Rachel Lambert Mellon

Rachel Lambert "Bunny" Mellon (August 9, 1910 – March 17, 2014) was an American horticulturalist, gardener, philanthropist, and art collector.

She designed and planted a number of significant gardens, including the White House Rose Garden, and assembled one of the largest collections of rare horticultural books.

Mellon was the second wife of philanthropist and horse breeder Paul Mellon.

Rachel Lowe Lambert, nicknamed Bunny by her mother, was the eldest child of Gerard Barnes Lambert, president of the Gillette Safety Razor Company and a founder of Warner–Lambert, and his wife, Rachel Parkhill Lowe.

Her paternal grandfather, chemist Jordan Lambert, was the inventor of Listerine, which was later marketed by her father.

She had a brother and a sister: Gerard Barnes Lambert, Jr. (1912–1947; married Elsa Cover), who died in a 1947 plane crash, and Lily McCarthy (1914–2006; married twice, to William Wilson Fleming and John Gilman McCarthy, respectively).

Lambert attended Miss Fine's School (Princeton, New Jersey) and the Foxcroft School (Middleburg, Virginia).

On November 25, 1932, Lambert married Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr..

of Ardmore, Pennsylvania, at Trinity Church, Princeton.

He served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.

Her parents divorced in 1933, and both subsequently remarried.

Lambert and her first husband became close friends of the banking heir and art collector Paul Mellon and his first wife, Mary Conover, who died of an asthma attack in 1946.

They divorced in 1948.

They had two children: Stacy Barcroft Lloyd III, and Eliza Winn Lloyd.

Eliza predeceased her mother.

After Lambert divorced Lloyd, she and Paul Mellon were married on May 1, 1948.

By this marriage, she became the stepmother of Timothy Mellon and Catherine Conover Mellon (later Mrs. John Warner and now known as Catherine Conover).

Together, the couple collected and donated more than a thousand works of art, mostly eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European paintings, to the National Gallery of Art and established the Yale Center for British Art.

A longtime friendship with the Kennedy family was initiated by a 1958 visit to Oak Spring Farms by Jacqueline Kennedy, whom Mellon later advised on fine arts and antiques during the Kennedy White House restoration.

In 1961, President John F. Kennedy asked Mellon to redesign the White House Rose Garden.

Mellon created more open space for public ceremonies and introduced American species of plants, as well as Magnolia soulangeana.

She next began to work on the White House's East Garden, but her work was interrupted by Kennedy's assassination.

After his funeral, for which Mellon arranged flowers, Lady Bird Johnson asked Mellon to resume her work on the White House grounds.

Mellon completed her work on the garden in close collaboration with Irvin Williams who, among other responsibilities, she tasked with finding and introducing magnolia trees to the garden.

Initially blocked from doing so by the National Park Service, Williams secretly removed the trees from the Tidal Basin and transported them to the White House himself.

After Jacqueline Kennedy left the White House, Mellon was asked to design landscapes for Kennedy's home in Martha's Vineyard, the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and River Farm, the headquarters of the American Horticultural Society.

In France, Mellon created a landscape design for the home of Hubert de Givenchy and assisted with a restoration of the potager du Roi in Versailles.

As most of her assets were invested in trusts, it was difficult to estimate Mellon's wealth, but her family and husband's fortune and fixed assets suggest she was exceptionally wealthy.

She maintained homes in Antigua, Nantucket and Oyster Harbors, Cape Cod, two apartments in Paris, and a townhouse in New York City.

These properties were sold in the years preceding her death.

In a 1969 New York Times article with the Mellons, she proclaimed that "nothing should be noticed."

Although this remark was made in reference to garden design, it has frequently been taken to encapsulate her attitude toward personal privacy and lifestyle choices.

Although she had no formal training, Mellon read widely in horticulture and made contributions to several landmark gardens.

Her interests in gardening were first cultivated while watching Olmsted Brothers gardeners tend the formal gardens at "Albemarle", her family's Princeton estate.

Mellon amassed a large collection of horticultural books and was regarded as an authority on American horticulture.

Her work was strongly influenced by French gardeners André Le Nôtre and Jean-Baptiste de La Quintinie.

Mellon designed landscapes for many of the Mellons' properties, including the French-inspired gardens of their estate, Oak Spring Farms.

The couple bred and raced thoroughbred horses, including Sea Hero, winner of the 1993 Kentucky Derby.

Mellon was long known for her discretion and limited public exposure.

She offered only a handful of interviews to journalists in her lifetime.