Five Centuries of Women & Gardens

The National Portrait Gallery in London reopened this June after three years of closure due to Covid (and refurbishing). To celebrate, readers can pick up this excellent book from 2000, written to support an exhibition at the Gallery.

The women and gardens in the title of Sue Bennett’s Five Centuries of Women & Gardens are British women and British gardens, each account supported by elegant portraits and some fine garden views. Bennett manages to include in each brief text biographical information, clear descriptions of the gardens, and just enough social history to place everything in context. The reader learns how gardens changed over the centuries, as well as how women gradually gained legal and social control over their gardens and their lives.

The subjects begin with Queen Elizabeth I and end with Beth Chatto. The Elizabethan gardens were created for and about the Queen, not ordered by her. Nobles currying favor developed gardens symbolically worshipping her as the Virgin Queen, using topiary, fountains, and privet hedges.

Queen Caroline, wife of George II, developed gardens at Hyde Park, Kensington, and especially Richmond Lodge. Each focused on supporting the legitimacy of the Hanoverian kings, recently imported from Germany and not very popular. At Richmond her garden included a hermitage with a live hermit and “Merlin’s Cave,” a thatched cottage and grotto meant to connect the royal family to Merlin’s prophecy. Alas, the public response was ridicule.

In the 20^th century Miriam Rothschild (1908-2005) turned very unlikely fields into meadows full of wildflowers, restoring medieval views. Rothschild, a scientist sometimes called “Queen of the fleas” because of her research into them, also decoded at Bletchley during World War II. In 1970, as a retirement project, she scattered wildflower seeds collected from a derelict airfield over the remnants of a tennis court on her property. In ten years her meadow had nearly 100 species of flowers and grasses She then sent out her seeds for use in other areas of the country. The National Trust adopted some of her ideas, and Prince Charles (now Charles III) worked with her on a wildflower garden at his estate at Highgrove.

“Five Centuries of Women and Gardens” gives surprisingly complete pictures of the connections women have had with their gardens. Each woman appears as a lively personality, accompanied by a dazzling portrait.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in Leaflet for Scholars, Volume 10, Issue 11, November 2023.

English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries

Eccentrics have been described as having “varieties of physical and behavioural abnormality that occupied ‘contested space at the juncture of madness and sanity’” (pp. 1-2). In English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries Todd Longstaffe-Gowan shows how a group of English men and women in the seventeenth to twentieth centuries used their gardens to express and develop their eccentricities. That means, of course, that in addition to describing their wonderfully diverse gardens, he also tells us many juicy bits about the gardeners’ lives.

It’s worth noting that “garden” in this case involves many things in addition to plants, and sometimes not many plants at all. The book presents twenty-one of these oddities, each with excellent illustrations: drawings, paintings, woodcuts, photographs – all very worth examining.

At Hoole House in Cheshire the focus falls on the garden itself more than the owner, Lady Broughton. She had come to Hoole House after she separated from her husband, Sir John Delves Broughton, 7th Baronet, in 1814. (Titles abound among these gardeners.) Separating from your husband and setting up your own household was eccentricity enough.

After her arrival, Lady Broughton had constructed a large and very tall rock garden covered with alpine plants and laid out to resemble shapes of the Swiss mountains at Chamonix, including the glacier at their base. A contemporary illustration from Gardener’s Magazine is paired in the book with a pen and ink drawing of the mountains to make clear how exactly the garden rocks matched the outline of the mountains. That the garden’s representation of the glacier made the area feel cool even in summer, as one visitor insisted, readers can only imagine.

One garden with a primary focus on plants was Viscount Petersham’s in Derbyshire. Petersham, a companion of the Prince Regent who became George IV, was described in 1821 as “’the maddest of all the mad Englishmen’” (p. 83). After he married a beautiful but scandalous actress, he developed his garden to entertain her – in the country, far from public view. A central project of this new garden became the transplanting of topiaries and other trees. William Barron, Petersham’s Scottish gardener, learned how to transplant mature trees successfully, and by 1850 had moved hundreds onto the property. “It was as though the earl were devising every form of horticultural diversion possible to keep his wife from pining for an existence beyond the bounds of her prison paradise” (p. 87).

