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History of Early American Landscape Design

Difference between revisions of "Flower garden"

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===Usage===
 
===Usage===
 +
 +
Lawson, John, 1709, describing North Carolina
 +
 +
(p. 79)
 +
“The Flower-Garden in Carolina is as yet
 +
arriv’d but to a very poor and jejune Perfection.
 +
We have only two sorts of Roses; the Clove-July-
 +
Flowers, Violets, Prince Feather, and Tres Colores.”
 +
 +
Hancock, Thomas, 20 December 1736, requesting
 +
items for the garden of Thomas Hancock on
 +
Beacon Hill, Boston, Mass. (quoted in Hedrick
 +
1988: 49)
 +
 +
“If you have any Particular, Curious Things
 +
not of a high price will Beautifie a flower Garden,
 +
Send a Sample with the price or a catalogue of
 +
‘em. . . . My Gardens all Lye on the South Side of a
 +
hill, with the most Beautifull Assent to the Top &
 +
it is Allowed on all hands the Kingdom of England
 +
don’t afford So Fine a Prospect as I have both of
 +
Land and water. Neither do I intend to Spare any
 +
Cost or Pains in making my Gardens Beautifull or
 +
Profitable.”
 +
 +
Anonymous, 1 July 1771, describing in the New
 +
York Gazette or Weekly Post Bay a property in
 +
Staten Island, N.Y. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)
 +
 +
 +
“To be SOLD. THE pleasant situated Place or
 +
Farm of LAWRENCE ROOME . . . on the North
 +
Side of Staten Island. . . . There is on said Farm, a
 +
large Stone House and Kitchen . . . a neat Flower
 +
Garden before the door, also a large Kitchen Garden
 +
behind the House, all in Pale Fence.”
 +
 +
Carroll, Charles (of Annapolis), 1775,
 +
 +
describing Carroll Garden, Annapolis, Md. (Maryland
 +
Historical Society, A. E. Carroll Papers)
 +
 +
“Examine the Gardiner strictly as to . . . in
 +
what Branch He had been Chiefly employed, ye
 +
Kitchen or Flower Garden.”
 +
 +
Bentley, William, 12 June 1791, describing Pleasant
 +
Hill, seat of Joseph Barrell, Charlestown, Mass.
 +
(1962: 1:264)
 +
 +
“[June] 12. Was politely received at dinner by
 +
Mr Barrell, & family, who shewed me his large &
 +
elegant arrangements for amusement, & philosophic
 +
experiments. . . . His Garden is beyond any
 +
example I have seen. A young grove is growing in
 +
the back ground, in the middle of which is a pond,
 +
decorated with four ships at anchor, & a marble
 +
figure in the centre. The Chinese manner is mixed
 +
with the European in the Summer house which
 +
fronts the House, below the Flower Garden.”
 +
 +
Latrobe, Benjamin Henry, 19 July 1796,
 +
 +
describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George
 +
Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (1977: 1:165)
 +
 +
“The ground on the West front of the house is
 +
laid out in a level lawn bounded on each side with
 +
a wide but extremely formal serpentine walk,
 +
shaded by weeping Willows. . . . On one side of
 +
this lawn is a plain Kitchen garden, on the other a
 +
neat flower garden laid out in squares, and boxed
 +
with great precission. Along the North Wall of this
 +
Garden is a plain Greenhouse. The Plants were
 +
arranged in front, and contained nothing very
 +
rare, nor were they numerous. For the first time
 +
again since I left Germany, I saw here a parterre,
 +
chipped and trimmed with infinite care into the
 +
form of a richly flourished Fleur de Lis: The expiring
 +
groans I hope of our Grandfather’s pedantry.”
 +
 +
Clitherall, Eliza Caroline Burgwin, active
 +
1801, describing the Hermitage, seat of John Burg-
 +
win, Wilmington, N.C. (quoted in Flowers 1983:
 +
126)
 +
 +
“These [gardens] were extensive and beautifully
 +
laid out. There was [sic] alcoves and summer
 +
houses at the termination of each walk, seats
 +
under trees in the more shady recesses of the Big
 +
Garden, as it was called, in distinction from the
 +
flower garden in front of the house.”
 +
 +
Hamilton, Alexander, c. 1802, describing
 +
Hamilton Grange, estate of Alexander Hamilton,
 +
New York, N.Y. (quoted in Hamilton 1910: 348)
 +
 +
“3. If it can be done in time I should be glad if
 +
space could be prepared in the center of the flower
 +
garden for planting a few tulips, lilies, hyacinths,
 +
and [missing]. The space should be a circle of
 +
which the diameter is Eighteen feet: and there
 +
should be nine of each sort of flowers; but the gardener
 +
will do well to consult as to the season.
 +
 +
“They may be arranged thus: Wild roses
 +
around the outside of the flower garden with laurel
 +
at foot.”
 +
 +
Martin, William Dickinson, 1809, describing
 +
the pleasure grounds at Salem Academy, Salem,
 +
 +
N.C. (quoted in Bynum 1979: 29)
 +
“Next, I visited a flower garden belonging to
 +
the female department. The flowers were very
 +
numerous, but none of them remarkable for their
 +
beauty or novelty—the garden was badly laid off,
 +
for it possessed neither taste, elegance nor convenience:
 +
the soil appeared barren & unproductive, &
 +
the flowers by no means flourishing. There was
 +
nothing uncommon in the garden.”
 +
 +
Hall, Capt. Basil, 1828, describing a plantation
 +
he visited during his trip from Charleston, S.C., to
 +
Savannah, Ga. (quoted in Jones 1957: 98)
 +
 +
“From the drawing-room, we could walk into
 +
a verandah or piazza, from which, by a flight of
 +
steps, we found our way into a flower garden and
 +
shrubbery, rich with orange trees, laurels, myrtles,
 +
and weeping willows, and here and there a great
 +
spreading aloe.”
 +
 +
Bell, Caroline, 10 July 1831, in a letter to
 +
Frances P. Butler, describing Plaqumine, Iberville,
 +
La. (Historic New Orleans Collection, Butler Family
 +
Papers, folder 545, MSS 102)
 +
 +
“You tell me to procure all the flowers &
 +
shrubs possible—this I will certainly do—& am
 +
sure you will do the same—and under your direction—
 +
I have not the least doubt, our Gardens will
 +
be most beautiful, and flourish—for my part my
 +
dear I have neither taste (altho’ I admire flower
 +
Gardens as much as any one) or time to devote to
 +
those things at least not as much as is necessary—I
 +
hope you will be more fortunate than I have been,
 +
I have made every exertion to have a great many
 +
Monthly Roses, without success, as I do not think
 +
that a dozen have taken—owing intirely, I believe,
 +
to the Yards being in White Clover—I have been
 +
equally unfortunate with the most beautiful, of all
 +
flowering shrubs—The flowering Pomgrancete
 +
[sic]—I’m sure I have set out the Pomigranite, the
 +
Rose and many other things half a dozen times—
 +
When they have died—Mr Bell thinks we will be
 +
obliged to cultivate the Yard to have things do well
 +
in it—I am of the same opinion—however we are
 +
in hopes that the Bermuda Grass sods which we
 +
have set about thro’ the yard—in time—will get
 +
the better of the Clover. Much, very much, is yet
 +
to do here, to render our place either pleasing to
 +
the eye or comfortable.”
 +
 +
Hovey, C. M., July 1835, “Notices of some of the
 +
Gardens and Nurseries in the neighborhood of
 +
New York and Philadelphia; taken from Memoranda
 +
made in the Month of March last” (American
 +
Gardeners’ Magazine 1: 241)
 +
 +
“There is another class of gardens in Philadelphia,
 +
called public gardens, which combine in
 +
addition to a flower garden, green-houses, hothouses,
 +
&c., a bar-room or tavern; this latter addition
 +
we are far from believing useful or needful.”
 +
 +
Breck, Joseph, 1 July 1837, “Calls at Gardens and
 +
Nurseries in the Vicinity of Boston” (Horticultural
 +
Register 3: 271–72)
 +
 +
“One of the most interesting spots is the boys’
 +
flower garden, an oblong square piece, handsomely
 +
fenced off, containing perhaps about a
 +
quarter of an acre. Every boy has his own spot,
 +
which is laid and planted to suit his own fancy,
 +
and the whole forms an assemblage of squares, triangles,
 +
circles, segments of circles, and every possible
 +
shape that their boyish notions dictated.”
 +
 +
Hovey, C. M., October 1839, “Some Remarks
 +
upon several Gardens and Nurseries in Providence,
 +
Burlington, (N.J.) and Baltimore,” describing
 +
the residences of Charles Phelps, Esq.,
 +
Stonington, Conn., and Horace Binney, Burlington,
 +
N.J. (Magazine of Horticulture 5: 363)
 +
 +
“The flower garden contains about a quarter
 +
of an acre, in front of the house, and between that
 +
and the road, and is walled in on the north and
 +
west side. It is tastefully laid out in small beds,
 +
edged with box; on the north side stands a moderately
 +
sized green-house, about forty feet long.”
 +
 +
“The flower garden is nearly a square, and is
 +
laid out with one main circular walk, running
 +
round the whole, and a border for flowers on each
 +
side; the centre forming a lawn scattered over with
 +
several large fruit trees.”
 +
 +
Hovey, C. M., November 1841, “Select Villa Residences,”
 +
describing Highland Place, estate of A. J.
 +
Downing, Newburgh, N.Y. (Magazine of Horticulture
 +
7: 406–9)
 +
 +
“18. Flower garden, in front of the greenhouse.
 +
It is laid out in circular beds, edged with
 +
box, with gravel walks. Under the arbor vitae
 +
hedge, which is here planted against the boundary
 +
line, the green-house plants are principally placed
 +
during summer. . . .
 +
 +
“the flower garden (18,) a small space laid out
 +
with seven circular beds; the centre one nearly
 +
twice as large as the outer ones: these were all
 +
filled with plants: a running rose in the centre of
 +
the large bed, and the outer edge planted with fine
 +
phloxes, Bourbon roses, &c.: the other six beds
 +
were all filled with similar plants, excepting the
 +
running rose, which would be of too vigorous
 +
growth for their smaller size. Under the arborvitae
 +
hedge here, on the south side of the garden,
 +
the green-house plants were arranged in rows, the
 +
