I'LL BUILD A STAIRWAY TO PARADISE

The landscapes of a privileged life.

Landscape historian Griswold offers a warm portrait of her longtime friend Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon (1910-2014), a noted garden designer and “icon of style.” Born into wealth and luxury, Bunny grew up on curated estates: The gardens of her childhood home, for example, were created by the prestigious Olmsted firm. She married into even greater wealth: Her second husband was Paul Mellon, philanthropist and heir to the Mellon banking fortune. “In the Mellons’ self-sufficient universe,” Griswold observes, “acquiring the best became expected, ingrained, something to be done without remarking on the effort or the money it required.” Their multiple homes were staffed by as many as 350 employees. Although their marriage soon fell apart, Paul assured Bunny that “she would have all the money she wanted.” That money seemed limitless. Dressed by Balenciaga, bejeweled by Jean Schlumberger, Bunny had a wardrobe that cost close to $3 million per year in today’s money. While Paul took a lifelong mistress and Bunny reveled in serial infatuations with “interesting and talented men—almost all gay,” they remained married until Paul’s death in 1999. Griswold follows Bunny’s passions for art, gardens, and interior design, which led to her reputation as a woman of supreme good taste and imagination. Fashioning for herself a “hushed and extremely private domestic universe,” her social world was glamorous: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip came to tea, and Jackie Kennedy became a close friend. Bunny served on Jackie’s White House Fine Arts Committee, redesigned the Rose Garden, and designed the landscaping for the JFK Library and Kennedy gravesite. Alongside achievements, though, were scandals and sorrows that challenged Bunny’s “theatrical mastery” of her life. Acknowledging Bunny’s insularity and emotional limitations, Griswold still admires her. What saved Bunny “from being a complacent, undereducated, rich society woman with time on her hands,” she writes, “was her bottomless curiosity.”

A richly detailed rendering of a world of boundless extravagance.