The illustrations show that at least some of his many topiaries had shapes much more varied and complex than the more typical birds. Yews shaped like enormous mushrooms, tall columns, even a cave-like arbor were enclosed in a long, undulating hedge. One visitor responded enthusiastically to the prospect, reporting: “’we actually threw our body down upon the soft lawn in an ecstasy of delight’” (p. 96).

In one final glimpse of another garden, Lamport Hall exhibited the now-ubiquitous garden gnome gone mad: many dozen tiny ceramic gnomes were scattered throughout.

Well researched and lavishly illustrated, English Garden Eccentrics yields both copious information and a great deal of entertainment.

Reviewed by Priscilla Grundy in the Leaflet, June 2023, Volume 10, Issue 6.

Rainier Valley streets named for plants

I was browsing a couple of older Seattle street maps (1969, and late 1990s) and came across a cluster of streets named for trees and shrubs (Escallonia, Viburnum, Locust, Chestnut, Sumac, Barberry, Heather, Tamarack, Abelia), all tucked in between the east slope of Beacon Hill and near Martin Luther King Jr. Way (or Empire Way on the earlier map). They don’t show up in current online map searches. I am curious about their history.

Before non-Indigenous people settled in the area in the 19^th century, this particular area might have been crossed by Duwamish tribe trails that extended from Lake Washington to the Duwamish River along the south edge of Beacon Hill, as well as trails from Pioneer Square to Renton along the Rainier Valley, approximately where Rainier Avenue South is today. The area would have had a wealth of woody vegetation then.

In early 20^th century maps of Seattle, I found that the general area you are asking about was at one time owned by Joshua Montgomery Sears, a prominent Bostonian. The area on the 1907 map looks undeveloped, but may have been logged (see Olmsted report below). Sears invested heavily in the King County area, and at one time owned a substantial part of Kirkland. He had a financial interest in the Kirkland Iron Works (as reported in the May 29, 1890 edition of the Seattle Post Intelligencer). I mention Sears because the map snippet you sent shows those streets fanning out around Sears Drive South (which runs from what is now Martin Luther King Jr. Way to S. Columbian Way). In 1930, the city of Seattle purchased the property from the J.M. Sears estate.

This area was part of a 1920s Olmsted plan for what was called the Jefferson Park tract, which included a suggested layout for lot development. A 1903-1905 Olmsted firm report on the Jefferson Park location says that “all of the original forest trees that had any market value have disappeared, and the stumps and logs [… ] are gradually being taken away for firewood […] The southern portion of the park should be made to contrast with the larger open northern part, by having little or no grass, the surface being clothed with low, ground-covering plants. There may be long winding masses of trees and shrubbery […] Some walks may be carried through under the groups of trees, but most of the paths should be carried through the openings between the masses of trees and shrubbery, so as to […] command the distant views of Lake Washington.”

I don’t know if the Olmsted firm ever extended their planting plans beyond Jefferson Park and the surrounding boulevards. There is still a densely forested area now known as Cheasty Greenspace which borders the area where these street names used to be. A photo from 1941 shows newly built houses in an expanse denuded of greenery. At the time, the Seattle Housing Authority had just been formed, headed by Jesse Epstein, a social reformer who championed the creation of affordable public housing. A Russian Jewish immigrant, he grew up in Montana, and began studying at the University of Washington in 1927. Rainier Vista was among his initial Seattle projects, along with Yesler Terrace, Holly Park, High Point, and Sand Point; in every case he lobbied successfully for racially integrated housing.

Work began in 1941 and starting in 1942, the project began serving the housing needs of workers (at Boeing and other industries contributing to the war effort) and later, World War II veterans. The woody plant street names date from the early 1940s. (Some of these plants are classic mid-century stalwarts that are still growing in Seattle neighborhoods.) The names were unusual enough to catch the attention of the Seattle Times in August 17, 1943 [p. 4]. This article discusses their origins: “In the Rainier Vista homes project, for example, a botany expert glorified his enthusiasm by dealing out such monickers as Tamarack Drive, Kinnikinick [sic] Place, Sumac Court, Abelia Court, Viburnum Court and Escalonia [sic] Court. […] The names selected are subject to the approval of Jesse Epstein, housing director.” We don’t know who the botanist was, but naming the streets after trees and shrubs is a gesture toward the idea of a garden community accessible to all, regardless of income, and would have appealed to Epstein. Residents of Rainier Vista and the other housing developments did have gardens, and starting in 1955, the Seattle Housing Authority held an annual Better Yards Roundup competition, sponsored by the Snoqualmie Federation of Garden Clubs.

