Plants & Gardens in Colonial & Early America: A Garden Gate by Winslow Homer

17C Europeans landing from the Atlantic Ocean onto North America's East Coast coped with unfamiliar weather & geography by creating spaces to meet basic needs for shelter & food. Mankind uses plants for food & medicine, dyes & textiles, fuels & building materials, and trade & profit.

With the additional help of offspring & imported servants & slaves, growing plants in farm fields often became economic enterprises for local communities as well as for export across the Atlantic.

A garden is a planned space set aside for the practical cultivation of useful plants, and/or for the artistic display, & enjoyment of decorative plants. In the 18-19C, many gentry transformed the gardens near their personal living spaces into art hoping to project a desired image of themselves to others - their wealth, power, refinement, & beliefs.

Searching for WHY human society changes & what those living before us declare in their own words and in their design & images of themselves & of the world around them. Posting on the worldwide internet makes history less intimidating, easily accessible, & freely available for everyone.

As a historian, I must rely on archaeologists, using a variety of scientific tools, to find & help explain earlier evidence beyond that obvious on the surface. Science is not truth. It is a process in the pursuit of truth.

Focusing mostly on the history & art of gardens & women, I put together several blogs, different in the particulars but similar in the essentials. They are listed in the blogroll below.

Honored to have you here - Welcome!

Barbara Wells Sarudy

Friday, February 11, 2022

A Garden Gate by Winslow Homer