Bunny Mellon: Creating Gardens and a Library Legacy to Inspire and Educate I Gardening is a way of life. As long as I remember I have never been without a plant or something growing. Seeds were a wonderment. Bunny Mellon
Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon was a talented garden designer and horticulturist. She was also a lifelong bibliophile who assembled an extraordinary collection of rare books, manuscripts, and works of art. Her passion in both areas profoundly influenced many in the worlds of horticulture and the fine arts. She also thought deeply about both pursuits. Bunny would often say, “The quality of a garden does not depend on size. Gardens are personal reflections of the tastes, hopes, and desires of each garden maker.”1 Bunny Mellon was born in New York City on August 9, 1910, at 777 Madison Avenue (today 45 East Sixty-Sixth Street) in a beautiful apartment building that was built only two years before her birth. A nurse who cared for her as a baby gave her the nickname “Bunny” and she was known by that name for the rest of her life. She was the eldest of the three children of Gerard Barnes Lambert (1886–1967) and Rachel Parkhill Lowe (1889–1978). On her father’s side, her family was prominent in business and she spent her early adolescent years at the family estate, Albemarle, in Princeton, New Jersey. Bunny attended the prestigious Miss Fine’s School (now Princeton Day School) with her brother, Gerard Barnes Lambert Jr. (1912–1947), and younger sister, Lily Lambert (1914–2006). Bunny’s paternal grandfather, Jordan Wheat Lambert (1851–1889), attended Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia, where he studied chemistry and business. He established the successful Lambert Pharmacal Company in Saint Louis, Missouri, and in 1879, with the help of Dr. Joseph Joshua Lawrence (1836–1909), formulated a mouthwash with antiseptic properties called Listerine. The product was named
after Sir Joseph Lister (1827–1912), the discoverer and promulgator of the practice of antiseptic surgery. Jordan left his flourishing company to his sons, Albert Bond Lambert (1875–1946), Jordan Wheat Lambert Jr. (1878–1917), Marion Liscome Jarvis Lambert (1881–1923), Gerard Barnes Lambert, and John David Wooster Lambert (1889–1976). Upon graduation from Princeton University and Columbia University, Bunny’s father Gerard served in the First World War. After his military service, he went to work in the family company and became the driving force behind the advertising agency Lambert and Feasley, which was also located in Saint Louis, Missouri. Gerard promoted Listerine with great success as a cure for halitosis, and the Lambert family made a fortune from his canny style of advertising. Prior to the stock market crash of 1929, Lambert presciently sold most of his shares in the company. Subsequently he became president of the Gillette Safety Razor Company. His contributions included the development of the Gillette Blue Blade razor, which greatly increased the company’s profits. Bunny’s father had many interests outside of his work. He was an erudite collector and amassed a large collection of fine art and books. Bunny described her father’s library at Albemarle: “There were books in Daddy’s library—big, huge books of gardens, of architecture, of archaeology… Everything fascinated me—and there was no one who talked to me about them so they were absorbed and made a great vault in my mind to think about.”2 Gerard was also an accomplished yachtsman who owned and raced famous yachts, including the Atlantic, the Vanitie, and the Yankee.
Bunny Mellon leaning against a haystack, Oak Spring, ca. 1952. Photograph by Thomas Neil Darling, courtesy of Howard Allen Photography, LLC, Middleburg, VA.
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