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President Trump has replaced the grass in the iconic White House Rose Garden with stone. It's a nearly $2 million project and just the latest of many modifications Trump is making to the White House. NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith reports.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Since returning to the White House in January, President Trump has been on a mission, a mission to renovate. And that includes the Rose Garden. By Trump's telling, getting rid of the grass was a necessity because it got too soggy in the rain. Here he was in an interview with The Spectator magazine in February.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We had the press here yesterday. You see the women? They're going crazy. The grass was wet. Their heels are going right through the grass like 4 inches deep.
KEITH: Wearers of stilettos need not worry about sinking anymore. The grass has been replaced with gleaming white stone. New drainage systems are covered with white grates with a stars-and-stripes motif.
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TRUMP: And it's a beautiful white stone. And it's a stone that's the same color as the White House itself. And because it's very white, it's going to reflect the heat. It's not going to be very hot, like if you had a dark stone. So, yeah, we've gotten great reviews on the Rose Garden.
KEITH: The Rose Garden, with the large lawn in the center edged by flower beds, dates back to the Kennedy administration.
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JOHN F KENNEDY: The garden is filled with some of your old friends from the Congress.
KEITH: At this 1963 event, President John F. Kennedy gave comedian Bob Hope a congressional medal. Kennedy is the one who made it less of a garden and more of an event space. Stewart McLaurin is president of the White House Historical Association.
STEWART MCLAURIN: President Kennedy wanted an outdoor room. He wanted a space where you could have outdoor meetings, receptions, events.
KEITH: The garden remained largely unchanged until the first Trump term, when first lady Melania Trump led an effort to restore it. She added drainage, hedges and 200 new rose bushes. Trump recently boasted about the blooms when introducing his wife at an event.
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TRUMP: You know, she took a lot of heat. She did it. It was so gorgeous. And they couldn't, these people couldn't do that if they tried. And those flowers were blooming. I said, how the hell? Two weeks ago, this was, like, beautiful green, but it was - and now it just happened so quickly. But you did some job.
KEITH: Those flowers aren't going anywhere. Only the grass was removed. The $1.9 million price tag is being covered by private donations to the Trust for the National Mall, which also paid for the earlier overhaul. And while the first lady was a driving force last time, this project is all President Trump.
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LEE GREENWOOD: (Singing) Defend her still today...
KEITH: Earlier this week, music blasted from the White House as Trump tested out a new speaker system for the deck. Trump can play DJ from his iPad, just like he does at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort. The Rose Garden also has patio tables now with yellow and white striped umbrellas, a perfect match to the space at Mar-a-Lago known as The Beach Club. McLaurin acknowledges this change may be jarring. But he says many changes at the White House that were controversial at the time have become essential parts of the people's house. The West Wing, the Colonnade, the North and South Porticos, all of those were add-ons.
MCLAURIN: It's not frozen in time. It evolves, and it changes. And different presidents and first ladies have different ideas.
KEITH: And Trump has had many different ideas. There are plans to add a ballroom, and the Oval Office is now thoroughly gilded.
Tamara Keith, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF JON BRION'S "ROSE GARDEN") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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