Old, but proper, garden sheds

Today is a good day to dream about old pots & proper potting sheds. Spring is here...

Down House, Home of Charles Darwin, South East, Kent, England

Calke Abbey. Ticknall, Derby, Derbyshire, England

Royal Horticultural Society Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England

Beningborough Hall, North Yorkshire, England


Beningborough Hall, North Yorkshire, England
Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England




Down House, Home of Charles Darwin, South East, Kent, England
Royal Horticultural Society Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
Exbury Gardens, Southampton, Hampshire, England
Royal Horticultural Society Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
Lost Gardens of Heligan, South West, Cornwall, England
Royal Horticultural Society Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England
Lost Gardens of Heligan, South West, Cornwall, England


Lost Gardens of Heligan, South West, Cornwall, England
Royal Horticultural Society Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England


Royal Horticultural Society Harlow Carr Botanical Gardens, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England

Garden to Table - Chocolate

Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789)  Madame Liotard and her Daughter & Chocolate  Detail

1764 Plants in 18C Colonial American Gardens - Virginian John Randolph (727-1784) - Indian Cress

A Treatise on Gardening Written by a native of this State (Virginia)
Author was John Randolph (1727-1784)
Written in Williamsburg, Virginia about 1765
Published by T. Nicolson, Richmond, Virginia. 1793
The only known copy of this booklet is found in the Special Collections of the Wyndham Robertson Library at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia.

Indian Cress

Cress, Indian, Nasturtium indicum nasis torinentum; because the seed when bruised is apt to cause pressing; known to the Botanists by the name of Acriviola, a sharp violet, should be sown, in April or March, being extremely tender. If stuck, they will climb a great height, and will last till the frost come, and then totally perish. It is thought the flower is superior to a radish in flavour, and is eaten in salads or without. My method is to plant the seeds in hills, three in a hill, leaving a space in the middle to put the stick on which they are to grow; and I have found they succeed very well in a rich light soil..

Looking to Europe for Inspiration - Versailles painted by American James Carroll Beckwith 1825-1917

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Bassin de Neptune, Versailles 1913

The only way I can justify posting these paintings on this blog is to say that the artist is American & Versailles lead the way for garden design in England and then on the the British American colonies. It is impossible for a garden historian to stay away from Versailles for very long, and so back we go. I hope you enjoy the trip.
James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Terminal Figure of Ceres 1911

James Carroll Beckwith (1852–1917) was born in Hannibal, Missouri; however, he grew up in Chicago, where his father started a wholesale grocery business.

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Arcade of the Grand Trianon, Versailles 1913

In 1868 at age 16, he studied art at the Chicago Academy of Design under Walter Shirlaw until the great fire of 1871, destroyed eveything there & much of the heart of the city. He then went to New York to study at the National Academy of Design.

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Syrinx, Par Maziere, 1689; Bassin d'Apollon 1913

Carroll Beckwith, as he preferred to be called, visited Versailles, France, in 1911 & 1913, where he created about 22 paintings of garden statues.

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Allee de l'Ete, Versailles 1913

When Beckwith was in France, the government had recognized the dilapidation of the once glorious palace, and was moving to restore Versailles to its original splendor. (Franchi and Weber, Intimate Revelations: The Art of Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917), 1999)

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Nymph and Cupid 1913

His papers, including his sketchbooks & the diaries he kept from 1871, until his death in 1917, are held by the National Academy of Design in New York City. All of the paintings in this posting are held by the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Carrefour at the End of the Tapis Vert, Versailles 1913

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) One of the Figures at the Parterre d'Eau

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Corner of the Terrace, Versailles 1911

James Carroll Beckwith (1852-1917) Parterre du Nord, Fontaine des Sirenes 1913,

Garden to Table -

Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699–1779) In the Kitchen preparing the Vegetables    Detail

Garden Structures & Ornaments - Dovecote, Pigeon-House, Culver-House

A dovecote is a practical, and often ornamental, building intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes in America were also called pigeon-houses and culver houses. Doves were kept in early America for the same reasons they had been kept for centuries - for their eggs, their meat, and their dung used as fertilizer. Dovecotes in America usually were either rectangular or circular free-standing structures or built into the end or top of a house or barn, often containing pigeonholes, in which tasty doves would nest.

The term culver-house originated from the old English terms culfre or colver which had their origins in the Latin columba. In Rome, a dovecote was called a columbarium. In early English, Hus or haus meant house, and cote referred to a small building housing animals.

William Holman Hunt (English artist, 1827-1910) The Dovecote

In colonial and early America, dovecotes appeared from New England into the deep South, although they are more often mentioned from the Mid-Atlantic region southward.

