Squirrel Stashes Pignuts in My Garden Shed

November 12, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Squirrel stashes pignuts in my garden shed –

I know of a squirrel that has been quite busy lately.

A few days ago I opened my garden shed and discovered a pile of pignuts.

The pointed mound measured almost two feet high in the center. A lot of pignuts.

The yellow pignut looks a great deal like a walnut. The large pile shocked me at first.

I thought to myself, “How could this amount of nuts accumulate in this one spot?”

I presented the issue to the Master Gardeners at our monthly meeting a couple of days later. As if in unison, they all agreed that it had to be a squirrel.

Pignuts [Courtesy of Illinois Wildflowers]

Carya glabra Tree

Pignuts come from the Carya glabra or hickory tree.

The 1900 edition of Liberty H. Bailey’s Cyclopedia of Horticulture described the value of the wood from this tree.

It said, “Most of the species [of Carya] have hard strong and tough wood, much valued for many purposes, especially for handles of tools, manufacture of carriages and wagons, also making baskets and for fuel.”

University of Georgia horticulturist Michael Dirr also gives a bit of history to the tree in his Manual of Woody Landscape Plants. He writes, “It is native from Maine to Ontario, south to Florida, Alabama, and Mississippi. Introduced 1750.”

Here in New England it is considered a hardy native ornamental tree.

Nineteenth century Rochester, New York seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) mentioned the Carya in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly. In 1880 he wrote that the nut, “On account of its delicate flavor and excellent keeping qualities, is the most highly prized of our native nuts.”

Bailey too discussed the nut.

The COF said, “The species of some varieties of C. glabra are edible, and are sold in large quantities; mostly gathered from the woods though in later years orchards of improved varieties have been planted.”

Somewhere out there, scurrying around, is one industrious squirrel who has been quite busy carting these edible pignuts off to my garden shed.

Unfortunately he will have to find a new storage spot since I have sealed up the opening in the shed’s foundation.

Filed Under: Native plants

19th Century Advertising Featured People as Vegetables

November 5, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

19th Century advertising featured people as vegetables –

Tower Hill, near Worcester, Massachusetts, ranks high on my list of favorite public gardens.

On a recent visit I saw their newest exhibit.

The exhibit featured several trade cards from the nineteenth century garden industry.

In their effort to market vegetable seeds, companies used trade cards that included people as the vegetable. This trade card from Jerome B. Rice and Company promoted beet seeds. [below]

Jerome B. Rice and Company sold beet seeds with this colorful chromolithograph, copyrighted in 1885.

Notice the phrase beneath the beet-man. It says, “I AM FREQUENTLY MISTAKEN FOR A DEAD BEET.” The lettering appears all in uppercase for greater emphasis.

It was not uncommon for several seed companies to share the same image, changing only the name at the bottom of the card.

The Tower Hill exhibit used this same beet image with another seed company’s name. The name ‘John B. Varick Company of Manchester, New Hampshire,’ appears at the bottom of the card.

Trade Cards

In her book The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s cultural historian Ellen Gruber Garvey writes about the history of trade cards.

She says, “Beginning in the 1880s, trade cards dominated advertising for national distributed products, until they were largely supplanted by national magazine advertising during the 1890s.

“Manufacturers had put colorful advertising trade cards into the hands of thousands but nationally circulated magazines were a more efficient tool.”

By the 1890s national magazine advertising had outpaced the effectiveness of the trade card.

At one time these small cards, some with people as vegetables, proved popular both for businesses and customers around the country.

Some people even turned to collecting them as a form of amusement.

The Tower Hill seed trade card exhibit in the library will be up for only a few more days.

Filed Under: Advertising, Garden fashion, Nursery business, Seed business, Victorian

Opium Enriched Nineteenth Century Boston Merchant

October 29, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Opium enriched nineteenth century Boston merchant –

Nineteenth century Boston merchant Thomas H. Perkins (1764-1854) cultivated a landscape at his country estate in Brookline, Massachusetts in the English landscape style.

