What garden did Melania remove from the white house
Executive summary
Melania Trump oversaw a major redesign of the White House Rose Garden, first unveiled in August 2020, which included removing and replacing many plantings and changing hardscape elements; social-media claims that she “dug up” roses planted by every first lady since 1913 are false according to multiple fact checks and landscape records (see Reuters, Snopes) [1] [2]. Subsequent reporting and photographs in 2025 show the Rose Garden’s lawn was later replaced with a concrete or patio surface during renovations under President Trump’s return, with only a small number of original rose bushes reported remaining during the 2025 work (People) [3] [4].
1. What garden was changed — the Rose Garden, not some obscure plot
The high-profile garden associated with Melania Trump’s work at the White House is the Rose Garden adjacent to the West Wing; she led a redesign unveiled in August 2020 that altered plantings, paths and borders and was the locus of her public events, including her 2020 RNC address [1] [2].
2. What did Melania actually do — redesigned and replaced, not preserved intact
Melania’s 2020 project removed existing rose bushes and other plantings and introduced new hardscape and plant schemes as part of what the White House described as a “restoration” to improve drainage and guest use [3] [2]. Garden historians and the White House landscape report show plantings have been changed repeatedly over decades, and many original trees and roses from earlier administrations did not survive into 2020, so the 2020 work was another phase in a long sequence of updates [1] [2].
3. The viral claim vs. documentary evidence — social media exaggerated the loss
Viral posts stated Melania “dug up” roses planted by every first lady since 1913. Reuters and Snopes checked historical landscape records and experts and concluded that claim is false: earlier plantings had been routinely replaced over many years and the specific historic trees often cited (for example, the 1962 Kennedy crabapples) were not the same living specimens removed in 2020 [1] [2].
4. What happened afterward — further changes to the Rose Garden in 2025
Reporting in 2025 documents additional, more extensive work: photographs and reporting show the former lawn area of the Rose Garden replaced by a large concrete slab or patio-style surface, with only about a dozen original rose bushes reported as remaining and hundreds of new roses being planted during the 2025 project [3] [4]. Coverage also frames the 2025 changes as part of a broader White House remodeling program under President Trump [5].
5. Differing narratives and implicit agendas in coverage
Supporters framed the 2020 redesign and later 2025 hardscape change as functional improvements to drainage, sunlight and guest experience, citing White House statements calling it a “restoration” [3]. Critics and social-media posts framed the work as destructive of history and symbolic of a lack of stewardship; fact-checkers found those dramatic historical-loss claims misleading because they ignored decades of prior replanting [1] [2]. News outlets in 2025 emphasizing a “remodeling spree” highlighted political context and scale of changes beyond the garden [5].
6. What the records actually say — the long arc of the Rose Garden’s plantings
Landscape records assembled by the Committee for the Preservation of the White House document repeated changes across administrations; roses and trees do not reliably survive for a century in a formal garden, and plant lists show many varieties have been cycled through since the garden’s 1913 and 1962 designs, undercutting claims that a single renovation “removed” a continuous century-old planting [1] [2].
7. Where reporting is limited — what sources do not say
Available sources do not mention a complete inventory of every rose removed in 2020 or 2025 tied to each first lady’s specific plantings; the fact-checks and landscape reports say such continuous survival is implausible, not that no historically significant specimens were ever replaced [1] [2]. Detailed greenhouse-forensic inventories of individual root stocks were not presented in the cited reporting [1] [2].
Bottom line: Melania Trump led a visible redesign of the White House Rose Garden in 2020 that removed and replaced many plantings; fact-checkers say viral claims that she uprooted roses planted by every first lady since 1913 are false because gardens have been altered repeatedly over decades [1] [2]. Later renovations in 2025 converted the Rose Garden lawn into a concrete/patio surface and involved further replanting, photo-documented and reported by outlets including People and KVPR/NPR [3] [5].