Your maps show how the streets are cul de sacs, set apart from the more grid-like arrangement of surrounding roads. This design was altered in the 2002 redevelopment, when the previous dwellings were leveled, and construction began. The idea was that streets should connect more directly to the rest of the neighborhood, so as not to isolate the residents from the community. It is a shame to lose the distinctive street names in the process of redevelopment—all except Kinnikinick Place South, east of MLK Jr. Way, which is now an alley with garages facing onto it. Tamarack Drive is gone, but the name lives on in Tamarack Place, an affordable apartment complex on MLK Jr. Way next to the Columbia City light rail station. Interestingly, a 2002 Seattle Times article about the redevelopment mentions a group of black locust trees at the edge of Rainier Vista—a living reminder of Locust Court South. Today, Rainier Vista’s streets encircle a small green space, Central Park, and most blocks are lined with trees in the parking strips. There are also several nearby community gardens that are part of Seattle’s P-Patch program.

Garden history, Trees in cities–Seattle, Urban land use, Urban parks

The Garden Diary of Doctor Darwin, 1838-1865: A Garden History

This handsome book presents for the reader the garden diary of Dr. Robert Darwin, father of the famous Charles. Subtitled “A Garden History,” it brings to life the garden Charles knew as a child. As such it has some interest in how the garden might have related to Charles’s thinking about evolution and how he occasionally used the garden for plant experiments. Its primary interest, though, is as a description of a very impressive mid-19th century garden.

Susan Campbell divides the book into three parts, the first intended for garden enthusiasts, the second for “keen garden enthusiasts,” and the third for “even more serious garden enthusiasts.” Part One is the history of the garden; Part Two contains entries from the diary itself; and Part Three catalogues all the plants mentioned in the diary. As a member of only her first reader category, I can testify that all three are worthy of attention.

In 1796 Robert Darwin purchased the property near Shrewsbury that would officially become The Mount House and the site of the garden. He had recently married Susannah Wedgwood of the famous pottery family, and her money undoubtedly underwrote the purchase, though he had a thriving medical practice. On a cliff overlooking the Severn River, the site had previously been a “rubbish tip.” Given the Miller Library’s similar history of construction on a garbage dump, readers may feel connected. The garden, about seven acres when completed, included a large kitchen garden and a flower garden. A greenhouse was attached to the residence.

Charles Darwin’s recorded experiences with the garden begin with his father asking him, at age 10, to count the flowers on the peony plants (160 in 1810). While he was on his famous voyage on the “Beagle,” letters from his sisters provide much information on the garden development, and one from Charles reports he would love to be back in the gardens “’like a Ghost amongst you’” (p. 38). The Diary itself begins on September 1, 1838 and ends in 1866. It includes several references to experiments with plants requested by Charles, who was living in London, with no garden. In January 1939, for instance, Dr. Darwin records sowing Mimosa sensitiva in the family hothouse for his son.

Part One of “Dr. Darwin’s Diary” also includes descriptions of the various gardens and background on the Darwin family in Shrewsbury. Campbell turned up lots of intriguing information for this book. One example: Dr. Darwin weighed 24 stone later in life. A stone is 14 pounds! He had to be wedged into the carriage that took him on his medical rounds. He clearly was not “cleaning” the garden himself. (They didn’t call it weeding.)

Part Two, “An Almanac of Work done in the Garden,” lists items by months through the year, under categories like “Work Under Glass (Indoors),” and “Walks and Lawns.” Extracts from multiple years are presented under each category. Specific dates are not always included, but for November, in the “Fields” category, Campbell notes that “The haystack is cut for the first time” appears in the diary in 1842,1844, and 1852.

This section of the book provides a wonderful, detailed description of the work in the garden and the rhythm of the seasons. Campbell connects entries to various events in the garden and elsewhere. When the diary notes that asparagus and globe artichokes are cut down and covered in cedar boughs, she explains that the boughs “undoubtedly” came from a cedar tree blown down the previous winter (p. 164).

