President Donald Trump has insisted he is hearing “great reviews” for his makeover of the White House Rose Garden, which has seen its famous manicured lawn paved over to make way for a stone patio.
“We’re getting great reviews of the Rose Garden, and we had to do it,” the president told reporters on Sunday as he returned to Washington, D.C.
“When we had a press conference, you’d sink into the mud. It was grass and it was very wet, always wet and damp and wet and if it rained it would take three, four, five days to dry out and we couldn’t use it really for the intended purpose.
“It’s a beautiful white stone and it’s a stone that’s the same color as the White House itself. And because it’s very white, it’s going to reflect the heat and it’s not going to be very hot. Yeah, we’ve got great reviews of the Rose Garden.”
The president’s assessment does not match that of social media users, who complained over the weekend that he had turned a cherished piece of American history into a “parking lot” and a “concrete jungle” that looks “devoid of life.”
The garden was first opened in 1913, was planted up with roses by then-first lady Jackie Kennedy in the early 1960s and has hosted receptions for visiting dignitaries for decades, also serving as a venue for annual ceremonies like the Thanksgiving turkey pardon and occasional policy announcements, most recently Trump’s swiftly-reversed “Liberation Day” tariff unveiling in April.
The redesign leaves its signature rose bushes pushed to the periphery to accommodate a design much closer to the president’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida.
The cost of the “upgrade” has not been released although it is known that the work was paid for by the Trust for the National Mall, a nonpartisan nonprofit that has raised $75m in private funding for D.C. restoration projects since 2007.
The president has enjoyed imposing his idiosyncratic taste on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue since returning to office and last week announced the construction of a new $200m ballroom.
He has already had the Oval Office redecorated, wasting no time in switching the pictures, busts and ornaments around and introducing as much gold as possible.
As CNN noted earlier this year: “There is gold everywhere: new gold vermeil figurines on the mantle and medallions on the fireplace, gold eagles on the side tables, gilded Rococo mirrors on the doors, and, nestled in the pediments above the doorways, diminutive gold cherubs shipped in from Mar-a-Lago.”
Trump also tripled the number of pictures of his predecessors on the walls, adding portraits of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D Roosevelt, Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan, amongst others.
He further reinstated his signature Diet Coke button on the Resolute Desk and a bust of Sir Winston Churchill last seen during his first term.
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