Old Medical Journal Encouraged Retired Nurses to Garden

April 22, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Old medical journal encouraged retired nurses to garden. –

Recently I came across an article in an old professional journal for nurses from 1911 called The Trained Nurse and Hospital Review.

The article “Floriculture as an Occupation for Retired Nurses” encouraged retired nurses to take up gardening.

The journal noted the author simply as “A Retired Nurse.”

The author wrote the article for “the retired nurse or nurses about to retire who are in quest of some employment that will be productive of an income.”

Such garden work would “at the same time be conducive to the recuperation of tired bodies and wornout nerves.”

The purpose for the gardening, she admitted, ultimately was to sell the flowers to make some money.

Annuals

Annuals like pansies, asters, and verbenas might be a good start.

The author herself grew five thousand pansies in frames and hot-beds.

She also planted hundreds of verbenas and petunias along with a good selection of vegetable plants.

Advertising helped spread the word that created a great demand for her plants.

After July 1 the author recommended growing cut flowers like dahlias to meet the buyer’s needs.

She mentioned how English nurses have taken up growing flowers and vegetables quite successfully.

She wrote, “The growing of flowers as an occupation is said to have become exceeding popular with our English sisters.”

Asters

On this trade card also from the early 1900s the James Vick’s Sons Seed Company in Rochester, New York featured a field of asters. [below]

As this retired nurse wrote, the aster was a very popular annual at that time.

Filed Under: Garden history, Nursery business, Seed business

Early American Gardening Centered on Vegetables

April 15, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Early American gardening centered on vegetables –

In the first half of the nineteenth century gardeners focused on growing vegetables rather than cultivating a flower garden.

Perhaps the emphasis on vegetable growing may have been related to the simple need to survive.

Vegetable growing and farming consumed the early decades of the country. Once we had food on the table, we could worry about a flower garden.

In his book The Victorian Garden Tom Carter writes, “Until the middle of the century gardening writers dismissed flowers in favour of useful vegetable products.”

By the 1860s and 1870s seed company owners like Rochester, New York’s James Vick (1818-1882) still featured the importance of growing vegetables.

Here is an illustration from Vick’s catalog. Vegetables surround almost the entire house. [below]

In the catalog Vick wrote, “There is almost as much pleasure in growing a choice vegetable well, in bringing it to the highest possible state of perfection, as there is in producing a beautiful flower.”

Then Vick mentioned the lowly cauliflower, pictured in the left of the illustration. [above]

He wrote, “Indeed, some think with Dr. Johnson, that a Cauliflower is the handsomest flower that grows.”

Vick’s advice became important to his customers, so I am sure they followed his guidance in growing vegetables.

By that time gardeners were also enjoying their many flowers as well.

Filed Under: Advertising, Garden history, gardening, Seed business

High Style Victorian Ornamental Gardening

April 8, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

High style Victorian ornamental gardening –

In the nineteenth century plants from around the world became available for the English garden.

Such plants created a thirst for an ornamental gardening style that spread around the country.

Thomas Carter writes in his book The Victorian Garden, “Professional plant-hunters and amateur naturalists – many of them missionaries of the Church – travelled all over the world in search of unknown species to satisfy a taste for the spectacular.”

Such plants transformed the garden into formal beds, container planting, and lines of shrubbery. [below]

Victorians treasured their ornamental gardening.

Carter writes, “The high style of Victorian ornamental gardening reached its peak in the 1850s and 1860s in the grounds of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham and of the private estates like Trenthem and Shrublands.”

Eventually America took up ornamental gardening as well.

Nineteenth century New Jersey seed company owner Peter Henderson included formal ornamental design in his book Gardening for Pleasure. [below]

Notice the formal beds near the front door to the house.

Today we continue the search for plants to contribute to the ornamental gardening style that we love.

Plant hunters still travel the world in search of that new plant.

No surprise that our gardens are filled with both native and exotic plants.

Filed Under: Annuals, English garden design, English Style, Garden fashion, Garden history, Victorian

Victorians Loved Foliage Plants

April 1, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Victorians loved foliage plants. –

One summer I planted a banana (Musa ensete) in the center of a bed along the driveway.