This portrait of Perkins by Thomas Sully today hangs in the large first floor meeting room of the downtown Boston Athenaeum. [below]

Boston Athenaeum’s portrait of Thomas Handasayd Perkins

Perkins became one of America’s first millionaires.

To increase his sale of goods to China Perkins found himself in the opium trade.

In 1815 he opened an office in Afghanistan in order to buy opium there to sell to China.

Stephen Harris wrote a great book called Planting Paradise: Cultivating the Garden 1500-1900, which covers the history of gardening.

Harris writes, “Ultimately, tea transformed English society, was a driver of the Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century, maintained the opium trade with China and became a new crop for colonial India.”

He draws a link between the sale of tea and the sale of opium in the nineteenth century. Both made certain people quite wealthy.

Perkins’ Fortune

Perkins built his fortune by selling opium more than any other product.

At the same time he offered substantial financial assistance to local institutions like the Boston Athenaeum and Massachusetts General Hospital.

Today these institutions as well as Perkins School for the Blind, another of his charities, have had to respond to this part of their history. People inquire how they could have accepted money made from selling opium.

In their book Merchant Prince of Boston: Colonel T. H. Perkins, 1764-1854 Carol Seaburg and Stanley Peterson write, “They cheerfully rationalized that the opium habit was not nearly so debilitating as the habit of drink.”

I don’t know what the word ‘cheerfully’ means here. I would say they saw opium as a business. It was, after all, legal in America at that time.

Filed Under: English garden design, English Style, Victorian

Nineteenth Century Boston Merchant’s Country Estate

October 22, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Nineteenth century Boston merchant’s country estate –

Recently I attended a short talk at the Boston Athenaeum where a staff member discussed three Athenaeum portraits.

My intention in taking the train to participate in this session was to hear about the Athenaeum’s portrait of Thomas Handasyd Perkins (1764-1854).

Thomas Handasyd Perkins

Sending his ships primarily to China, Perkins became a wealthy merchant in nineteenth century Boston.

The speaker’s remarks at the Athenaeum centered on what a philanthropist Perkins had been for the city.

He founded the Perkins School for the Blind, which today is located in Watertown.

Perkins owned a downtown home, first on Pearl Street and later on Temple Place, but also escaped the summer heat to his country home in Brookline, a few miles from Boston.

Brookline Estate

Perkins purchased the land for his Brookline estate in 1799.

The Boston Athenaeum archives include a landscape plan for the Perkins’ Brookline property.

The plan illustrates the modern form of landscape gardening, begun in England in the eighteenth century. This style, because it was the fashion, attracted wealthy Americans throughout the nineteenth century.

The landscape in his estate reflected the English style of rolling lawns, trees, and shrubs.

The extensive lawn, dotted with several greenhouses, takes up most of the space in the plan. The plan shows a kitchen garden and orchards as well.

According to their book Merchant Prince of Boston, Carol Seaburg and Stanley Peterson write that the Perkins’ Brookline property, on the corner of Heath and Warren, became “one of the show places around Boston.”

There Perkins cultivated plants from around the world, including a grape-vine from England’s Sir Joseph Paxton, the head gardener at Chatsworth. Paxton became one of the most important gardeners in England. He also designed the Crystal Palace for the London Exhibition of 1851.

Like other prominent men of his time who owned such country estates, Perkins chose to design in the modern English landscape style.

Seaburg and Paterson note that at the Perkins’ garden, “Encouragement was given to ornamental gardening, with an eye to the art of landscaping.”

Filed Under: English garden design, Garden history, Garden style, Victorian

Crockett’s Compost Bin Works Well

October 15, 2018 by admin 3 Comments

Crockett’s compost bin works well –

A few days ago the Boston Globe featured an editorial called “Time to embrace composting. No, really.“

The message struck me in a somewhat personal way since I just had my compost bin rebuilt.

The final words in the title made me see the importance the writer attempted to give this message.

