American Gardening

It was no surprise that since garden writer William Robinson (1838-1935) was so important in England that he would also assume a role in the development of the American garden. The Pittsburgh seed company owner Benjamin A. Elliott, who began his company in 1840, gave a considerable amount of space in his catalog to instruction for [...]

Today we take the sales catalog for granted. In our house several arrive in the mail each month, selling everything from flour to clothes. In the nineteenth century the American seed and nursery industries pioneered the use of the mail order catalog to reach customers across the country.  It became their major form of advertising. [...]

This past week I attended a lecture on the chromolithography exhibit currently showing at the Boston Athenaeum. I knew that chromos played a key role in advertising in the nineteenth century and wanted to learn a bit more about them. A chromo is a colored illustration in which the artist used a flat limestone for [...]

  I just came across the book Pages from a Garden Note-Book by Mrs. Francis King, written in 1921.  It’s focus is American gardening at the beginning of the twentieth century. King included a wonderful chapter on seed and nursery catalogs.  Many well-known seed company and nursery owners are mentioned like Childs, Henderson, Lovett, Vaughan, [...]

Today we accept the perennial bed as a mainstay in our gardens. In the nineteenth century it was not as common. Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan wrote in the 1886 issue of his magazine Gardener’s Monthly, “Those who desire to thoroughly enjoy flowers, will have a rich treat in the herbaceous border. It is a surprise [...]

Advertising to a mass audience creates similar tastes.  Everybody wants the same product that appears over and over again in ads. Such is the power of modern advertising. At the end of the nineteenth century which was the birth of modern advertising selling the garden was no different. The seed and nursery catalogs sold the [...]

You can judge the interest of a culture by what the media cover. In the late nineteenth century newspapers and magazines were the major forms of mass media. More garden magazines became available because the communication technology of that time made printing them in the thousands possible, but also because there was an audience for [...]

I continue to highlight material that I come across in reading.  Now that summer is definitely here, reading often provides both leisure and research for me. 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. He wrote: “The English possess [...]