The plant looked majestic among the low growing perennials and annuals that surrounded it. [below]

Banana plant in island bed in my garden

Then I remembered that the Victorian gardener in the second half of the nineteenth century also loved tall, showy, foliage plants.

Tom Carter in his book The Victorian Garden wrote, “Since the early 1860s, gardeners had used many of the foliage plants which had previously been treated as stove or greenhouse subjects to add a contrasting element to floral bedding during a summer.”

Foliage plants could include canna, colocasia, and yucca as well.

Here is a photo of a banana at the recent Boston Flower and Garden Show. It is in a pot but still shows off its bold foliage for the passer-by.

A banana in an exhibit at the recent Boston Flower and Garden Show

This summer I plan to make sure my blue container on the lawn has a large red cordyline, another of my favorites.

In that way I will be keeping up the tradition of the Victorian gardener who treasured plants with bold leaves.

Filed Under: Annuals, English Style, Garden history, Victorian

Victorian Conservatory Became Essential

March 18, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Victorian conservatory became essential –

Victorian garden fashion demanded several elements.

Plants that stood out became essential for their structure and color.

The list included ricinus, canna, yucca – all with their bold leaves.

To grow and cultivate plants during the winter a conservatory, attached to the house, became a must for all serious Victorian gardeners.

Conservatory as part of the house in this 1892 Parker and Wood Seed Catalog

Carter says in his book The Victorian Garden, “Eventually the conservatory became a Victorian cliché – a necessary attachment to any house of even modest pretentions, and often, no more than a place where pot plants could be brought in.”

Serious gardeners then cultivated orchids which demanded special growing conditions.

Eventually the middle class would also grow orchids in their version of that essential greenhouse or conservatory.

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

Victorian Garden Book

February 11, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Victorian garden book –

Last week I attended a meeting of the New England Hosta Society, a group I joined many years ago.

The meeting included a wonderful speaker who owns a local nursery.

The highlight of the meeting, however, was the item I won in the raffle.

To my surprise I won Tom Carter’s book The Victorian Garden.

I was familiar with this title when I placed my red ticket in the cup to bid on the book.

The bibliography and illustrations in the book indicate the English origin of the book.

The book, however, was first published by Salem House, a member of the Merrimack Publishers Circle, Salem, New Hampshire in 1985. R. J. Acford, Chichester, Sussex printed this edition.

The book details the development of the English Victorian garden in the nineteenth century.

Carter writes, “The range of plants available in nineteenth century Britain was constantly increasing as more and more specimens were sent home from abroad, and as colonial territories were opened up.”

The plants would include of course varieties from Asia and North America.

Look forward to reading this book during the cold weeks of winter still to come.

Filed Under: English garden design, English Style, Garden history, History of English garden style, Victorian

English Garden Style May Not Work

February 4, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

English garden style may not work –

Landscape architect Samuel Parsons, Jr. came from a long line of horticulturists. His family owned a popular late nineteenth century nursery in New York.

According to the American Architects Biographies, Parsons was a landscape architect who died February 3, 1923 in New York City. He was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts in 1845. A former park commissioner, he was largely responsible for the development of Central Park and Riverside Drive in New York City. He also designed a 1,400 acre park in San Diego, California.

Parsons gives some sound gardening advice in his book Landscape Gardening (1891)

He warns about simply following a certain garden style, like the English.

Parsons writes, “We are learning that because an English or Scotch gardener tells us we should have a particular tree which has grown successfully in England, we are not necessarily to assume that horticultural skill, whether Scotch, or English, or French, must be able to conpass, in some occult way, its successful employment on American lawns.”

He was a great advocate for the classic lawn, sweeping down from the house.

No surprise that the lawns in Central Park took on that green beauty that Parsons orchestrated in his job as Superintendent of Parks in New York.

Parsons offered this advice in 1891.

Still makes sense today.

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

Nineteenth Century Style of Planting Shrubs

January 21, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Nineteenth century style of planting shrubs –

Soon the Weigela rosea [below] will burst with spring color in my New England garden.

This shrub came to America in 1848 from England. Three years earlier British plant hunter Robert Fortune had found it in China. He introduced it to the English garden.

This Weigela grows right outside my front door. [photo by Ralph Morang]

Walter Elder, a nineteenth century Philadelphia horticulturalist, wrote many articles for nurseryman Thomas Meehan’s popular magazine Gardener’s Monthly, published in the same city.

