All the Presidents' Gardens by Marta McDowell

It was about Beatrix Farrand that I taught my first class at the New York Botanical Garden.

On my first visit to the grounds of Dumbarton Oaks in Georgetown in the 1980s, I was smitten with it and Farrand, its designer, one of the country’s first landscape architects. The reason I study, teach, and write about garden history is because of Beatrix Jones Farrand (1872–1959). Two people convinced me to take on this quest-one dead, one alive. And with more than five-plus centuries, depending on how you count, the players involved in American horticulture and landscape design are legion. Then there are questions of influence that vary across the wide waist of the continent: the Spanish with their patio and courtyard gardens from Florida to California, the tidy colonial gardens of New England, the immense plantations of the antebellum South. What grows happily for friends in Denver sulks, then dies, in my humid New Jersey garden. It seemed a subject broad as a sea of grass, long and muddy as the Mississippi, elusive as a white whale that would, after a mad, obsessed chase, drag me under. When my editor suggested I might write a history of American gardening, I sat at my desk. As one head gardener put it, “What’s great about the job is that our trees, our plants, our shrubs, know nothing about politics.” Read Excerpt Gardeners will enjoy the information on the plants whose favor has come and gone over the years and the gardeners who have been responsible for it all. History buffs will revel in the fascinating tidbits about Lincoln’s goats, Ike's putting green, Jackie's iconic roses, Amy Carter's tree house, and Trump's controversial renovations.

In All the Presidents' Gardens bestselling author Marta McDowell tells the untold history of the White House grounds with historical and contemporary photographs, vintage seeds catalogs, and rare glimpses into Presidential pastimes. Throughout it all, the grounds have remained not only beautiful, but also a powerful reflection of American trends. The 18-acres surrounding the White House have been an unwitting witness to history-kings and queens have dined there, bills and treaties have been signed, and presidents have landed and retreated. A New York Times Bestseller and AHS Book Award winner

All the Presidents' Gardens by Marta McDowell