During the nineteenth century the preeminent American writer in landscape design was New York nurseryman Andrew Jackson Downing, who followed the principles of English writer and designer John Claudius Loudon. Downing wrote several books which came out in multiple editions…
The nineteenth century seed and nusery catalogs often included an image of a suburban home with a lawn and garden. That illustration confirmed what was happening around large cities across the country. People were moving to suburbs because they wanted…
Nineteenth century newspapers were the first mass medium of communication for the country. Cheap printing that made the daily newspaper popular also enabled more seed company and nursery catalogs. That made possible for the first time a mass media produced garden…
The seed and nursery businesses in late nineteenth century America used the latest marketing and advertising to promote their products. In 1915 a writer for the trade magazine Printer's Ink: A Journal of Advertising interviewed W. Atlee Burpee (1858-1915) just before Burpee…
Did you ever wonder how mowing the lawn became man's work? Here is one answer. Cultural historian Thomas Schlereth's book Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life , 1876-1915 gives us some insight. He wrote that in Victorian times "with the advent of…