Linda Jane Holden - Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon

Garden Secrets
of Bunny Mellon

Linda Jane Holden, Thomas Lloyd, and Bryan Huffman

Foreword by P. Allen Smith

Illustration by Bunny Mellon, Thomas Lloyd, Gerard B. LambertFoundation.

Contents

Illustration by Bunny Mellon, Thomas Lloyd, Gerard B. LambertFoundation.

P. Allen Smith

C reating a garden is a personalexpression. One can tell much about the deeper makeup of a person by the gardensthey create. Bunny Mellon was an extraordinary person in many ways. A person ofgreat style, taste, all set within a full life of privilege, but with a love of thegarden that grounded and shaped her throughout her life. I think the garden has away of doing just that, doesnt it? Bunny learned early on that for those interestedin gardens, nature would always meet you at least halfway. And, on that journey muchabout lifeand oneselfcan be discerned.

The collaboration between Linda Jane Holden, Bryan Huffman and ThomasLloyd in Garden Secrets of BunnyMellon is an important one, offering rare insights and lessons from thereserved Mellon. Although deeply private, Mellon was known as a great design talentand one of the 20th centurys most celebrated style icons. Indeed, Mrs. Mellon andMrs. Mellons gardens continue to inspire today. Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon offersus direct access to Mrs. Mellons gardening passion, her process and herpredilections vis--vis careful curation of her personal writings and photographs.This assembly has been attentively orchestrated by three personalities intimatelyfamiliar with her habits and design formulations. Each collaborator knew Bunny andher strong affection for garden design, each with a unique perspective to share.

Linda met Mrs. Mellon herself at Oak Spring, the Mellon family farm inUpperville, VA (a property with gardens I have long admired), when she went there totalk about gardening at the White House. What a conversation that must have been;and what incredible scholarship Linda was gifted, with direct guidance from Mrs.Mellon from her Oak Spring librarythe very texts that Mrs. Mellon called upon torefine her own aesthetic and design technique.

Family and friends were a wellspring of warmth and joy for Mrs. Mellon,notably with her grandson Thomas Lloyd and, later in her life, with devoted personalfriend and designer Bryan Huffman. From these gentlemen, we benefit from theperspective of kinship and kinship extended. Mr. Lloyd graciously navigated theMellons private collection and provided (much never previously made public) detailsof Bunnys private life, as well as his own loving recollections of Mrs. Mellonswork on family properties.

Kissing Cousin is the affectionate nickname Bunny had for Bryan.Southerners know this as a moniker reserved for the warmest of friends with whomsecrets and thoughts are shared. As a friend of Bryan myself, I understand why heand Bunny became quick companions. I first met Bryan Huffman in his native NorthCarolina during a private party hosted by philanthropist and preservationist TomGray. Toms notoriously well-preserved Philip Hoehns (now Hanes) home in Clemmonswas the perfect background for a collection of design experts descending on historicSalem for the symposium of Early Southern Decorative Arts in 2018, of which I wasthe keynote speaker. Bryan shared with me then his love of the garden, design, andspirit of generosity. His close friendship with Bunny near the end of her life wasfilled with daily talks about design, projects, art, politics, gardens, and travel.Through these exchanges, Bryan became a steward of Bunnys mature and reflectivedesign values, as well as her most memorable and personally rewarding designexperiences. As Bryan testified to me, It doesnt matter if one is in Virginia,Nantucket, Antigua or ParisBunnys style was Bunnys, her style is alwaysidentifiable and it is her own.

As an American whose own design ethos developed in Europe, I have a greatadmiration for Bunnys grounded approach to garden design and love of horticulture.And I also identify with her joy for experimentation and expression that wereexercised at her many properties, just as I have at my Arkansas home, Moss MountainFarm. She liberally borrowed from both the jardin la franaise and jardin langlais schools and rendered product with a distinct American accent.

During my formal education in England as a young man, I befriendedsimilarly strong female tastemakers who contributed significantly to thelandscapeDebo Duchess of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Nancy Lancaster at LittleHaseley, and Viscountess Ashbrook at Arley, amongst others. Women such as Bunny fromthis postwar era were stylish, yet pragmatic. Imbued with a Jeffersonian spirit of alove of beauty, nature and functionality, Bunny crafted gardens that worked withnature, not against it. Meadow grasses and wildflowers allowed to go ungroomed intheir natural state juxtaposed with more formal elements celebrated the art of thegardenand always with a bow to Nature herself.

Linda, Thomas and Bryan are to be applauded for their tireless workdistilling Bunnys personal views and gardening techniques. Collecting theseinsights preserves skilled practical knowledge and cultural information of animportant era in American gardening for everyone to access for generations to come.

The best gardeners are those with a long history in the garden and soilon their hands. Bunny was certainly both.

It was June 2010, and I hadresumed previous talks about gardens with the White House gardener, Irvin Williams,whom I knew when I worked at the White House and who had recently retired. We weredelving into the history of the Rose Garden. I mailed a letter to the Oak SpringGarden librarian requesting permission to view Mrs. Mellons Rose Garden archivesand he had responded by saying that Mrs. Mellon wanted to see me to discussgardening at the White House when I came to Oak Spring, the Mellon family farm inUpperville, Virginia.

On the day of the visit, Bunny Mellon and I sat down together at a roundtable in her garden library in front of an immense and equally sunny Rothko paintingthat seemed to light up the space all around her. Straightaway she asked, Linda,you worked in the White House. Which president did you work for? Knowing of herfriendship with the Kennedys, I suspected my honest reply would bring a hastyconclusion to our conversation and I would soon be on my way. But after answeringthat I had worked in the Reagan White House, I was surprised to hear her proclaim,Oh! Ronnie was my second favorite president and Jack was my first.

In the White House I worked with the Assistant to the President forAdministration, who had taken a keen interest in the gardens and grounds and wantedeverything to be perfect. Our suite of offices was located on the ground floor ofthe West Wing, across the hall from the photographers office, next door to thepresidents barber shop and down the hall and around the corner from the SituationRoom. This is where I met Mr. Williams, who had come to work at the White House in1961 to help Mrs. Mellon redesign the Rose Garden for President Kennedy. Graduallyover those busy years of the Reagan Administration, Mr. Williams began telling methe story of the White House gardens and I soon realized that they, in actuality,were the gardens of Mrs. Paul Mellon, as Mr. Williams called her. He explained thatMrs. Mellon began her garden designs with what she called the bones of the garden.In the Rose Garden she anchored the four corners of the plot with