Thomas Mickey
I am Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where I taught for twenty-one years.
I have loved gardening for thirty years. I am a Master Gardener and Landscape Designer, a graduate of the Landscape Institute at the Boston Architectual College. 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?