tallest at the back.” [Fig. 4]
 +
 +
B., P., January 1844, “Progress of Horticulture in
 +
Rochester, N.Y.” (Magazine of Horticulture 10: 17)
 +
 +
“Flower gardens and shrubberies are no
 +
longer objects of amazement; avenues of forest
 +
trees are not uncommon sights in the vicinity of
 +
dwellings; in fact the general neatness that pervades
 +
this beautiful section of country cannot fail
 +
 +
to suggest to the traveller the steady march of taste
 +
and refinement, and the progress, though slow, of
 +
that art that transforms the wildest forest into a
 +
very Eden.”
 +
 +
Downing, A. J., October 1847, describing Montgomery
 +
Place, country home of Mrs. Edward
 +
(Louise) Livingston, Dutchess County, N.Y.
 +
(quoted in Haley 1988: 52)
 +
 +
“Passing under neat and tasteful archways of
 +
wirework, covered with rare climbers, we enter
 +
what is properly
 +
 +
“THE FLOWER GARDEN.
 +
 +
“How different a scene from the deep
 +
sequestered shadows of the Wilderness! Here all is
 +
gay and smiling. Bright parterres of brilliant flowers
 +
bask in the full daylight, and rich masses of
 +
colour seem to revel in the sunshine. The walks
 +
are fancifully laid out, so as to form a tasteful
 +
whole; the beds are surrounded by low edgings of
 +
turf or box, and the whole looks like some rich
 +
oriental pattern of carpet or embroidery. In the
 +
centre of the garden stands a large vase of the
 +
Warwick pattern; others occupy the centres of
 +
parterres in the midst of its two main divisions,
 +
and at either end is a fanciful light summer-house,
 +
or pavilion, of Moresque character. The whole
 +
garden is surrounded and shut out from the lawn,
 +
by a belt of shrubbery, and above and behind this,
 +
rises, like a noble framework, the background of
 +
trees of the lawn and the Wilderness. If there is
 +
any prettier flower-garden scene than this ensemble
 +
in the country, we have not yet had the good
 +
fortune to behold it.”
 +
 +
Longfellow, Samuel, 16 November 1847, in a
 +
letter to Alexander W. Longfellow, describing the
 +
Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, Cambridge,
 +
Mass. (quoted in Evans 1993: 42)
 +
 +
“At the Craigie House there is nothing new I
 +
think save a new flower garden of larger growth
 +
which is in the process of completion under the
 +
direction of Richard Dolben Landscape gardener
 +
& florist from England & which promises to be
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very charming by next Summer, with a great
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Gothic Cathedral wheel or Rose-window in the
 +
centre.”
 +
 +
Kirkbride, Thomas S., April 1848, describing
 +
pleasure grounds and farm of the Pennsylvania
 +
Hospital for the Insane, Philadelphia, Pa. (Journal
 +
of Insanity 4: 349, 352)
 +
 +
“Between the north lodge and the deer-park,
 +
separated from the latter by a sunk palisade fence,
 +
is a neat flower garden. . . . As on the men’s side,
 +
there is a private yard for females, and the flower-
 +
garden in front of the lodge, and the paved yards
 +
connected with it are similarly arranged. . . . The
 +
cultivation of the gardens and the improvement of
 +
the pleasure grounds, offer the generality of
 +
patients the most desirable forms of labour. It is
 +
sufficiently varied, not too laborious, and in some
 +
division of it many will engage who could not be
 +
induced to assist upon the farm or in any other
 +
kind of employment, out of doors. . . . The flower
 +
gardens should be as extensive as can be well taken
 +
care of by the inmates and persons employed in
 +
the Hospital. The good influences which these, as
 +
well as a high state of improvement about the
 +
buildings, generally produce on patients and their
 +
friends, is often of great importance.”
 +
 +
Justicia [pseud.], March 1849, “A Visit to
 +
Springbrook,” seat of Caleb Cope, near Philadelphia,
 +
Pa. (Horticulturist 3: 411)
 +
 +
“We now sally forth into the flower garden.
 +
The flowers are grown in beds and masses, and
 +
consist of sorts that are either continually in
 +
bloom, or such as are succeeded by others from a
 +
reserve-garden, producing a magnificent display
 +
the entire season.”
 +
 +
Hovey, C. M., December 1849, describing Oat-
 +
lands, residence of D. P. Manice, Hempstead, N.Y.
 +
(Magazine of Horticulture 15: 529–31)
 +
 +
“The house is a handsome building, in a kind
 +
of castellated gothic, standing about fifty feet from
 +
the road, with the conservatory and hothouse, and
 +
flower garden on the left,—the kitchen garden
 +
and forcing-houses on the right,—and the lawn
 +
and pleasure ground, in the rear of the house, separating
 +
it from the park. . . .
 +
 +
“Continuing our walk about the grounds, we
 +
entered the flower garden, which is laid out in
 +
beds, bordered with box; the dahlias were about
 +
all that remained in bloom at this late season, save
 +
here and there a stray rose.”
  