A plantation-for- sale ad in the June 5, 1736, South Carolina Gazette in Charleston, South Carolina, noted, "To be Sold A Plantation containing 200 Acres...a dove-house with nests for 50 pair of pigeons." A plantation-for-rent ad in the same paper in January of 1740 mentioned, "a Dairy, Dovecoat, Stable, Barn," in a list of outbuildings.

The 1777 Pennsylvania Gazetter advertised, "A large commodious Brick House, with two acres of good land, situated on the pleasant banks of Schuykill, commonly called Vauxhall 45 feet in front, 34 feet deep...yard large enclosed...pigeon house."

Moreau de St Mery noted in his 1793-1798 American Journey on May, 1794, that, "There are many dove-cotes in Baltimore, as well as little houses made to shelter swallows, due to the belief that their attachment for a house will bring prosperity to those who live there." Baltimore visitor Richard Parkinson also wrote of dovecotes in his Travels in America in 1798.

During the same period, William Faris noted in his Annapolis diary on March 21, 1798 that “the Pigeon House Blew Down, it was Built in the year 1777.”

John Beale Bordley wrote in his Gleanings from the Most Celebrated Books on Husbandry, Gardening, and Rural Affairs published in Philadelphia in 1803, of the culver, Pigeon or Dove: a Culver House.

As the 19th-century progressed, artist Charles Willson Peale mentioned squabs from his Pennsylvania "Pidgeon House" in 1814. Marylander Martha Ogle Forman also wrote in her diary of her Pigeon House in 1819 and 1823 at her home at Rose Hill.

As late as 1887, R. S. Ferguson wrote in the June Archeological Journal of "an almost forgotten pigeon house or culver house."

The Wentworth-Gardner Outbuilding with Dove-Cote. Portsmouth, New Hampshire

The Romans may have introduced dovecotes or columbaria to Britain, since pigeon holes have been found in Roman ruins at Caerwent. However it is generally believed that doves were not commonly kept there until after the Norman invasion. The earliest known examples of dove-keeping occur in Norman castles of the 12th century (for example, at Rochester Castle, Kent, where nest-holes can be seen in the keep).

Documentary references to dovecotes in England also begin in the 12th century, when a coluerhouse" is mentioned. The term appears again in 1420, as a "colverhous."  J. Harmar writes in his 1624 Beza's Sermon that the "poor culverhouse sorer shaken." Izaak Walton mentioned a dove-cote in his 1653 Compleat Angler. By 1669, John Webb reported that in the north of England, a dove house was called a dove-cote and in the south of England it was referred to as a pigeon-house. Nathan Bailey wrote in his Dictionarium Rusicum "old Word for a Pigeon of Dove, and theance Culver-House." By 1735, The Sportsman's Dictionary from London, reported the term 
Cluver House.

The oldest known dovecotes are the fortified dovecotes of Upper Egypt, and the domed dovecotes of Iran. In arid regions, the droppings were in great demand as fertilizer. In Medieval Europe, the possession of a dovecote was a symbol of status and power and was regulated by law. Only nobles had this special privilege which was often referred to as droit de colombier. This property right lasted until the 18th-century in England.

Dovecotes were built by the Romans, who knew them as Columbaria. They seem to have introduced them to Gaul. The presence of dovecotes is not noted in France, before the Roman invasion of Gaul by Caesar. The pigeon farm was, by then, a passion in Rome. The Roman columbarium , generally round, often had its interior covered with a white coating of marble powder. Varro, Columella, and Pliny the Elder wrote works on pigeon farms and dovecote construction.

To ensure the safety of their edible doves, owners tried to locate their dovecotes away from large trees, which might house raptors, such as hawks, eagles, and owls, and shielded their dove houses from prevailing winds. Owners usually constructed their dovecotes with tight access doors and smooth walls with a protruding band of stones (or other smooth surface) to prohibit the entry of climbing predators such as rats, cats, and squirrels. The exterior facade was sometimes coated by a horizontal band, in order to prevent their ascent. In colonial America, Landon Carter wrote in 1764 that, "Colo. Tayloe's Ralph (was) sent back here to cut my dishing capstones for my Pigeonhouse posts to keep down the rats."
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Dovecote at Shirley Plantation in Virginia

Dovecotes can be extremely diverse in construction materials, shape, and dimension. The square dovecote with quadruple vaulting was built before the 15th century such as the examples at Roquetaillade Castle in Bordeaux or Saint-Trojan near Cognac. The cylindrical tower appeared between the 14-16th centuries covered with curved tiles, flat tiles, stone roofing, and an occasional dome of bricks. The dovecote sitting on brick, stone, or wooden pillars, either cylindrical, hexagonal, rectangular, or square in form was common in early America. Some pigeonholes were built-in as a part of a house or barn or other outbuilding,  or they were attached as a lean-to dovecote structure against the sides of buildings. The interior of a dovecote might contain pigeonholes large enough for a pair of doves. Usually a ladder was located in the interior of large dovecotes for the collection of eggs or squabs and for maintenance.

