American Gardening

Biography

About Thomas Mickey, author of America’s Romance with the English Garden.

I am Professor Emeritus  of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where I taught for 21 years.

I have loved gardening for thirty years. I am a Master Gardener and Landscape Designer, a graduate of the Harvard Landscape Institute.

My research interest is how public relations, marketing and advertising materials provide a window on the culture. Advertising sells more than a product. An ad or marketing message also sells how people should be, how they should act, and even how a garden should look. Like any media text, such images frame the world for us.

I want to know how through a text, like an ad, something came to be represented in a particular way. American gardening is no exception. The question for me here is: how did the words and images of the seed and nursery catalogs of the nineteenth century represent American gardening?

My regular garden column has appeared for several years in New England newspapers.

My most recent book is Best Garden Plants for New England.

Here are two of my earlier  books: Deconstructing Public Relations and Sociodrama.

Tweet This Post