Rarely “Special Events” are included. A Thanksgiving Day decreed by Queen Victoria for November 11, 1849, comes with Campbell’s explanation that it marked the end of a cholera epidemic. Most entries record the routine activities of planting, tending, harvesting, and maintaining the garden.

Part Three – “A Catalogue of Plants named in the Diary” – divides the plants into five categories. Roses have one of their own; three are organized by their location in the garden, e.g., the Green House; and a final catch-all category of flowers and shrubs named elsewhere in the diary. Each entry uses the plant’s name and spelling found in the diary, and its location and source, if known. In a section on Citrus Trees, Campbell sometimes adds background information: The Shaddock tree is a native of China and Japan, for example, and the “sweet lemon” cut down in 1849, came from the doctor’s niece. Descriptions may also note how and where the plant was grown, such as the pineapple plant being potted and plunged into tar in the greenhouse.

In sum, The Garden Diary of Dr. Darwin provides not only a wealth of botanical information, but also a precise history of this particular garden and its connection to the Darwin family and to the social environment that supported it.

Published in the Leaflet, May 2022, Volume 9, Issue 5.

Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park

“Legacy of Trees: Purposeful Wandering in Vancouver’s Stanley Park” has an unusual way of telling the story of a public park. The intent of author Nina Shoroplova in writing the book was to allow herself the “purposeful wandering” of the sub-title. She skillfully brings the reader along on this journey, using individual trees as markers and the focus in telling the natural and human history of this peninsula and the adjacent, densely populated city.

This makes for an engaging book to read, but a hard one to describe. While it is helpful if you are planning to explore the park, I recommend it more for reading as a narrative before going. I gained much understanding and appreciation for the indigenous and many immigrant nationalities that make up the city of today, as well as the importance of trees in all cultures.

Shoroplova gives much of the credit for the early history she recounts to Major James Skitt Matthews (1878-1970), who established the city archives and like herself was from Wales. She describes him as an “irascible Welshman who insisted on single-handedly seeking out and detailing the early stories of Vancouver.”

For more recent history, the author consulted with living experts, including interviewing Alleyne Cook, shortly before he died in his 90s. Cook designed and established the very popular Ted and Mary Grieg Rhododendron Garden, a 22-year project completed in the 1980s. Shoroplova skillfully weaves the story of bringing rhododendrons from the Grieg’s remote specialty nursery on Vancouver Island and incorporating them, along with complimentary flowering trees, into the existing landscape.

Excerpted from the Fall 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World

What is a Wardian Case? Any English gardener between 1850 and 1900 could have easily answered that question, but today it is mostly forgotten. Partly because the term was used for two distinct variations of the device. The first was a decorative, enclosed case – the forerunner to the terrarium – that allowed Victorian plant lovers to grow their ferns and orchids despite the heavily polluted air of London and other cities. The second was a tool for transporting plants on long sea voyages, and that form is the subject of “The Wardian Case: How a Simple Box Moved Plants and Changed the World” by Luke Keogh.

In part, this book is also a biography of Nathaniel Bradshaw Ward (1791-1868), a London physician who was a passionate, amateur botanist. His experiments with sealed environments led to the highly successful efforts in the 1830s to transport plants for the many months it took to travel from, for example, Sydney to London. Prior attempts had mostly failed because of damage from salt spray or a shortage of fresh water. This invention became so popular that by later in the 1800s “there were thousands if not tens of thousands of these cases in operation, moving plants around the globe. Our choices of what we drink, eat, smell, and wear have all been transformed by the movement of plants.”

This movement of plants had a profound impact on human cultures, especially those colonized by European powers. The Wardian Case allowed for the transport of many valuable crops to be grown in colony plantations with suitable climates, typically destroying the native flora and often subjugating the local population to work these foreign crops. Examples include tea, rubber, cocoa, and cinchona, the source of quinine used to fight malaria.

These plants did not travel alone. In their soil and on their leaves came various animal species and plant diseases eager to attack a susceptible flora. Many of the plants themselves became invasive. All this led to efforts in the 20^th century to using these cases (now better known as cages) to send predatory insects to attack unwanted plants and destructive pests. The advance of air travel ended the prominence of the Wardian Case but for about a century it was closely linked to all aspects of the global movement of plants for profit, research, and horticulture.

