They Paved Paradise? A Closer Look at Trump's New White House Rose Garden
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 wondering: Why trade greenery for granite?
John F. Kennedy, Jr. (JFK, Jr.) in the Rose Garden, April 26, 1963.
Photo: Courtesy of the JFK Library
But the Rose Garden was never meant to be a static relic. Its defining layout—still largely recognizable six decades later—was tailored not only for beauty, but for utility. 'My grandmother was always open to treating gardens with the idea that you had to pull a tree out when it was too old, or you had to update a design element if it didn't make sense anymore,' says Thomas Lloyd, Mellon's grandson, a trustee of the Oak Spring Garden Foundation and editor of Garden Secrets of Bunny Mellon. 'Mr. Kennedy knew the advent of television was a huge new technology and a component of his success as a politician,' he continues. 'He wanted to have an outdoor area to do press conferences and really utilize that space in a very beautiful way.'
To that end, Mellon—introduced to JFK by Jacqueline Kennedy—transformed what had once been a loosely structured garden first planted in 1913 by Ellen Wilson. She widened the central step leading from the lawn to the Oval Office into a low platform, creating an outdoor pulpit for presidential addresses. Carefully plotted hedges in diamond formation softened the classical lines of the White House. Crabapple trees added seasonal drama. The grassy expanse was left uninterrupted, spacious enough to stage televised diplomacy and stateside pageantry.
'The president proposed to her: make a plan for this garden space where I can have a beautiful place to give a press conference,' Lloyd explains. 'That was her job. It wasn't, 'Hey, make me a beautiful rose garden that looks like your garden at Oak Spring in Upperville.' It was all about JFK's direction.'
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Born in 1967, he grew up in the leafy Main Line suburbs outside Philadelphia, the son of a trial attorney. He later studied social studies at Harvard, where he rowed heavyweight crew and graduated with honors before studying politics and political theory at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Later on, he took a job at a Japanese think tank in Tokyo where he got a front-row seat to the effects of globalization. At the time, he was still considering law school, or getting his PhD in political theory. 'I wasn't one of these Wharton kids who knew I wanted to go to Wall Street from day one,' Cardinale recalled on The Deal. But meeting with investment bankers in Tokyo convinced Cardinale that finance would be a rewarding (and no doubt lucrative) career path. He joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in 1992, the same year he published an article on Japanese anti-American sentiment and rising trade tensions in the academic journal Asian Survey . (His strong interest in Japan is something he shares with Larry Ellison, who has a Japanese art collection and modeled his Woodside, California home after a 16th century Japanese emperor's palace.) Cardinale worked at the bank's Hong Kong and Singapore offices before settling in the New York office in 1997 to work in the telecom, media and technology group as an investment banker. He later joined the bank's principal investment division, where he made his name persuading Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to launch the YES regional sports network in 2001. The project was finalized the day before September 11, and Goldman Sachs ended up backstopping the deal with a $335 million private equity investment after another investor pulled out. Though risky, the deal turned into a huge success, and Goldman made Cardinale a partner in 2004. A few years later in 2008, he persuaded Dallas Cowboys' billionaire owner Jerry Jones to team up with Steinbrenner to create the sports stadium concessions business Legends Hospitality, which investment firm Sixth Street Partners acquired a majority stake of in 2021. Cardinale left Goldman in 2013 and briefly worked at merchant bank BDT, founded by fellow Goldman alum Byron Trott, whom he'd previously done deals with. (BDT later merged with Michael Dell's family office to become BDT & MSD, and the firm has advised outgoing Paramount boss Shari Redstone). Cardinale founded RedBird in 2014 and raised $665 million for an inaugural fund from high-net-worth backers he'd met while at Goldman (their identities have not been disclosed) and an anchor investment from the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, which he also had a preexisting relationship with. RedBird became Skydance's second largest investor in 2020 when it led a $275 million capital raise. 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From Cardinale's perspective, the new Paramount—with its more than 1,200 film titles, distribution rights to another 2,400 films, and roster of television networks emblazoned in the American viewer psyche—is the perfect candidate to receive the RedBird treatment. 'What we do at RedBird is we look for ways of monetizing world-class IP. This is an over 100-year-old business…with really high-quality intellectual property,' he said last year on The Town, Puck founder Matthew Belloni's podcast, after the Skydance-Paramount deal was announced. 'We're not just deal guys looking to do a deal; we're not just private equity guys looking to go buy something.' 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