When the White House was Green

“It is necessary to cultivate our garden”

– Voltaire

White House conservatory earliest photo 1857 (photo taken right after construction, the green house had a wood frame which burnt in a fire in 1867)

When the White House was Green

John Adams would be the first president living at the White House after its completion. Believing in being self sustained, he was the first to plow and fertilize a vegetable garden at the white house in 1800. Before the opertunity in the spring to seed his gardens, he would lose the presidency in the 1800 election…

Less then a year into his term as the new President, Thomas Jefferson was already making improvements to the very same garden.

It was Andrew Jackson who decided to really take White House gardening to the next level in 1835 by constructing a orangery, or early style greenhouse. In a line of green thumbed presidents, he grew tropical fruit trees and flowers that couldn’t survive otherwise, including the famous Jackson magnolia…

“INDIAN DELEGATION IN THE WHITE HOUSE CONSERVATORY DURING THE CIVIL WAR with Mary Todd Lincoln.” Photograph taken by Mathew Brady on March 27, 1863. This first group photo of the Southern Plains delegation to Washington in 1863 is well known and shows the Cheyenne and Kiowa delegates including front row, left to right: Lean Bear, War Bonnet, Standing-in-the-Water (all three Cheyennes). Mary Todd Lincoln standing far right, Standing at left: Interpreter William S. Smith and agent Samuel G. Colley. Cheyenne cheif’s War Bonnet and Standing-in-the-Water would be murdered a year later in the Sand Creek Massacre…

Andrew Jackson’s prized orangery would only survive for about 20 years…
In 1857 under President James Buchanan, the orangery was demolished to make room for the Treasury Department wing.

Knowing its importance as an example to the country, President Buchanan decided to have a wood framed Greenhouse built as a replacement for the orangery right where the west wing now sits.

Hand-colored view of President Abraham Lincoln’s secretary John George Nicolay (far right) and three other unidentified men posing in the interior of the White House Conservatory, Washington, D.C., c. 1863. By E. & H. T. Anthony & Company. Animated stereo-view.

The stick built greenhouse built by Buchanan would stand less than a decade. In 1867 a fire burned the wood framed conservatory to the ground…

Lucy Hayes poses with her children in the White House conservatories, c.1879

Immediately President Andrew Johnson approved plans for a improved White House greenhouse. Architect Alfred B. Mullet designed and built a fireproof iron frame and wood sash replacement the same year.

The White House Conservatories 1890

In 1902, Theodore Roosevelt chose to destroyed the conservatories to make way for the new West Wing…

Alice Roosevelt in the White House Conservatory by Frances Benjamin Johnston 1902

In replacement of the conservatories, Roosevelt’s wife Edith insisted there still be a vegetable garden to produce food. The White House ‘colonial’ garden was born.

Vegetables would be grown and consumed at the White House until Woodrow Wilson’s wife Ellen decided to do away with the vegetables. She would choose beauty over function tearing up the food producing greens to plant flowers…

To this day flowers are the plant of choice in what has become known as the White House Rose Garden…