[Thanks for the illustration above to garden historian, lecturer, and writer Dr. David Marsh from The Gardens Trust.] After his defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon returned to Malmaison to a place he found soothing, and full of memories of…
I just finished reading a book about Napoleon Bonaparte and gardens called Napoleon: A Life Told in Gardens and Shadows. This is an excellent biography of Bonapart and in a clever way the author manages to intertwine his life with…
Last week I visited Blithewold, a beautiful public garden in Bristol, Rhode Island, right on Narragansett Bay. I have been there many times in the fall but this time was special, mainly because I was the only visitor in the…
Petunias from South America first arrived in France in 1823. The botanist Antoine de Jussieu called it Petunia nyctaginiflora, presently P. axillaris. By the mid-1840s double petunias appeared. According to Peggy Cornett Newcomb's book Popular Annuals, they "created a sensation…
Gloucester is on the north shore and home to a statue called A Woman and Two Children. The statue represents the fears of the wives and children of the fishermen who leave Gloucester every day in search of fish. Last…