Last Saturday I spent an afternoon at the Rhode Island Spring Flower and Garden Show in Providence, RI. The temperature for the day reached 50 which provided a sense of warmth in the air, an ideal time to drive down…
From before colonial times and well into the nineteenth century the English have shown a fondness for American native plants. One such variety was the weed called Solidago or goldenrod. The Englishman William Cobbett (1763-1835) in his book The American…
One of my favorite plant stories is how the poinsettia became a popular Christmas flower here in America. In the nineteenth century it was common for garden magazines or journals to include articles from other garden publications. The source of…
It was no surprise that since garden writer William Robinson (1838-1935) was so important in England that he would also assume a role in the development of the American garden. The Pittsburgh seed company owner Benjamin A. Elliott, who began his…
Today we take the sales catalog for granted. In our house several arrive in the mail each month, selling everything from flour to clothes. In the nineteenth century the American seed and nursery industries pioneered the use of the mail…