 
===Citations===
 
===Citations===

Revision as of 16:42, February 1, 2016

History

The meaning of the term flower garden remained relatively unchanged between 1650 and 1850, and the placement of the flower garden within a designed landscape, as well as the plants and their arrangement contained therein, helped distinguish it from other garden features. Although flowers might appear in kitchen gardens, the kitchen garden carried connotations of utility while the flower garden signified ornament and pleasure. Moreover, the flower garden required specialized care and expertise, as implied by Charles Carroll (of Annapolis) in his 1775 query about the training of a potential gardener.

The siting of the flower garden distinguished it from the kitchen garden and orchard, which, as mainly utilitarian features, were often situated beyond the view of the main house. Flower gardens, in keeping with their ornamental function, were often placed in relative proximity to the most prestigious rooms of the house. In this location they could be viewed from the house and could act as adjuncts to reception and entertaining rooms. Some eighteenth-century British treatise writers stated that the flower garden should be situated at the “back-front” of the house, meaning the area adjacent to the rear of the house and often just below the terrace. Such a location also provided a degree of shelter conducive to nurturing plants.

Flower gardens also could be placed at some distance from the house. Batty Langley (1728), for example, advised situating the flower garden within a wilderness (see Wilderness). At the seat of John Penn, near Philadelphia, the flower garden was located in a wooded area away from the mansion [Fig. 1]. This placement of the flower garden distinguished it from the parterre, which, typically in the British and European context, was placed adjacent to the house (see Parterre). The eighteenth-century parterre used common plants, whereas the eighteenth-century flower garden was often devoted to exotic, unusual, or rare plants; hence Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1796) expressed disappointment in the flower garden at Mount Vernon because it contained “nothing very rare.” This “neat” layout arranged with precision met with Latrobe’s sarcasm as he described a parterre as “the expiring groans I hope of our Grandfather’s pedantry.” A sketch of John Bartram’s famous garden depicts the botanist’s care and interest in “new flowers,” which were separated from the “common flower garden” [Fig. 2].

In England, long narrow beds were associated with florists’ gardens, which were devoted to the cultivation of rare or “choice” flowers, also known as “florists’ flowers.” Bernard M’Mahon’s prescription in 1806 for a flower garden composed of narrow beds and planted with bulbous and tuberous rooted flowers, “each sort principally in separate beds,” suggests this English florist tradition.

By the eighteenth century in England, regular, geometric layout gave way to a new type of flower garden: island beds set into a lawn. Isaac Ware (1756) proposed planting flowers so as to resemble a nosegay emerging out of green lawn. [1] The island (or kidney-shaped bed), composed of flowers arranged in concentric circles or in a grid, gradually became a popular mode of flower garden design in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English gardens. [2] Such practices were adopted in America in the nineteenth century.

J. C. Loudon’s An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1826) attempted to order and clarify the increasing profusion of flower garden types by establishing a typology. For small gardens, he recommended a “regular figure” enclosed by a hedge. For larger gardens, Loudon recommended what he called an “irregular,” or alternately, a “modern” style garden, characterized by small groups or “garden scenes” of flowers set in the lawn and interspersed with shrubs. Loudon, in describing the modern garden, addressed an issue that had emerged for treatise writers of his time. As shrubbery developed as a garden feature, and as flowering shrubs were increasingly included in flower gardens, the “lines of distinction between the Flower Garden, the Shrubbery, and the Pleasure Ground,” as John Abercrombie and James Mean observed in The Practical Gardener (1817), “can neither be positively marked, nor constantly observed” (see Shrubbery). Indeed, writer Basil Hall (1828) conflated flowering shrubs in shrubbery and those in the flower garden when describing a plantation in the South.

Loudon outlined four types or classes of flower gardens. The first was the “general” or “mingled” flower garden, one in which graduated rows of flowers and shrubs were planted in a loose quincunx pattern that allowed taller species to rise up behind shorter species. In An Encyclopaedia, Loudon included a plan for planting a flower garden with respect to alternating the colors and sizes of plants, as well as the time of the plants’ flowering. The second type, the “select” flower garden, included only “particular kinds of plants,” that were cultivated or hybridized flowers grown by nurseries or florists, which were often massed in irregular drifts. The “changeable” flower garden, the third type, plunged plants (presumably greenhouse- or hothouse-raised) in their pots to correspond with seasonal changes. The final type, the “botanic” flower garden, had plants “arranged with reference to botanical study.” A. J. Downing similarly attempted to systematize the flower garden in A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1849), in which he discussed the “irregular” flower garden, the “English” flower garden, and the “old French” flower garden.

The nineteenth century witnessed another style of flower gardening: the “geometric” garden, as described in Downing’s 1847 article in the Horticulturist. The flower bed was divided into square or rectangular plots and subdivided into geometric figures. This manner of gardening had persisted since the eighteenth century and harkened back to such European Renaissance patterns as knots or cutwork parterres. The 1847 redesign of the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House flower garden in imitation of a Gothic stained-glass window was suggestive of this fashion [Fig. 3].

Greenhouses or conservatories were often located near or in flower gardens as they allowed for easy transport of plants. (See, for example, Hovey’s 1839 description of Charles Phelps’s residence in Stonington, Conn.) At Montgomery Place, on the Hudson in New York, Downing (1847) placed the flower garden in front of the conservatory, echoing the “Moorish” character of this building with a flower garden designed to resemble an oriental carpet.

