Critics Hope To See Melania's Soulless Rose Garden Makeover Buried

One thing critics of first lady Melania Trump would really like to see packed up and carted away is her sterile renovation of the White House Rose Garden .

The makeover reminded at least one Twitter wit of the creepy dead twins from “The Shining”: 

That touch of the macabre became a bit of a hallmark of Trump’s White House style as evident in her 2018 Christmas decorations featuring blood-red Christmas trees. (Vogue described the previous year’s white trees as having “distinctly desolate, post-apocalyptic ice chamber vibes.”) 

Those kinds of themes carried right through to the somber Rose Garden renovations, which involved adding walkways and removing trees and flowers:

“The garden will feel more open and sunnier but perhaps less interesting. It will feel the loss of the crab apple trees, which are full of effervescent blossom in April, decorative fruit in September and a sculptural quality in the winter. They served as a reminder of Washington’s seasonality, and the preciousness of time,” noted a review in The Washington Post about the makeover. “It will also “feel the loss of the crab apple trees , which are full of effervescent blossom in April, decorative fruit in September and a sculptural quality in the winter.” 

The Rose Garden, which was most significantly renovated by Jacqueline Kennedy in 1962, acquired a new reputation last September when it became the site of a COVID superspreader event that honored new Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett:

Many Americans are still pining for the former garden and hoping incoming first lady Jill Biden will restore it to a pre-Trump glory. The two women will not meet before President-elect Joe Biden ’s inauguration because Trump has decided to forgo the tradition of welcoming her replacement.