The world is full of too much garbage. Where possible, we need to recycle it as compost.

I have had a compost bin in the backyard, behind the shed, for almost twenty years.

The old one was decaying, and the wood no longer held together.

Three compartments make up the bin. One is full of the newest material that I add right now; the second is material from last year decaying so I can use it next year; and the third is the ready compost which I can use right now for any need in the garden. Next summer I just rotate each of them.

In having it built I followed the design of the drawings and photos from the original design that appeared in Crockett’s Victory Garden published in 1977.

That is where I first saw this version of a compost bin. Some have called it “the Cadillac of compost bins.’

It is easy to use and offers plenty of space.

This photo of my old compost bin illustrates how I desperately needed a new one. This is the bin just a few days ago:

My old compost bin has certainly seen better days.

Here is a photo of the new version which I just had built this week:

My new bin ready for making that ‘black gold’ called compost.

Gardeners and Compost

Gardeners have long seen the value of compost, even for a lawn.

Rochester, NY seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) saw the value of compost in putting in a lawn.

He wrote in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly in 1879 how a new lawn, installed in the spring, needs a bit of compost. He said: “Compost should be spread evenly over the surface and raked in.”

Filed Under: Garden fashion, Garden history, Nature

Victorian Annuals Still Popular

October 8, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Victorian annuals still popular –

I have visited the downtown Georgian Mansion called the Moffatt-Ladd House in Portsmouth, NH many times.

What I like about it is that the garden skeleton basically dates back to the Victorian period. Today the gardeners, mostly volunteers, have sought to use garden drawings and written material as a guide for how the garden should look.

Luckily in 1990 Joseph Copley, curator of the Portsmouth Historical Society, found the garden journal of the late nineteenth century owner Alexander H. Ladd (1815-1900).

Ladd took possesion of the mansion in 1862. Over the years he lived there he became passionate about his garden, located behind the house.

In his journal Ladd writes about several annuals he regularly planted that are still popular today.

He mentions these annuals that he grew in his garden: pansy, petunia, sweet pea, verbena, and zinnia.

To make room for his spring narcissus, Ladd planted narcissus bulbs in an area where he had earlier planted verbena.

He wrote on November 7, 1889, “I planted Verbena bed with my largest selected Poets Narcissus – of which 608 (illegible) put in this bed.”

Rochester, New York seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) also wrote about the verbena in his seed catalog under the section called ‘Annuals.’

Vick wrote in 1873, “Well-known and universally popular bedding plants; may be treated as half-hardy annuals.”

Here is a colorful illustration from Vick’s Illustrated Monthly of 1880. [Below]

Verbenas, Vick’s Illustrated Monthly [Courtesy of the New York Public Library]

The tradition of planting Victorian annuals like verbena continues.

Little did Ladd suspect that his favorite annuals would remain popular with gardeners over a century later.

Filed Under: Advertising, Annuals, Bulbs, Flowers, Victorian

Time to Plant Tulips

October 1, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Time to plant tulips –

It is October 1 and a gardener’s thoughts turn to spring bulbs like tulips.

For generations gardeners dug up tulip bulbs only to replant them in the Fall.

Rochester, New York seedsman James Vick (1818-1882) recalled that practice in his garden magazine.

A suburban gardener wrote to Vick in 1878, “I don’t know of any flowers that afford me more pleasure than my Tulips, because they are so sure and so little trouble.

“I take up the bulbs, dry them a little, and store them away until October, when they are planted again.”

Then she laid out her method of planting the tulips.

“To occupy the Tulip ground, secure a few Petunia plants, or Portulacas, and sometimes Verbena.

“In October these have done flowering, or nearly so, and the Tulip bed is made again.

“In this way I get two seasons of flowers on the same bed in one season.”

Thus in the late nineteenth century she demonstrated the common practice of planting the same bed with both spring tulips and summer annuals.

Boston Seed Company

Like many other late nineteenth century seed companies and nurseries, the Rawson Company, with its main office in Boston’s Fanuel Hall, offered tulips to its customers.