In addition to design and plant material, objects placed within the garden—seats, statues, arbors, and other decorative structures—contributed to the style of flower gardens. “Figures of statuary work of every character and description” characterized the “French” style according to Robert Buist (1841), whereas Jane Loudon (1845) included statues as well as vases, seats, basins of water, rustic baskets, and rock-work in the “modern English” flower garden. Edward Sayers, in The American Flower Garden Companion (1838), proposed a native American flower garden to be accompanied by a rustic seat and rockery in addition to a pond, shrubbery, and walk.

Given the plethora of styles and types of flower gardens in the nineteenth century, treatise writers emphasized the need for homeowners to select a mode of flower garden design that suited the characteristics of their house’s site and architecture, as well as the associative readings desired by the owners. Downing’s explanation (1849) for why an “enthusiastic lover of the picturesque” whose residence was in the so-called “Rural Gothic” style would chose an “irregular” flower garden is an excellent example of this design logic.

Flower gardens often carried associations of status, wealth, and taste because of the expense of skilled gardening and of rare flower species. [3] Thomas Hancock in 1736, for example, fretted over the cost when he ordered plants, instructing that he wanted “Particular, Curious Things not of a high price.” Hancock’s concern about the potential financial liability of flowers was warranted. In 1737, for an order shipped from England of a “Baskett of flowers” (which, in fact, had arrived dead), he paid £26—a sizable amount of money considering that such luxury goods as lace, muslin, and silk could be purchased for a few pennies a yard. [4] While the cost of flowers declined with the growth of nurseries in America, prices remained relatively high compared to other goods and services. [5] For example, in 1839, the Ellwanger and Barry Nursery in Rochester, N.Y., sold a China Rose for $2.50 at a time when the average wage for nursery labor was $1.50 per day. [6] In 1850, Henry C. Bowen of Woodstock, Conn., a successful dry goods merchant, bought a tree peony for $1.00, the equivalent of the daily wage that he paid his laborers. [7] Thus the flower garden proposed by treatise writer Joseph Breck in 1851 at the cost of $10.00 dollars was the equivalent to approximately ten days’ salary for a laborer. Breck’s recommendation of old-fashioned plants as opposed to new hybrids or florists’ flowers may have been, in part, an attempt to decrease the cost of a flower garden.

The high cost of flowers enhanced the cachet of flower gardens. Despite her protests that she had neither taste nor the time, Caroline Bell (1831) expended much energy to create a garden that she hoped would be “pleasing to the eye or comfortable.” Treatise writers echoed and encouraged such attention. Charles Marshall (1799) wrote that no trouble should be spared in cultivating the “choicest gifts of Flora”; Thomas Green Fessenden (1828) claimed that “flower gardens were ever held in high estimation by persons of taste”; and C. M. Hovey (1844) insisted that “the flower garden is an appendage to almost every residence” and therefore should be planted in “a judicious manner” in order to be “an object of importance.” Fessenden also capitalized upon the notion of the flower garden as an index of taste when he proposed that young ladies cultivate flower gardens to learn neatness and correct taste and ideas. Writer

M.A.W. (1840) commended flower gardening as a test of the gardener’s taste and skill. This didactic aspect of the flower garden resided in the link between gardening and moral behavior. Fessenden (1828) argued that by caring for plants young persons could learn that “every moral virtue must be protected, and every corrupt passion and propensity subdued.” Walter Elder (1849) implied that flower gardens could keep at bay the physical and moral corruption that he associated with the urban environment. Robert Squibb (1727, reprinted 1827), in keeping with his notion that flowers were an expression of divinity, believed that flowers could ennoble, “refine,” and comfort their beholders and caretakers. Consistent with these discourses, many nineteenth-century institutions responsible for the care of individuals (including orphanages and insane asylums) kept flower gardens.

The labor and exercise associated with flower gardens resulted in their promotion as a source of healthy activity. Fessenden argued that flower gardens crossed class lines and appealed to everyone, and he described tending gardens as particularly suitable exercise for older citizens. Elder, in touting gardening for city dwellers, stipulated that no other activity could “more plainly bespeak” the “health and happiness” of the family. Sayers (1838) also argued that flower gardens were particularly healthful for city dwellers, basing his argument upon the notion that gardening helped to dispel the noxious vapors that condensed and settled on the ground.

Such texts helped to imbue flower gardens with pastoral, anti-urban associations and encouraged the recognition of the feature as a sign of the transformation of the American “wilderness” into a cultivated, even utopian, landscape. As was written in the Magazine of Horticulture in 1844, flower gardens suggested to the traveler “the steady march of taste and refinement, and the progress, though slow, of that art that transforms the wildest forest into a very Eden.”

-- Anne L. Helmreich

Texts

Usage

Lawson, John, 1709, describing North Carolina

(p. 79) “The Flower-Garden in Carolina is as yet arriv’d but to a very poor and jejune Perfection. We have only two sorts of Roses; the Clove-July- Flowers, Violets, Prince Feather, and Tres Colores.”

