In 1806 the Philadelphia seedsman and immigrant from Ireland Bernard M’Mahon (1775-1816) published his book American Gardener’s Calendar.  He borrowed rather extensively from the work of English garden writers.

In an article called “The Beginnings of  the Landscape Tradition in America”, the writer David Chase discussed Bernard M’Mahon.

Chase wrote: “The first extensive practical description of the English landscape style published in America was a chapter in the American Gardener’s Calendar.”

What’s amazing to me is that M’Mahon simply treated the topic of ‘landscape design’. He does not call it English garden design for Americans.

His assumption was that the only design for the landscape for an American gardener had to be English style.

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Do you sometimes feel like your garden is too big?  There just seems a lot to do.

This idea of too much hits me now in May when I am working in the garden to clean up from winter, weed, transplant, and fill pots for the summer.

I have built my garden over the past twenty-five years, a bit at a time.

Euphorbia now blooming in my garden

Rochester seedsman James Vick (1818-1882) once raised the same question.

He wrote in his seed catalog of 1872: “The great difficulty with American gardens is that they are too large, and not sufficiently cared for.  If we gave the same amount of labor on a quarter of an acre that we now expend on an acre, the result would be much more satisfactory.”

Vick recognized that a gardener needs a sense of satisfaction in the work of gardening.  One way to achieve that is to have less to cultivate.

Somehow I feel Vick’s insight is just as appropriate for a gardener today as it was in the 1880s.

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When the Shakers arrived from England in the late 1700s and settled in Watervliet, New York, they  gardened of course , but also needed  to provide income for the community.

Selling vegetable seeds became the answer.

The Shakers found the most efficient way to provide a costumer with the seeds was with a small paper envelope.  They were the first to use seed packets as a marketing strategy.

According to the book Work and Worship among the Shakers, “from 1811 when the Watervliet Shakers raised $300 worth of seeds, to 1840, at the height of the enterprise, the seed business was their chief industry.”

The Shaker seed pedlers crossed the state of Nw York as well as bordering states to sell their seeds.

Other Shaker communities also took up the business.

Shaker historian M. Stephen Miller writes in the book Shaker Design: ” For the garden seed industry the Shakers used up-to-date printing technologies as they evolved, even though it meant having the printing done for them rather than by them…Seeds were a major source of revenue throughout the nineteenth century.”

The Shaker seed business lasted until about 1870 when it could no longer compete with the commercial seed trade.

Nineteenth century seed companies, like Burpee and Park, owe a debt of gratitude to the Shakers who paved the way for seed sales with their simple paper seed packet.

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I am days away from signing a contract for my book.  It has been a long journey.

The book motivated this blog almost two years ago.  Now I enjoy writing and editing these posts.

My need for your help is the subject of this post. I need your wisdom for the title of the book.

The main idea of the book is that in the nineteenth century for the  first time a mass media driven garden became part of the culture.

With the rise of the number of newspapers, magazines, and their dependence on advertising in the second half of the nineteenth century, the American garden industry changed as well.

The new media environment put the the selling of plants and seeds into a new orbit.

Modern seed companies and nurseries, those after 1870, used the new media to sell a garden brand, which in the catalogs was their version of the English garden with its lawn and flowerbeds.

Advertising of any product like medicinal beverages, clothing, furniture, canned goods, and, of course, seeds and plants became unbridled.  People could write and illustrate whatever they wanted about a product. There was a seduction of the consumer, especially women, through the words and images connected with a product.

I want to thank historian Jackson Lears who develops the  idea of ‘seduction’ in his  book on the cultural history of advertising called Fables of Abundance.

The working title of my book is Seduction of the English Garden: The Story of American Gardening according to the Nineteenth Century Seed and Nursery Catalogs.

The 'Crimson Rambler' Rose, imported from England in 1893, began an American sensation.

The ‘Crimson Rambler’ rose  [above] might work for the cover. Notice the landscape illustrated in this Peter Henderson catalog.

The book will come out next year.

Here is where you can help.

What do you think of the title?  Do you like it? Do you have a suggestion for another title?

I look forward to hearing from you.

If you like the title, let me know that as well.

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I recently spent an afternoon at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society Library in Wellesley, Mass.

There I examined a collection of seed catalogs from the nineteenth century seedsman Robert Buist.

What I discovered was that Buist took great pride in telling his customers about how his firm used the latest communication techologies.

Gordon Press in the 1870s

In his catalog of 1872 Buist boasted about his new printing presses. He wrote: “Three of the celebrated ‘Gordon’s Printing Presses’ are kept constantly at work on seed bags, labels, and other printing matter required in our business, and the stock of type and other printing material we use is equal in extent to that required by some of our daily papers.”

Buist, like most businesses of that time, had to keep modern, and that meant using the latest form of communication.

He wrote in that same catalog: “When we established ourselves in 1828, the Seed business in this country was in its infancy, the trade was really insignificant in comparison to what it is in the present day.”

The world was indeed much different in 1870 when the new mass communication technologies enabled the company’s  catalogs to be printed for the first time in the hundreds of thousands.

It was not only a new company.  It was a new world.

Sounds a bit like today’s garden industry  meets social media, doesn’t it?

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A while back I attended an all-day workshop sponsored by the New England Garden History Society.  The day amounted to listening to a  series of speakers, something I love.

Thomas A. Woods, former director at Old World Wisconsin and author of the book Knights of the Plow, was one of the speakers. His topic was “American Kitchen Gardening Traditions”.