Winner of the 2021 Award of Excellence in History from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries

Excerpted from the Summer 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Japanese Zen Gardens

Yoko Kawaguchi’s book “Japanese Zen Gardens” is excellent source of Japanese gardening history, but with a focus on the dry landscape (kare-sansui) traditions associated with Zen Buddhist temples. These sites bring the history alive with gorgeous photographs by Alex Ramsay and interpretive diagrams. While the dry landscape style may seem static to those outside Japan, Kawaguchi clearly shows an ongoing evolution, including its use for gardens not associated with temples.

This book would be excellent reading for planning or recalling a trip to Japan, especially if centered on Kyoto. While too large for a traveling guide, it is written in an instructive style for a visitor. Kawaguchi was born in Japan, but has lived much of her life in either North America or the UK, and has an ability to interpret and correlate both western and eastern aesthetics.

Kawaguchi focuses the latter half of her book on symbolism. This includes plant selection and, in some cases, removal. At the temple of Tōfuku-ji in Kyoto, all the ornamental cherry trees were chopped down around 1400. All the maples suffered the same fate in 1869, although these have mostly grown back. In both cases, the trees were considered a diversion. “Are they not perhaps too showy for a temple setting, making people think about temporal pleasures rather than reflect on the state of their souls?”

Excerpted from the Summer 2020 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin

Pacific Northwest Garden History Homepage

Two-Hundred Years of People, Plants, and Gardens in British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington. Now includes the new Heritage Plants page.

The History of Landscape Design in 100 Gardens

Ugh. That was my first reaction to the title “The History of Landscape Design in 100 Gardens.” I immediately pictured a dull, dusty history book.

When I opened the book, I was surprised. Choosing a random page, I was hooked by the narrative and soon fully engaged. Author Linda A. Chisholm skillfully weaves stories of gardens and gardeners seamlessly within the prevailing styles and the broader culture of their times.

To do this, she uses “one hundred of the world’s great gardens, chosen to illustrate the history and principles of landscape design and to answer the question of why a particular style became dominant at a specific time and place in history.”

This history begins with a wide swath from the 9^th century to the 15^th century C. E. This was a time when gardens were enclosed, providing protection from the dangerous world outside. This style was used in both Christian and Muslin gardens, the latter in part represented by the Alhambra in Spain.

A later chapter, entitled “The Poppies Grow”, explores how “designers of five beloved gardens find solace in opposing the industry that led to war.” These gardens include Hidcote, Sissinghurst, Great Dixter, and Dumbarton Oaks. I’ve been to all, but I will now better appreciate their shared purposes.

Each of these entries are short, but – as a librarian friend of mine commented – meaty. Most of the gardens will be familiar. There is an emphasis on European and American history, although the two chapters that linked European and East Asian gardens were especially insightful. For example, I have never considered the similarities between French Impressionism and Japanese garden design of the same period.

This is a wonderful way to teach a challenging subject – the history of design. The author’s astute organization of the chapter topics, along with the photographs of Michael D. Garber, make this book work. I wish there was a broader selection of west coast gardens (there are two, both in Sonoma County, California), but that is a small quibble. An excellent bibliography leads the reader to a wealth of other publications to pursue these topics further.

Published in Garden Notes: Northwest Horticultural Society, Summer 2019

Edward Bawden’s Kew Gardens

book jacket This book defies easy categorization. Bawden was a renowned British illustrator, graphic artist, and painter who served as an official War Artist during World War II. He and his contemporary Eric Ravilious studied with surrealist landscape painter and engraver Paul Nash, and his influence can be felt in Bawden’s lively calligraphic line, and his modernist approach to landscapes and cityscapes. Until exploring this book, I was most familiar with his posters for London Transport, depicting sights and scenes around London.

The first section of the book reproduces Bawden’s very early manuscript (created when he was just twenty), A General Guide to the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Spring and Easter 1923. The second section is a brief but eccentric sociocultural history of Kew, incorporating Kew-inspired illustrations, verse, and humor. The third section is a selection of Bawden’s wry illustrations for Robert Herring’s Adam and Evelyn at Kew. The last section summarizes his lifelong artistic fascination with Kew. Those who are interested in 20th century art and the history of Kew will find it a fascinating book to read and savor.