In the 1865 issue of GM, Elder wrote about shrubs in the landscape.

He said ”The modern is the most admirable and ennobling mode of embellishing large grounds with flowering shrubbery, namely massing them in groups of various dimensions and forms. All sharp points are avoided. Even at the junction of two roads or paths, sharp, projecting points are rounded and made blunt, if a group of shrubbery is to be planted there.”

He continues, “Where there is a fine view in the distance to be seen from the mansion, it would not do to plant trees to hide it, but the lawn can be ornamented with groups of shrubs.”

Seed company and nursery owners in their catalogs, books, and magazines taught America landscape principles.

In this case they instructed home gardeners on how to plant shrubs in the English picturesque or gardenesque, or as they called it, the ‘modern’ style.

Filed Under: English Style, Garden fashion, Garden history, Gardens of England, Victorian

America’s Enduring Home Landscape Style

January 14, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

America’s enduring home landscape style –

Several years ago I owned a house which included two side-by-side rental units.

I thought it would be a a good idea to include plants along the front porch. I planted the old-fashioned spirea prunifolia called ‘BridalWreath.’

Of course at the time I had no idea it could grow to nine feet.

I also planted a young arbor vitae.

Little did I know that I was following the American tradition of foundation planting, or planting along the walls of the front of the house.

In his book From Yard to Garden: The Domestication of America’s Home Grounds landscape arhictect Christopher Grampp writes about the origin of foundation planting, an American invention for the home landscape.

He says, “By the 1930s, lawns and foundation planting had so firmly established themselves in American front yards that it was rare to see other styles.”

Since then the front home landscape has included the lawn and foundation plantings.

In 1901 the Rawson Seed Company from Boston advertised its grass seed with this image from Quincy, Massachusetts. [below] Notice the front lawn and plantings near the house.

The lawn photo in the 1901 Rawson catalog

The garden industry continued for decades to promote this kind of front yard with its lawn and foundation planting.

Grampp writes, “Nearly all garden design advice in books, newspapers, and magazines were now recommending shrubs against the facade of the house and lawns running to the street.”

No surprise that American homes shared this sameness in landscape from California to Maine – even to this very day.

Filed Under: Garden fashion, Garden history, Lawn

Media Drives Garden Industry

January 7, 2019 by admin Leave a Comment

Media drives garden industry –

We gardeners like to think we are original in planning and installing a garden space.

In an environment of newspapers, magazines, books, and, of course, social media that is not possible because we are surrounded by media messages in both advertising and editorial content.

Since the 1890s the media have become the major influence on our ideas about gardening.

At the end of the nineteenth century people wanted standardized products that came from the nation’s factories, whether clothing, shoes, or food. Even seed company and nursery owners illustrated their large operations in a chromolithograph included in the pages of the catalog. A customer could then see the trial fields, the building which made boxes for the company’s many orders, and, of course, the multi-storied factory that served as the seed company or nursery headquarters.

People didn’t want just any oat meal. They wanted Quaker Oats.

And they got that, and lots of other standardized products.

People also wanted a garden like the one illustrated in the garden catalog, which spread across the country in the millions from the many seed companies and nurseries, operating as the modern business they had become.

The Philadelphia seedsman Robert Buist might have felt the power of the media on his business when he wrote in 1857: “Nurserymen have to cater for the wants of their customers, and they wish everything that receives a newspaper puff, however indifferent in quality–so that we go on increasing in all sorts of varieties.”

Garden Catalogs

No surprise then that the yearly catalog from the seed company or nursery helped people to choose seeds and bulbs for the flower garden.

This Smith catalog from Worcester, Massachusetts in 1898 provides an example from that period of the vibrant Victorian garden.

Because everyone was ordering the same seeds and bulbs there was a certain sameness in plant choice and garden design.

People wanted to conform to the norms of the culture.

Thus standardized gardens appeared everywhere.

It reminds me of the ‘ready garden’ you can buy today. All the seeds are embedded in a cloth that you simply lay on the prepared soil and water.

Not only has the garden vendor given you a garden. That person has also provided the design and the seeds.

All you need to do is water and watch it grow.

Filed Under: Advertising, Garden fashion, Garden history, Garden style