Dovecote in Williamsburg, Virginia Photo by Karen Stuart of the Library of Congress

Garden to Table - Chocolate

Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789) The Chocolate Girl 1743

Garden History - Americans Ben Franklin & Mark Twain look at Versailles

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) in France

Benjamin Franklin wrote of Versailles to his daughter Polly on September 14, 1767:
"Versailles has had infinite Sums laid out in Building it and Supplying it with Water: Some say the Expence exceeded 80 Millions Sterling. The Range of Building is immense, the Garden Front most magnificent all of hewn Stone, the Number of Statues, Figures, Urns, &c in Marble and Bronze of exquisite Workmanship is beyond Conception.

"But the Waterworks are out of Repair, and so is great Part of the Front next the Town, looking with its shabby half Brick Walls and broken Windows not much better than the Houses in Durham Yard.

"There is, in short, both at Versailles and Paris, a prodigious Mixture of Magnificence and Negligence, with every kind of Elegance except that of Cleanliness, and what we call Tidyness."

Just over a century later, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (Mark Twain) wrote of Versailles in his 1869 book The Innocents Abroad, where Twain chronicals his visit to Versailles.

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

"VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try to understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of Eden—but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite dream. The scene thrills one like military music! A noble palace, stretching its ornamented front, block upon block away, till it seemed that it would never end; a grand promenade before it, whereon the armies of an empire might parade; all about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal statues that were almost numberless and yet seemed only scattered over the ample space; broad flights of stone steps leading down from the promenade to lower grounds of the park—stairways that whole regiments might stand to arms upon and have room to spare; vast fountains whose great bronze effigies discharged rivers of sparkling water into the air and mingled a hundred curving jets together in forms of matchless beauty; wide grass-carpeted avenues that branched hither and thither in every direction and wandered to seemingly interminable distances, walled all the way on either side with compact ranks of leafy trees whose branches met above and formed arches as faultless and as symmetrical as ever were carved in stone; and here and there were glimpses of sylvan lakes with miniature ships glassed in their surfaces. And every where—on the palace steps, and the great promenade, around the fountains, among the trees, and far under the arches of the endless avenues—hundreds and hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran or danced, and gave to the fairy picture the life and animation which was all of perfection it could have lacked.

"It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Everything is on so gigantic a scale. Nothing is small—nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the palace is grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are interminable. All the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles are vast. I used to think the pictures exaggerated these distances and these dimensions beyond all reason, and that they made Versailles more beautiful than it was possible for any place in the world to be. I know now that the pictures never came up to the subject in any respect, and that no painter could represent Versailles on canvas as beautiful as it is in reality. I used to abuse Louis XIV for spending two hundred millions of dollars in creating this marvelous park, when bread was so scarce with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He took a tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make this park and build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept 36,000 men employed daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that they used to die and be hauled off by cartloads every night. The wife of a nobleman of the time speaks of this as an "inconvenience," but naively remarks that "it does not seem worthy of attention in the happy state of tranquillity we now enjoy."

"I always thought ill of people at home who trimmed their shrubbery into pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to feel dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it. They seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into unaccustomed shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then surely they look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand tall forest trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow on the trunk lower down than six feet above the ground; from that point the boughs begin to project, and very gradually they extend outward further and further till they meet overhead, and a faultless tunnel of foliage is formed. The arch is mathematically precise. The effect is then very fine. They make trees take fifty different shapes, and so these quaint effects are infinitely varied and picturesque. The trees in no two avenues are shaped alike, and consequently the eye is not fatigued with anything in the nature of monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject now, leaving it to others to determine how these people manage to make endless ranks of lofty forest trees grow to just a certain thickness of trunk (say a foot and two-thirds); how they make them spring to precisely the same height for miles; how they make them grow so close together; how they compel one huge limb to spring from the same identical spot on each tree and form the main sweep of the arch; and how all these things are kept exactly in the same condition and in the same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry month after month and year after year—for I have tried to reason out the problem and have failed.

