In the spring of 1963, toddler John F. Kennedy Jr. was photographed in a powder-blue suit wandering the freshly mulched paths of the White House Rose Garden. Dwarfed by clipped hedges and tulips flashing red and yellow, he stood just beyond a pristine green lawn—its first spring since the garden’s sweeping redesign the year prior by Rachel “Bunny” Mellon , the patrician horticulturist charged with bringing order and poetry to the presidential grounds.

Commissioned by President Kennedy and guided by First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Mellon’s garden became a living emblem of the Camelot era, as fleeting as it was idyllic. Which is why, decades later, newly released images of that same lawn—now paved over with pale stone by President Trump—have left White House nostalgists and gardeners alike

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