Rachel Lambert Mellon
| Rachel Lambert Mellon | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Rachel Lowe Lambert August 9, 1910 Princeton, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Died | March 17, 2014 (aged 103) Upperville, Virginia, U.S. |
| Residence | Upperville, Virginia, U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Foxcroft School |
| Occupation | Horticulturalist, arts patron |
| Known for | Redesigned White House Rose Garden |
| Spouse(s) |
Stacy Barcroft Lloyd, Jr. (m. 1932; div. 1946) Paul Mellon (m. 1948; d. 1999) |
| Children | 2 |
Rachel Lowe Lambert Lloyd Mellon (August 9, 1910 – March 17, 2014), often known as Bunny Mellon, was an American horticulturalist, gardener, philanthropist, and art collector. She designed and planted a number of significant gardens, including the White House Rose Garden, and assembled one of the largest collections of rare horticultural books. Mellon was the second wife of philanthropist and horse breeder Paul Mellon.
Rachel Lowe Lambert, nicknamed Bunny by her mother, was the eldest child of Gerard Barnes Lambert, president of the Gillette Safety Razor Company and a founder of Warner–Lambert, and his wife, Rachel Parkhill Lambert (née Lowe). Her paternal grandfather, chemist Jordan Lambert, was the inventor of Listerine, which was later marketed by her father.
She had two siblings: Gerard Barnes Lambert, Jr. (1912–1947; married Elsa Cover), who died in a 1947 plane crash, and Lily McCarthy (1914–2006; married twice, to William Wilson Fleming and John Gilman McCarthy, respectively).
Lambert attended Miss Fine’s School, Princeton, New Jersey and the Foxcroft School, Middleburg, Virginia. Her parents divorced in 1933, and both subsequently remarried.
Lambert married Stacy Barcroft Lloyd, Jr. in Philadelphia in 1932. Lloyd served in the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. They divorced in 1948. They had two children: Stacy Barcroft Lloyd III, and Eliza Winn Lloyd. Eliza predeceased her mother.
Lambert and her husband became close friends of the banking heir and art collector Paul Mellon and his first wife, Mary Conover, who died of an asthma attack in 1946. After Bunny divorced Lloyd, she and Paul were married, on May 1, 1948. By this marriage, she became the stepmother of Timothy Mellon and Catherine Conover Mellon (later Mrs. John Warner and now known as Catherine Conover). Together the couple collected and donated more than a thousand works of art, mostly eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European paintings, to the National Gallery of Art and established the Yale Center for British Art. The couple bred and raced thoroughbred horses, including Sea Hero, winner of the 1993 Kentucky Derby.
...
Wikipedia