Victorian Annuals Still Popular

Victorian annuals still popular –

I have visited the downtown Georgian Mansion called the Moffatt-Ladd House in Portsmouth, NH many times.

What I like about it is that the garden skeleton basically dates back to the Victorian period. Today the gardeners, mostly volunteers, have sought to use garden drawings and written material as a guide for how the garden should look.

Luckily in 1990 Joseph Copley, curator of the Portsmouth Historical Society, found the garden journal of the late nineteenth century owner Alexander H. Ladd (1815-1900).

Ladd took possesion of the mansion in 1862. Over the years he lived there he became passionate about his garden, located behind the house.

In his journal Ladd writes about several annuals he regularly planted that are still popular today.

He mentions these annuals that he grew in his garden: pansy, petunia, sweet pea, verbena, and zinnia.

To make room for his spring narcissus, Ladd planted narcissus bulbs in an area where he had earlier planted verbena.

He wrote on November 7, 1889, “I planted Verbena bed with my largest selected Poets Narcissus – of which 608 (illegible) put in this bed.”

Rochester, New York seed company owner James Vick (1818-1882) also wrote about the verbena in his seed catalog under the section called ‘Annuals.’

Vick wrote in 1873, “Well-known and universally popular bedding plants; may be treated as half-hardy annuals.”

Here is a colorful illustration from Vick’s Illustrated Monthly of 1880. [Below]

Little did Ladd suspect that his favorite annuals would remain popular with gardeners over a century later.

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