Hancock, Thomas, 20 December 1736, requesting items for the garden of Thomas Hancock on Beacon Hill, Boston, Mass. (quoted in Hedrick 1988: 49)

“If you have any Particular, Curious Things not of a high price will Beautifie a flower Garden, Send a Sample with the price or a catalogue of ‘em. . . . My Gardens all Lye on the South Side of a hill, with the most Beautifull Assent to the Top & it is Allowed on all hands the Kingdom of England don’t afford So Fine a Prospect as I have both of Land and water. Neither do I intend to Spare any Cost or Pains in making my Gardens Beautifull or Profitable.”

Anonymous, 1 July 1771, describing in the New York Gazette or Weekly Post Bay a property in Staten Island, N.Y. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)


“To be SOLD. THE pleasant situated Place or Farm of LAWRENCE ROOME . . . on the North Side of Staten Island. . . . There is on said Farm, a large Stone House and Kitchen . . . a neat Flower Garden before the door, also a large Kitchen Garden behind the House, all in Pale Fence.”

Carroll, Charles (of Annapolis), 1775,

describing Carroll Garden, Annapolis, Md. (Maryland Historical Society, A. E. Carroll Papers)

“Examine the Gardiner strictly as to . . . in what Branch He had been Chiefly employed, ye Kitchen or Flower Garden.”

Bentley, William, 12 June 1791, describing Pleasant Hill, seat of Joseph Barrell, Charlestown, Mass. (1962: 1:264)

“[June] 12. Was politely received at dinner by Mr Barrell, & family, who shewed me his large & elegant arrangements for amusement, & philosophic experiments. . . . His Garden is beyond any example I have seen. A young grove is growing in the back ground, in the middle of which is a pond, decorated with four ships at anchor, & a marble figure in the centre. The Chinese manner is mixed with the European in the Summer house which fronts the House, below the Flower Garden.”

Latrobe, Benjamin Henry, 19 July 1796,

describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (1977: 1:165)

“The ground on the West front of the house is laid out in a level lawn bounded on each side with a wide but extremely formal serpentine walk, shaded by weeping Willows. . . . On one side of this lawn is a plain Kitchen garden, on the other a neat flower garden laid out in squares, and boxed with great precission. Along the North Wall of this Garden is a plain Greenhouse. The Plants were arranged in front, and contained nothing very rare, nor were they numerous. For the first time again since I left Germany, I saw here a parterre, chipped and trimmed with infinite care into the form of a richly flourished Fleur de Lis: The expiring groans I hope of our Grandfather’s pedantry.”

Clitherall, Eliza Caroline Burgwin, active 1801, describing the Hermitage, seat of John Burg- win, Wilmington, N.C. (quoted in Flowers 1983: 126)

“These [gardens] were extensive and beautifully laid out. There was [sic] alcoves and summer houses at the termination of each walk, seats under trees in the more shady recesses of the Big Garden, as it was called, in distinction from the flower garden in front of the house.”

Hamilton, Alexander, c. 1802, describing Hamilton Grange, estate of Alexander Hamilton, New York, N.Y. (quoted in Hamilton 1910: 348)

“3. If it can be done in time I should be glad if space could be prepared in the center of the flower garden for planting a few tulips, lilies, hyacinths, and [missing]. The space should be a circle of which the diameter is Eighteen feet: and there should be nine of each sort of flowers; but the gardener will do well to consult as to the season.

“They may be arranged thus: Wild roses around the outside of the flower garden with laurel at foot.”

Martin, William Dickinson, 1809, describing the pleasure grounds at Salem Academy, Salem,

N.C. (quoted in Bynum 1979: 29) “Next, I visited a flower garden belonging to the female department. The flowers were very numerous, but none of them remarkable for their beauty or novelty—the garden was badly laid off, for it possessed neither taste, elegance nor convenience: the soil appeared barren & unproductive, & the flowers by no means flourishing. There was nothing uncommon in the garden.”

Hall, Capt. Basil, 1828, describing a plantation he visited during his trip from Charleston, S.C., to Savannah, Ga. (quoted in Jones 1957: 98)

“From the drawing-room, we could walk into a verandah or piazza, from which, by a flight of steps, we found our way into a flower garden and shrubbery, rich with orange trees, laurels, myrtles, and weeping willows, and here and there a great spreading aloe.”

Bell, Caroline, 10 July 1831, in a letter to Frances P. Butler, describing Plaqumine, Iberville, La. (Historic New Orleans Collection, Butler Family Papers, folder 545, MSS 102)

“You tell me to procure all the flowers & shrubs possible—this I will certainly do—& am sure you will do the same—and under your direction— I have not the least doubt, our Gardens will be most beautiful, and flourish—for my part my dear I have neither taste (altho’ I admire flower Gardens as much as any one) or time to devote to those things at least not as much as is necessary—I hope you will be more fortunate than I have been, I have made every exertion to have a great many Monthly Roses, without success, as I do not think that a dozen have taken—owing intirely, I believe, to the Yards being in White Clover—I have been equally unfortunate with the most beautiful, of all flowering shrubs—The flowering Pomgrancete [sic]—I’m sure I have set out the Pomigranite, the Rose and many other things half a dozen times— When they have died—Mr Bell thinks we will be obliged to cultivate the Yard to have things do well in it—I am of the same opinion—however we are in hopes that the Bermuda Grass sods which we have set about thro’ the yard—in time—will get the better of the Clover. Much, very much, is yet to do here, to render our place either pleasing to the eye or comfortable.”