Rawson included this black and white tulip illustration in its seed catalog of 1904. [below]

An illustration that appeared in the W. W. Rawson Seed Catalog of 1904

In the 1880s Alexander H. Ladd in Portsmouth, NH planted hundreds of tulips each year in his downtown garden.

He too would dig them up and store them for the summer only to plant them later in October.

Unfortunately, one year his baskets were so heavy on the storage shelves he had created that the whole structure collapsed. Hundreds of bulbs fell to the floor. As you can imagine, the next spring saw a mixture of colors and sizes in Ladd’s fields of tulips.

In 1889 he wrote, “I estimate by loss of Bulbs, to have been at least 60,000 – by the rain and want of attention last summer.”

Year of the Tulip

This is the Year of the Tulip according to the National Garden Bureau which provided this stunning show of modern tulip color. [Below]

The Parade of Pink collection. It is a mix of fragrant doubles that includes white, pink, peach and purple. [Courtesy of the National Garden Bureau]

Today it is more common to leave tulips in the ground so they can continue to grow in the same spot year after year.

Breck’s Bulbs says on its website, “Most bulbs prefer not to be disturbed and can be left in the ground for many years.”

Whether you dig them up after they bloom, or leave them in the ground, October begins the time to plant tulips for spring color.

Filed Under: Advertising, Annuals, Bulbs, Garden fashion, Garden history

Who Doesn’t Love Flowers?

September 24, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Who doesn’t love flowers?

The book The Rescue of an Old Place tells the story of restoring a house and its garden in the late nineteenth century.

The location is Hingham, Massachusetts, a New England seacoast town.

The author Mary Caroline Robbins shows little tolerance for those who would doubt America’s love of flowers.

She writes, “While we and our neighbors are doing our best to stock our grounds with ornamental shrubs and blossoms, it is discouraging to be told by some of our periodicals, which are probably edited by gentlemen who live chiefly in towns, that Americans do not love flowers, because they are used among the rich and fashionable in reckless profusion, for display rather than enjoyment.”

The book traces her journey to restore the flower gardens on the seacoast property she and her husband had purchased.

She says, “I wish that our urban critics could walk through this ancient town, and be introduced to its flower lovers, and get a glimpse of its interesting gardens, before they make up their minds so positively about the tendencies of our people.”

Loving flowers – basic to human nature

“The flower-dealers of the country” she says “need have no apprehension as to the future of their industry. It is based on one of the elementary wants of our nature. Flowers will be loved until the constitution of the human mind is radically changed.”

She writes about the popular flower California poppy. [below]

Eschscholtzia, the California poppy, is the State flower.

She says, “The State flower of California was introduced to the children of that commonwealth as the Eschscholtzia before they could spell it, but this does now prove any lack of love or admiration for it on their part.

Nineteenth century Rochester, New York seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) loved flowers.

He wrote these words about California’s poppy in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly in 1878:

“The Eschoscholtzia Californica, as its name indicates, is a native of California. We have seen it in Europe grown by the acre for supplying the world with its seeds, but no where so gorgeous as in its native home.“

Because of his own passion for flowers Vick tirelessly encouaged growing them in the garden.

Like Vick, Mary Caroline Robbins thought flowers were an essential part of any garden.

Filed Under: Annuals, Flowers, gardening

Vick’s Nineteenth Century Dahlia Field

September 17, 2018 by admin Leave a Comment

Last weekend I drove to North Kingston, Rhode Island for a dahlia show, sponsored by the Rhode Island Dahlia Society. This is an annual late summer event that I thoroughly enjoy.

Here is one of the flowers I saw that afternoon. This dahlia’s called ‘Merluza’. [below]

Dahlia ‘Merluza’ at Rhode Island Dahlia Society’s Dahlia Show, held last weekend

The beautiful show of dahlia blooms there reminded me of nineteenth century seed company owner James Vick’s love for dahlias.

