Archives: Recommended Websites

The Mertz Library is one of the world’s largest botanical and horticultural research libraries, with over one million accessioned items (books, journals, original art and illustration, seed and nursery catalogs, architectural plans of glass houses, scientific reprints, and photographs).

“Library, Art & Archives contains more than half a million items, including books, botanical illustrations, photographs, letters and manuscripts, periodicals, biographies and maps.”

“The Archives of American Gardens, part of the Smithsonian Gardens, includes a collection of approximately 60,000 photographic images and records that document historic and contemporary gardens throughout the United States. The images, which depict views from colonial times to the present, include a considerable range of garden features such as furniture and ornamentation, as well as all manner of design styles.”

The Royal Horticultural Society in London, UK offers the Lindley Library as “the world’s finest horticultural library, with books, journals, pictures and art on practical gardening, garden history, garden plants and design from 1514 to the present day.” Anyone can visit the Library, but only RHS members may borrow books.

Features a bibliography of the history of the American Seed and Nursery Industry and their Trade Catalogs and biographies of American Seedsmen and Nurserymen.

NAL “houses one of the world’s largest and most accessible agricultural information collections and serves as the nexus for a national network of state land-grant and U.S. Department of Agriculture field libraries.”