Hovey, C. M., July 1835, “Notices of some of the Gardens and Nurseries in the neighborhood of New York and Philadelphia; taken from Memoranda made in the Month of March last” (American Gardeners’ Magazine 1: 241)

“There is another class of gardens in Philadelphia, called public gardens, which combine in addition to a flower garden, green-houses, hothouses, &c., a bar-room or tavern; this latter addition we are far from believing useful or needful.”

Breck, Joseph, 1 July 1837, “Calls at Gardens and Nurseries in the Vicinity of Boston” (Horticultural Register 3: 271–72)

“One of the most interesting spots is the boys’ flower garden, an oblong square piece, handsomely fenced off, containing perhaps about a quarter of an acre. Every boy has his own spot, which is laid and planted to suit his own fancy, and the whole forms an assemblage of squares, triangles, circles, segments of circles, and every possible shape that their boyish notions dictated.”

Hovey, C. M., October 1839, “Some Remarks upon several Gardens and Nurseries in Providence, Burlington, (N.J.) and Baltimore,” describing the residences of Charles Phelps, Esq., Stonington, Conn., and Horace Binney, Burlington, N.J. (Magazine of Horticulture 5: 363)

“The flower garden contains about a quarter of an acre, in front of the house, and between that and the road, and is walled in on the north and west side. It is tastefully laid out in small beds, edged with box; on the north side stands a moderately sized green-house, about forty feet long.”

“The flower garden is nearly a square, and is laid out with one main circular walk, running round the whole, and a border for flowers on each side; the centre forming a lawn scattered over with several large fruit trees.”

Hovey, C. M., November 1841, “Select Villa Residences,” describing Highland Place, estate of A. J. Downing, Newburgh, N.Y. (Magazine of Horticulture 7: 406–9)

“18. Flower garden, in front of the greenhouse. It is laid out in circular beds, edged with box, with gravel walks. Under the arbor vitae hedge, which is here planted against the boundary line, the green-house plants are principally placed during summer. . . .

“the flower garden (18,) a small space laid out with seven circular beds; the centre one nearly twice as large as the outer ones: these were all filled with plants: a running rose in the centre of the large bed, and the outer edge planted with fine phloxes, Bourbon roses, &c.: the other six beds were all filled with similar plants, excepting the running rose, which would be of too vigorous growth for their smaller size. Under the arborvitae hedge here, on the south side of the garden, the green-house plants were arranged in rows, the tallest at the back.” [Fig. 4]

B., P., January 1844, “Progress of Horticulture in Rochester, N.Y.” (Magazine of Horticulture 10: 17)

“Flower gardens and shrubberies are no longer objects of amazement; avenues of forest trees are not uncommon sights in the vicinity of dwellings; in fact the general neatness that pervades this beautiful section of country cannot fail

to suggest to the traveller the steady march of taste and refinement, and the progress, though slow, of that art that transforms the wildest forest into a very Eden.”

Downing, A. J., October 1847, describing Montgomery Place, country home of Mrs. Edward (Louise) Livingston, Dutchess County, N.Y. (quoted in Haley 1988: 52)

“Passing under neat and tasteful archways of wirework, covered with rare climbers, we enter what is properly

“THE FLOWER GARDEN.

“How different a scene from the deep sequestered shadows of the Wilderness! Here all is gay and smiling. Bright parterres of brilliant flowers bask in the full daylight, and rich masses of colour seem to revel in the sunshine. The walks are fancifully laid out, so as to form a tasteful whole; the beds are surrounded by low edgings of turf or box, and the whole looks like some rich oriental pattern of carpet or embroidery. In the centre of the garden stands a large vase of the Warwick pattern; others occupy the centres of parterres in the midst of its two main divisions, and at either end is a fanciful light summer-house, or pavilion, of Moresque character. The whole garden is surrounded and shut out from the lawn, by a belt of shrubbery, and above and behind this, rises, like a noble framework, the background of trees of the lawn and the Wilderness. If there is any prettier flower-garden scene than this ensemble in the country, we have not yet had the good fortune to behold it.”

Longfellow, Samuel, 16 November 1847, in a letter to Alexander W. Longfellow, describing the Vassall-Craigie-Longfellow House, Cambridge, Mass. (quoted in Evans 1993: 42)

“At the Craigie House there is nothing new I think save a new flower garden of larger growth which is in the process of completion under the direction of Richard Dolben Landscape gardener & florist from England & which promises to be very charming by next Summer, with a great Gothic Cathedral wheel or Rose-window in the centre.”

Kirkbride, Thomas S., April 1848, describing pleasure grounds and farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, Philadelphia, Pa. (Journal of Insanity 4: 349, 352)

“Between the north lodge and the deer-park, separated from the latter by a sunk palisade fence, is a neat flower garden. . . . As on the men’s side, there is a private yard for females, and the flower- garden in front of the lodge, and the paved yards connected with it are similarly arranged. . . . The cultivation of the gardens and the improvement of the pleasure grounds, offer the generality of patients the most desirable forms of labour. It is sufficiently varied, not too laborious, and in some division of it many will engage who could not be induced to assist upon the farm or in any other kind of employment, out of doors. . . . The flower gardens should be as extensive as can be well taken care of by the inmates and persons employed in the Hospital. The good influences which these, as well as a high state of improvement about the buildings, generally produce on patients and their friends, is often of great importance.”

