The Scottish garden writer Charles McIntosh (1794-1864) in his book of 1853 The Book of the Garden provided a history of the English garden. He wrote: "The family of the Medici revived and patronized the art of gardening in Italy,…
I just finished reading Edward Hymans' book Capability Brown and Humphry Repton. The name Capability Brown (1716-1883) drew me to this title. For a long time I had been seeing his name, but never really knew much about him. This…
This past week I attended a lecture on the chromolithography exhibit currently showing at the Boston Athenaeum. I knew that chromos played a key role in advertising in the nineteenth century and wanted to learn a bit more about them.…
I always wondered when seed companies first started to send seeds across the country in the U. S. mail. The Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan in the 1873 issue of his magazine Gardener's Monthly included an article entitled "The Father of the…
By the end of the nineteenth century seed company and nursery catalogs would offer for sale many varieties of one plant. That was possible because of the new system of mass production of seeds and plants. Like any business, the…