"We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that to be in such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his disposal. These pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary little canvas among them all treats of anything but great French victories. We wandered, also, through the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, those monuments of royal prodigality, and with histories so mournful—filled, as it is, with souvenirs of Napoleon the First, and three dead kings and as many queens. In one sumptuous bed they had all slept in succession, but no one occupies it now. In a large dining room stood the table at which Louis XIV and his mistress Madame Maintenon, and after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat at their meals naked and unattended—for the table stood upon a trapdoor, which descended with it to regions below when it was necessary to replenish its dishes. In a room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just as poor Marie Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the King to Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious carriages that showed no color but gold—carriages used by former kings of France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly head is to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with them were some curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans, tigers, etc.—vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs and fine workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their history. When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told Maintenon he had created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think of anything now to wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be perfection—nothing less. She said she could think of but one thing—it was summer, and it was balmy France—yet she would like well to sleigh ride in the leafy avenues of Versailles! The next morning found miles and miles of grassy avenues spread thick with snowy salt and sugar, and a procession of those quaint sleighs waiting to receive the chief concubine of the gaiest and most unprincipled court that France has ever seen!"

Garden to Table - Jefferson's (1743-1824) Slave Cook Frances (Fanny) Hern

Monticello's kitchen, restored to its 1809 configuration

 Frances (Fanny) Gillette Hern, An Enslaved Cook

From Monticello's Digital Classroom

Frances (Fanny) Hern was the daughter of Edward and Jane Gillette, enslaved farm laborers who had twelve children. While Thomas Jefferson was president, the family worked in the fields for a tenant on the Monticello plantation.

Fanny married David (Davy) Hern, who worked at Monticello as an enslaved nailmaker, blacksmith, and wagon driver. In 1806, Thomas Jefferson decided that Fanny and Edith Hern Fossett, Davy’s sister, should go to the White House and train to be cooks. They traveled the 120 mile journey in a cart pulled by two mules.

At the White House, Fanny trained with chef Honoré Julien. She received a small gratuity but not a wage. Her husband visited every six months, arriving at the White House with letters and crates of supplies, departing for Monticello with seeds, trees, geese, and hogs. While at the White House, Fanny and Davy’s daughter died of whooping cough.

In 1809, Jefferson retired from the presidency and left the White House. Fanny, Davy, Edith, and Edith’s children traveled back to Monticello through a snow storm “half-leg deep.” Fanny was pregnant. That summer, her daughter Ellen was born. Fanny and Davy had eight children; however, five died at a young age

Fanny continued to work as a cook in the Monticello kitchen, located under the south terrace. She and Edith, the head chef, cooked on “iron stew holes mounted in a brick base”, which resembled an early kitchen stove. They prepared vegetables, roasted meat and churned ice cream, a favorite dessert at Monticello. Jefferson’s guest praised the meals: “The dinner is always choice and served in the French style.”

Research & images & much more are directly from the Monticello website - to begin exploring, just click the highlighted acknowledgment above. 

Metal & Clay Cloches

Monticello's version of a clay cloche
Terracotta rhubarb
A bell-shaped terracotta rhubarb forcer with lid, about 13" high

I have been taken to task by one of my garden history colleagues for being politically incorrect in my biased presentation of glass cloches. He is correct, of course. The only fair thing to do here is show you the other types of cloches from the 17th, 18th, & 19th centuries, some still in use today. They do deserve equal time.

Handmade terra-cotta cloches have existed nearly as long as the blown-glass examples. They often have ventilation holes to prevent spoilage from excessive heat & humidity.

Gardeners often used terra-cotta cloches slow the growth of lettuce.
Terre cotta rhubarb pots at Knightshayes Garden, Tiverton, Devon, England

Other terra-cotta cloches, often about 30" high & similar in shape to chimney pots, were used for forcing rhubarb. Some of these had lids.
Barnsdale Gardens, Exton, Oakham, Rutland, England.

Gardeners also used metal-framed glass cloches during the period.


In metal-framed cloches, one of the glass panes could be removed by the gardener for fresh air ventilation. Sometimes gardeners temporarily would paint the glass white to shade tender plants from direct sunlight.
Audley End Kitchen Garden, English Heritage, Essex, England

Today, these architectural tents or pavilions are more often employed for decorative purposes.

I found only one depiction of a completely metal cloche made in France about 1900.

Let me close by admitting what you surely already realize, I just love those plain, bell-shaped glass cloches...

Very clever make-do cloches.  Lined basket food covers.

Tho Jefferson (1743-1824) Writes about Gardening

 

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

1800 January 27.  (Jefferson to Joseph Priestley).  "to all this I add that to read the Latin & Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture, painting, gardening or the other arts."

Joseph Priestley ( 1733 –1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, & liberal political theorist who published over 150 works. The controversial nature of Priestley's publications, combined with his outspoken support of the French Revolution, aroused public & governmental suspicion; he was eventually forced to flee in 1791, first to London & then to the United States, after a mob burned down his Birmingham home & church. He spent his last ten years in Northumberland County, Pennsylvania.

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello.org website.