In providing seeds for his customers, spread around the country, Vick cultivated acres of various flowers and vegetables, including dahlias.

You would have found his field of dahlias about five miles north of the Rochester city limits. [below]

Vick’s Seed House and Mill at his trial farm, located north of Rochester, New York. History of Monroe County, New York, 1877

Once the editor of the Illustrated Christian Weekly visited Vick’s dahlia field and wrote an article about his visit.

The editor’s article appeared in Vick’s Illustrated Monthly of September 1879.

He wrote, “Mr. James Vick, of Rochester, N. Y., was the pioneer in the systematic growing of flower seeds, and without doubt the most extensive grower in America.”

That was quite the praise for Mr. Vick at a time when the seed and nursery business was growing around the country.

Then the editor raved about the blooms of the many dahlias he saw in the rows devoted to this flower at Vick’s seed farm.

He said, “Perhaps the largest field devoted entirely to one kind of flowers, at the time of our visit, was one filled with Dahlias, and containing six or more acres. It was supposed to include every variety known of real merit, and the display was gorgeous.”

What a sight that must have been – to see six acres of nothing but dahlias.

The Rhode Island Dahlia Society’s Show expressed that variety in what growers had on display. I was especially impressed with the prize winners.

In a room off the central area you could see dahlia flower arrangements.

This is the where you could experience the creativity demanded in flower arranging. The top winner for the category called the ‘Dining Room’ deserved the prize. [below]

Notice the brilliance of the dahlias in this table design.

First place in the category ‘Dining Room’ arrangement.

Vick grew many dahlias. As the editor stated in his letter, Vick cultivated almost every variety known at that time.

Today there are thousands of dahlia varieties available on the market. The Rhode Island Dahlia Society’s show last week offered just a few of them. Many however were new to me.

I am sure that Mr. Vick himself would have been proud to attend the Rhode Island event.

Filed Under: Advertising, Annuals, Garden history, Seed business, Victorian Tagged With: Dahlia

Garden Renewed: Rescue of an Old Place

September 10, 2018 by admin 3 Comments

Recently I finished reading a book, published in 1892, called The Rescue of an Old Place.

The book traces the journey of a late nineteenth century couple to renew a Victorian garden.

Author

The author, Mary Caroline Robbins, tells the story of discovering the home and renewing its landscape in Hingham, Massachusetts, not too far from where I live.

She and her husband purchased the property in the early 1890s.

Robbins writes, “The site of the old house, shaded by some fine Elms and White Ashes, was too near both streets to be at all desirable, though the shrubbery and the tangled remains of an old flower-garden rendered it very attractive.”

She could see the potential in the landscape, though it had long been neglected and seemed to be crying out for attention.

Winter Street

Their house sat on four-acres along Winter Street.

On a recent visit to Hingham I drove down Winter Street. Though I could not find the house, I saw the contours of the land along each side of the street.

I also noticed that part of the street bordered on a marsh with water that came from the near-by ocean.

Hingham is a town along the coast that attracts people who covet a quaint New England seacoast town.

Garden

The book devotes a great deal of space to the poor condition of the trees and shrubs as well the garden.

As I was reading it, I could see how clearly the author wanted to make the landscape attractive.

She sought to save much of the existing plantings, identifying much that she found on the property.

She named the property ‘Overlea.’

Robbins writes, “When came to examine matters at Overlea, as we named our acquisition, from its command of the meadow, we found that a good sweeping and dusting would do wonders for it.”

But it was the long-neglected Victorian flower garden that called out to her.

She wrote, “Next to our tree garden came the old-fashioned flower garden as an object of care and interest in the renovation of the place.”

She restored it with popular Victorian perennials and annuals.

The life of a garden

Though a garden may decline and even cease to exit because of neglect, some form of regular maintenance will preserve a gardener’s work for a long time, even generations.

Gardeners know the challenge so well.

Filed Under: Garden fashion, Garden history, Garden style, gardening, Victorian

American Gardening