Jackie Kennedy Had a Very Illegal Garden at Her Cape Cod Home, Claims Biographer

Jackie Kennedy — former First Lady, upper class socialite, a woman of distinction and an avid weed grower? One of these accolades is not like the other but all of them are (kind of) true according to a new biography. White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port by Kate Storey recounts tales of the Kennedy family on Cape Cod across generations. One excerpt shared in Town & Country Magazine details the claim that an illegal weed garden almost rocked Jackie’s reputation.

The tale took place after Aristotle Onassis‘s 1975 death, Jackie’s second husband whom she married five years after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. According to Storey, Jackie’s days at Hyannis Port were spent sunbathing, reading manuscripts as part of her editor role at Viking, and hosting friends and lovers while the Kennedy cousins flowed between her home and Ethel Kennedy’s, Robert F. Kennedy’s widow.

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Storey writes that Jackie struck up a friendship with Bunny Mellon, the horticulturalist who designed the White House Rose Garden. It was Bunny who told Jackie what to plant where in the cutting garden behind her Hyannis Port home. Storey writes: “Jackie loved the delicate lilies of the valley, which she had placed on her breakfast tray each morning because she liked to wake up to their sweet scent.”

The garden seemed entirely innocuous until, one afternoon, Jackie’s assistant noticed some of the older Kennedy cousins rummaging through the plants. She, Kathy McKeon, also spotted the teens the following day and, upon further investigation, realized exactly when the older children had uncovered.

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“She ran over to find Jack Dempsey, the police chief who was by now retired but often hanging out in the Secret Service trailer. She brought him over to take a look,” Dempsey confirmed that the weeds in the garden were, in fact, marijuana. The two rushed to tell Jackie.

Storey writes that McKeon took a shortcut back to the house so she could let Jackie know as soon as possible. The book states: “Out of breath, she blurted out, ‘Madam, we just found marijuana growing in the flower patch!’ Jackie stared at McKeon, stunned. ‘Are you kidding me?’ she asked. ‘Oh my God, this can’t get out. How are we going to fix this?'” Dempsey allegedly enlisted the help of the Secret Service who were assigned to Jackie to pull the plants from the garden that afternoon. McKeon claims she didn’t tell any of the other Kennedy mothers.

Storey writes that McKeon, who joined the family shortly after JFK’s death, recounted evenings spent with Jackie in Hyannis Port. “It seemed that those early evening hours, when she would have been unwinding from the day with her husband, were the hardest for Jackie. She wanted to put off being alone,” Storey writes.

The book recalls an oil painting done by Jackie for her first husband that showed Hyannis Port pier covered in fireworks and signs celebrating JFK’s presidential election win in 1960. It was, according to Storey, Jackie’s favorite item in the home. “When Jackie moved from Hyannis Port to the house she had built on Martha’s Vineyard in 1979, she left that painting, along with everything else. She walked out of the house on Irving Avenue, and she didn’t take a thing with her,” Storey writes.

“White House by the Sea: A Century of the Kennedys at Hyannis Port” on Amazon.com

Price: $25.15

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Before you go, click here to see photos of JFK and Jackie O.’s grown-up grandkids.

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