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WASHINGTON — President Trump’s promised renovation of the White House Rose Garden will begin in a “couple of weeks,” chief of staff Susie Wiles told The Post Tuesday.
The president has been keen on revamping the executive mansion to be more functional — and to adhere more closely to his personal style.
Trump has already redone the Oval Office, adding gold embellishments from Mar-a-Lago and lining the walls with portraits of presidents — but has also made plans to pave the grass portion of the Rose Garden and add a ballroom.
“He’s not going to pave over the Rose Garden. The Rose Garden will look exactly as it does,” Wiles clarified in a phone interview. “The grass is what will be paved over.”
The vision for adding pavement to the Rose Garden, is to make it easier to host events in the space, as the grass often gets wet and the White House has to set up a platform for speakers to speak from.
Trump has previously said that he doesn’t like when guests get their dress shoes wet by walking around on soaked earth.
“The ballroom is still in the design phase,” Wiles said of the president’s other planned renovation, “but he’s a builder, so I expect it to once, once the preliminary work is done, I expect it to go up pretty quickly.”
Trump has said he ran the $100 million ballroom idea by former President Joe Biden but “never heard back” — but now he wants to move ahead of the renovation to create “more room” for hosting events without having to go under a large tent.
The president also announced last week the impending construction of two 100-foot flag poles on the north and south lawns of the White House — making sure to mention that he will fund the project himself.
“They needed flagpoles for 200 years. It was something I’ve often said, you know, they don’t have a flagpole per se. So we’re putting one right where you saw us, and we’re putting another one on the other side, on top of the mounds. It’s going to be two beautiful poles,” he told reporters outside the White House April 23.
The president contributed to some landscaping work himself earlier in April, grabbing a golden shovel to plant a new sapling that was replacing the nearly 200-year-old Jackson Magnolia tree that was deemed a safety risk.
English (US)