The South Lawn includes plenty of beautiful trees, some of them dedicated by presidents long ago. The oldest still standing are two southern magnolias next to the South Portico (the White House backdoor), planted in 1830 by President Andrew Jackson in memory of his wife, Rachel. They usually flower in June.
And speaking of flowers, thousands bloom on the grounds every year. In the spring, more than forty thousand grape hyacinths and oxford tulips bloom around the two fountains alone. John Quincy Adams, president from 1825 to 1829, planted the first gardens and wrote in his diary about two acres covered with at least a thousand “forest and fruit-trees, shrubs, hedges, esculent (edible) vegetables, kitchen and medicinal herbs, hot-house plants, flowers, and weeds.”
Today, a twenty-person National Park Service crew takes care of the White House grounds, and it’s a lot of work. Just mowing the lawn takes eight hours in warm weather, and has to be done twice a week. In charge of it all is the superintendent, who has an office on the ground floor of the White House. Most days he gets to work at six a.m.
And while fictional White House pooch Hooligan has Mr. Bryant to watch over him, real White House pets are often looked after by the White House gardeners and groundskeepers.
Of course, the South Lawn isn’t just for pets and plants. Like any backyard, it’s also for fun!
In the 1920s President Herbert Hoover often invited his advisers to have breakfast and play a game of “Hoover Ball” on the lawn for exercise. Many presidents have enjoyed golf, and near the president’s office in the West Wing is a putting green. The first one was installed in 1954, and the squirrels liked it as much as President Dwight Eisenhower did. He blamed the critters on the president before him, Harry Truman, who enjoyed feeding them by hand.
Along with the putting green, there is a swimming pool, tennis courts and horseshoe pitch—all put in by different presidents to suit their favorite pastimes. In 2009, for example, President Barack Obama had the lines on one tennis court repainted so it could also be used for full-court basketball.
Of course it’s not just grown-ups who get to play in the big backyard. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s grandchildren, Sistie and Buzz, had a slide, jungle gym and swing on the east side of the lawn. The Kennedy children had playground sets, as do Sasha and Malia Obama. President Jimmy Carter’s daughter, Amy, had her own treehouse.
Also for children is a special garden installed in 1968 by President Lyndon Johnson and his wife. Tucked away near the tennis courts, it features a goldfish pond, child-size outdoor furniture and an apple tree for climbing. Bronze castings of the footprints and handprints of presidents’ children and grandchildren are embedded in the paving stones of the garden’s path.
The Children’s Garden is one of three on the South Lawn. The other two—the Rose Garden and the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, which is sometimes called the First Ladies Garden—are larger. Where today’s Rose Garden is located, stables and greenhouses once stood. You can see this garden on TV quite a lot because it’s used for news conferences and other events like the president’s annual pardoning of the turkey at Thanksgiving. Visitors on White House tours get to see Mrs. Kennedy’s garden through the windows as they walk along the East Wing colonnade.
The White House is often called “the people’s house,” and presidents say it belongs to all Americans. Still, the president would have a hard time getting any work done if all Americans felt free to drop by anytime. When President Jackson was sworn into office in 1829, he had an open house to celebrate—and twenty thousand guests showed up! They made such a mess that no one knew what to do, until the president ordered orange punch to be served from washtubs on the lawn. When the guests went out to get a drink, the staff closed the doors on them.
To visit the president’s backyard today, you have to make special arrangements or else have an invitation. One tradition that brings a lot of visitors is the annual Easter Egg Roll on the Monday after the holiday. Another tradition was started by President George W. Bush, who once owned a baseball team. Every year, he invited Little League T-ball players for a game on the lawn. When First Lady Michelle Obama oversaw the planting of a kitchen garden in 2009, she invited Washington, D.C., schoolchildren to help her.
If you’d like to see the White House grounds for yourself, visit www.WhiteHouse.gov. There you will find information about garden tours, entering the lottery for tickets to the Easter Egg Roll. Even if you’re not lucky enough to get an invitation to the president’s backyard, you can get a view from E Street in Washington, D.C.
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