Old World Wisconsin, one of the largest outdoor museums in America, includes 576 acres and features the gardens of  fourteen ethnic groups.

Of course my ears perked up when Mr. Woods mentioned the seed companies of the nineteenth century.

Woods said, “Nineteenth century seed catalogs became one of the first expressions of advertising.”

German immigrants flocked to Wisconsin in the nineteenth century. During most of that period Milwaukee had become a mecca of German culture in America. Breweries like Pabst gave Milwaukee its reputation as the home of the beer barons.

Rochester Seedsman Jame Vick (1818-1882)  became popular with German gardeners since he advertised in German American newspapers. He had a special floor in his seed house for German orders.

Woods said, “The availability of seeds  through catalogs and advertising encouraged and accelerated the trend of gardening with flowers and vegetables.”

Not only did the seed companies sell seeds, they also promoted a style of gardening, which was often the English fashion.

Wisconsin gardens tended to take on the same style because catalogs, like Vick’s, proposed the kinds of plants to use but also the style for American gardens, which resembled that of the current Victorian fashion.

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Buffalo landscape designer Elias Long wrote a book in 1884 called  Ornamental Gardening for Americans: A Treatise on Beautifying Homes, Rural Districts, Towns and Cemeteries.

Shortly after that Philadelphia nurseryman and editor of Gardener’s Monthly Thomas Meehan recommended the book in his magazine.

Now what author doesn’t treasure any form of book publicity, even in the nineteenth century?

Long’s book was, according to Meehan, more suitable for the middle class who wanted a less complicated way to deal with residential landscape design.

A few years earlier (1880)  the Ohio artist and landscaper Frank J. Scott had written a book called The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent.

In that same issue of GM Meehan recommended Scott’s book for  those of a refined taste in rural art.  Presumably he meant the more wealthy.

According to Meehan everybody can enjoy a beautful home landscape, no mattter what the personal resources of the homeowner.

Since both books encouraged the English garden style, Meehan thus proposed the same style, including the lawn, for the American gardener.

In his book Long wrote: “The lawn, to be most satisfactory, should present a green velvety appearance throughout the season.”

The nineteenth century middle class homeowner and wealthy estate owner were both encouraged to design their landscape  in the English garden fashion.

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One of my favorite public gardens is Blithewold in Bristol, Rhode Island.

Thousands of daffodils bloom under the trees at Blithewold.

Yesterday I drove down to see the thousands of daffodils that greet you in the bosquet, near the house. This is a shaded, low area where spring bulbs put on a show beyond belief.

In the rose garden at the end of a walkway you see the Moongate, a circular stone entrance into the garden.   The sign there describes the origin of this structure: “In 1907, Landscape Architect John DeWolf designed and supervised construction of the Moongate, the most notable feature of the Rose Garden. Circular stone entries similar to this were popular in English gardens of the same era, and were originally derived from the gardens of China, representing the full moon, or happiness, in Chinese philosophy and tradition.”

The Moongate, built in 1907, in Blithewold's Rose Garden.

Henry Shaw’s garden in St. Louis, now called the Missouri Botanical Garden, built in the second half of the nineteenth century also has a Moongate.

I was amazed that the reason to construct it was that the English at that time were doing this same design for their gardens.

Late nineteenth century American gardeners, rich as well as middle class alike,  looked in awe at the English garden.

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I spent an afternoon recently at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society at Elm Bank in Wellesley,Massachusetts.The Library had made available to me  a selection from their amazing collection of seed and nursery catalogs.  I wanted to see the catalogs by  the Philadelphia seedsman Robert Buist (1805-1880).

Buist 1844 Seed Catalog Cover

What amazed me is how much the cover of the catalog changed over a period of fifty years from 1828 when the company was founded.  Over that

Robert Buist Catalog Cover 1898

time more printing and publishing innovations entered the culture.  By the 1890s it was a different world.  The mass media culture, especially through advertising in magazines and newspapers, impacted every business.

In the early years of the company the catalog cover featured mostly text, and by the end of the century the cover became a blast of color chromolithography.

As with any business, the seed and nurseries industries like Buist had to keep up to date in order to attract customers.

By the end of the century the companies were mailing out hundreds of thousands of catalogs.

Bigger catalogs with more color followed, as did of course more merchandise for the American gardener.

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Since the 17th century, American plants formed part of the English garden.

American gardeners however preferred exotic plants, rather than native varieties, well into the end of the 19th century.

Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan in his magazine Gardener’s Monthly of  February 1882 recognized the English garden tradition, but felt sad that Americans were behind the English in cultivating our own plants.

Meehan wrote: “It is often a matter of surprise that the English should grow what they call ‘American plants’ better than we can. These plants form the greatest attraction of their grounds. Why should not America grow American plants? Now, what they call American plants are only those chiefly which belong to the

Rhododendron catawbiense, Native American shrub

Ericaceous family. These are Rhododendron, Azalea, Kalmia, and Andromeda, and such well-known beautiful flowering shrubs in which America abounds.  But it is not generally known here that they could not grow them there if it were not for the garden art and garden skill at the back of their culture…There is no reason why, with a little study to adapt our circumstances to the wants of these plants, we should not have as good ‘American plants’ as they have in England.”

Eventually our native plants would play a greater role in American gardening.

To this day however you still hear about the need for more extensive use of native plants.

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