it.
Graham Gremore is the Features Editor and a Staff Writer at Queerty. Follow him on Twitter @grahamgremore.
Cam
The B.S. attempt to defend Melannia is wrong. One anonymous gardener supposedly said ““The first year it’s sleeping, the second year it’s creeping, and the third year it’s leaping. Everyone knows that adage,” the person told CNN of the tempered expectation process, which those in the gardening world know to be true”
That is only true if you’re planting small own root plants like roses that will be a few inches tall. Yes, they don’t perform until their 3rd year. But in the pictures “defending” herself, Melania showed pictures of roses a few feet tall, which means they planted grafted plants which perform immediately.
She also planted hedges, which look good right away, and tore out crab apple trees and replaced them with nothing.
So even when they find an anonymous person to defend her they have to lie.
Bengali
The hoe using a hoe. Okay, it’s a shovel but in order to insult her, I had to call it a hoe.
MISTERJETT
even if you had used “shovel”, she’s still a hoe.
RickGarcia
A hoe and a shovel in a “garden”.
garmo98
What this Slovenian streetwalker did destroyed decades of history by women whom the country admired. Melania is neither a lady nor first – at anything. Like her butt plug Christmas trees another debacle.
whereshouldistart
First Skank.
KyleMichelSullivan
I don’t care what her excuse is, nor do I appreciate CNN trying to give her cover over it; that woman didn’t just destroy a rose garden, she destroyed history.
Essie
The fact that no professional garden person wanted to attach their name to this mess is not surprising. It could spell disaster for their florist business or, if they are writers, cancel culture would demand they be dropped by their publisher.
The fact is, she did not “destroy” the Rose Garden, it was already a mess. She tried to make it better, with the help of a professional. She should have just left it alone and let Dr. Jill or another future First Lady do it because no matter what she did, Mel would have been criticized. She should have not responded to what Beschloss wrote but she can’t help playing the victim.
I can’t wait to see what happens when the new Air Force One designed by the Dumpster is unveiled. Jackie Kennedy designed the one they have now and there was nothing wrong with that design. Can’t wait to see what the new one looks like. (Unless Biden decides to cancel the new design and keep Jackie’s design.)
Den
Professional garden people are seldom “florists”, and florists quite often know nothing or next to nothing about either horticulture or garden design. Their profession is entirely about handling and arranging cut plant material.
There was no shortage of garden and landscape design writers who criticized the plan when it was first unveiled.
And of course “cancel culture” is primarily a right wing phenomenon, though they love to project it on the left, even as they wage their silly culture wars in which it is a primary weapon.
Den
This whole thing is rather silly. Melania did not design the garden renovation (it was “overseen” by a reputable Long Island landscape architecture office), so it might have been informed by her “personal taste”, or lack thereof, but was not dictated by it.
The two most controversial aspects of it were the addition of hardscape to what was originally entirely lawn, and the removal of the flowering crabs. The crabs were, in maturity, taking sun that the roses need (and crabs are both surface rooters and notorious for suckering, so quite competitive), despite being wonderful trees in bloom. But they should have been replaced by something else to soften the glaring colonnades behind them (like standard roses, climbing roses on trelliage or new smaller trees). The paved paths were ostensibly to provide better access disabled people and women (like Melania) foolish enough to wear stilettoes to a garden event. A good idea, but there are certainly ways to provide hardscape that blends in better with the lawn it surrounds. Also, to my eye, a “rose garden” should highlight the breadth of color and form roses provide, not be limited to just white and pink. But Melania likely felt the limited palette was “classy” rather than a bit boring.
As for the early damage to plants, I would not doubt that Trump’s penchant for substandard contractors was involved (as I recall there were some irrigation issues).
Fahd
It’s not surprising that a newly rich mobster consort did something ill-advised and in bad taste; the sooner we get it behind us, the better. Assigning blame is part of the process, but undoing the damage should take priority. Let us hope the nation can learn from its mistakes.
surfnspy
I loathe the Dumps as much as the next person, but this rose garden obsession is problematic for many reasons. First, of all the horrible things that Trump did, roll back environmental protections, lie about the election, mislead people on Covid, focusing on the rose garden makes it seem like there’s nothing better to talk about.
The claim that no one defends this revision is simply not true. The design was overseen by multiple landscape design firms, an advisory committee and was a project for Melania. She didn’t design it, she simply rubber stamped it.
The rose garden had a few design issues—lack of easy access to chairs when they are set up—previously one had to walk on the grass to access seats set up on the lawn, and the crab apple trees were providing too much shade for the flowers below them. This and other infrastructure regarding irrigation, drainage, etc were all addressed in the revision.
The basic layout and purpose remains the same.
The right loves to place blame in irrational places—blaming Biden for the debacle of Afghanistan is unfolding right now. ) Bush’s war, trumps deal. Somehow this is all Biden’s fault?!)
So let’s focus on real failures by the trump administration and let go of this silly critique over something that is not really a national crisis.
Den
“The right loves to place blame in irrational places—blaming Biden for the debacle of Afghanistan is unfolding right now. ) Bush’s war, trumps deal. Somehow this is all Biden’s fault?!)
“So let’s focus on real failures by the trump administration and let go of this silly critique over something that is not really a national crisis.”
ABSOLUTELY TRUE.
mateo
Be Best, Mel! I really don’t care. Do U? Go back under the rock from which you came, SKANK! Nobody is interested in hearing your garbled English anymore. Just STFU and watch how a real FLOTUS–Jill Biden–does the job that you should have at least attempted to do. But alas, your only talent in life was knowing how to spread your legs, stare at the ceiling for three minutes, and “think of Slovenia”…
cuteguy
Can’t Faux News hire a fake gardening expert like it hires fake journalists to help this hoe out?
HankHarris
she confused gold-digging with garden-digging…
Cam
Snap!
Liquid Silver
““The first year it’s sleeping, the second year it’s creeping, and the third year it’s leaping. Everyone knows that adage…”
That’s not an adage, it’s a garden myth. Anybody with a modicum of talent and skill can get a decent garden moving in a year. I reset mine yearly–annuals, of course. Perennials can take into the second year, or one full year.
I guess, of the “Rose Garden” effort I can say it’s not that…it could be…I suppose it seems…
OK, it’s awful. It looks like any other untalented design I’ve seen spat out by somebody with an associates degree from a so-so community college. I do better with my yearly redesign writ in annual plants.
BoomerMyles
Go back to your lesbian soft core porn photo shoots Melanie.
inbama
Neither plan compares to the grandeur of the 1913 landscape that so perfectly suited the architecture. Who in their right mind would have ever decided to scrap it?
Hdtex
Low rent