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Inspiration behind this Blog

It does not seem possible that I have written 984 posts on this blog since its launch September 9, 2010.

But that is the case.

Here is a press release I wrote about the origin of this blog at that time:

New Blog Highlights America’s Fascination with the English Garden Style

            Garden writer Thomas Mickey has started a blog about American gardeners’ love for the English garden.  The blog combines a bit of history with gardening.  Mickey bases a lot of the material on his year-long research into American gardening at the Smithsonian archives in Washington. 

            With a Fellowship from the Smithsonian’s Department of Horticulture, Mickey spent the year pouring over dozens of seed and nursery catalogs from the nineteenth century and concluded that the English garden model began with the seed and nursery catalogs of that period. He said, “The catalogs sold us more than seeds and plants.  With their essays and images in the catalog, the company owners sold us the English garden.”

The obsession with the lawn is only one example of how the English garden model has influenced gardening in this country. Though the lawn is the most important feature of the English garden, there are other elements as well, like the curved walkways, the cluster of shrubs, well-placed trees, and, of course, flowerbeds with annuals or perennials.

            The  blog, called American Gardening, has this URL: www.americangardening.net.

Today many gardeners call their garden style  ‘English’. This blog is a chance to tell others about your garden, hear what others like about the English garden, and how, like you, they model their own garden in that style.

            Mickey said, “This blog is just not about how to garden, but why we garden.  We love the English garden. The English garden style lies deep in the American psyche.”

“We want a bit of that tradition in our own garden.”

Here is a photo I use in the tabs at the top of the blog site:

At my desk

The nineteenth-century American garden magazine The Gardener’s Monthly pointed our our reverence for the English garden.

The editor Thomas Meehan wrote in the magazine in the year 1862:

“All of our readers have heard of the excellence of English gardening.

“All of this has been brought about within the past fifty years, and mainly through the influence of the Horticultural Society of London.”

A Familiar Flowerbed

Here is a flowerbed in the English style. Notice that it sits on the lawn. That’s an English practice.

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