Justicia [pseud.], March 1849, “A Visit to Springbrook,” seat of Caleb Cope, near Philadelphia, Pa. (Horticulturist 3: 411)

“We now sally forth into the flower garden. The flowers are grown in beds and masses, and consist of sorts that are either continually in bloom, or such as are succeeded by others from a reserve-garden, producing a magnificent display the entire season.”

Hovey, C. M., December 1849, describing Oat- lands, residence of D. P. Manice, Hempstead, N.Y. (Magazine of Horticulture 15: 529–31)

“The house is a handsome building, in a kind of castellated gothic, standing about fifty feet from the road, with the conservatory and hothouse, and flower garden on the left,—the kitchen garden and forcing-houses on the right,—and the lawn and pleasure ground, in the rear of the house, separating it from the park. . . .

“Continuing our walk about the grounds, we entered the flower garden, which is laid out in beds, bordered with box; the dahlias were about all that remained in bloom at this late season, save here and there a stray rose.”

Citations

Images

Notes

  1. Isaac Ware, A Complete Body of Architecture (London: T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756), 651–52, view on Zotero.
  2. For more about the development of the eighteenth-century flower garden in the British context, including designs, plant materials, and its distinction from other planting features, see Mark Laird, The Flowering of the Landscape Garden: English Pleasure Grounds, 1720–1800 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), view on Zotero. Also see John Harris, “Some Imperfect Ideas on the Genesis of the Loudonesque Flower Garden,” in John Claudius Loudon and the Early Nineteenth Century in Great Britain, ed. Elisabeth B. MacDougall (Washington, D.C.: Dumbarton Oaks, 1980), 45–58, view on Zotero.
  3. Similar to the decorative objects and elaborate furnishings found in middle- and upper-class drawing rooms, flowers gardens offered displays of the skill, taste, and wealth of their owners and thus were part of the patterns of consumption and consumerism that shaped much of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century culture. For more about consumerism in early America, see Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter J. Albert, eds., Of Consuming Interests: The Style of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia for the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, 1994), view on Zotero; and Carole Shammas, The Pre-Industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990), view on Zotero.
  4. See U. P. Hedrick, A History of Horticulture in America to 1860 (Portland, Ore.: Timber Press, 1988; originally published in 1950), 48–50 view on Zotero, for a history of Hancock’s plant purchases. For a discussion of the exchange of goods between America and England in the colonial period, see T. H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690–1776,” Journal of British Studies 25 (October 1986): 467–99, view on Zotero.
  5. For a discussion of the emergence and subsequent growth of nurseries in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century America as well as listings of flowers then available, see Hedrick, A History of Horticulture in America to 1860, 71–72, 113–14, 158–66, 197–214, 242–54, 270–74, view on Zotero, and Patricia Tice, “Industry in the Garden,” in Victorian Landscape in America: The Garden as Artifact, ed. Robert R. Gutowski (Philadelphia: Arboretum of the University of Pennsylvania, 1989), 20–24, view on Zotero. For a discussion of the flowers cultivated in American gardens, see Peggy Cornett Newcomb, “Plants of American Gardens,” in Keeping Eden: A History of Gardening in America, ed. Walter T. Punch (Boston: Massachusetts Horticultural Society, 1992), 120–33, view on Zotero. Historic listings of available flowers can be obtained from seed catalogues; see, for example, those for the firms of Ellwanger & Barry at the Mount Hope Botanic Garden and Nurseries (Rochester, N.Y.) and Hovey and Company (Boston, Mass.). Collections of seed catalogues can be found at the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and the University of Delaware Library. For an overview of the Delaware collection, see Gary E. Yela, compiler, Suitable for Cultivation: Horticultural Collections at the University of Delaware Library (Newark: University of Delaware Library, 1990), view on Zotero. For plant lists, also see books published by nurserymen and gardeners, such as John Gardiner and David Hepburn, The American Gardener (Georgetown, D.C.: Joseph Milligan, 1818), view on Zotero; Joseph Breck, The Flower-Garden (Boston: John P. Jewett, 1851), view on Zotero; Thomas Bridgeman, The Young Gardener’s Assistant (New York: Geo. Robertson, 1832), view on Zotero; Robert Buist, The American Flower Garden Directory (Philadelphia: Carey and Hart, 1841), view on Zotero; William Prince, A Short Treatise on Horticulture (New York: T. and J. Swords, 1828), view on Zotero; and Edward Sayers, The American Flower Garden Companion (Boston: Joseph Breck, 1838), view on Zotero.
  6. Patricia M. Tice, Gardening in America, 1830–1910 (Rochester, N.Y.: Strong Museum, 1984), 56, view on Zotero.
  7. Papers of Henry C. Bowen, Landscape Projects 1847–1853, Box 2, Folder 10, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, Boston, Mass.

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