Garden History - Design - Lakes

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Baltimore Country Seat Druid Hill by Francis Guy

Just south of Brooklyn and overlooking the river is a small chain of hills, on which are the country houses of many wealthy New Yorkers. Its proximity to New York leads New Yorkers to rent the houses and send their families there during the hot season. The men go to New York in the morning, and return to Brooklyn after the Stock Exchange closes. "The elevated situation of these country residences, in addition to being healthy, gives them the advantage of a charming view which includes New York and the nearby islands, principally Governor's Island, and is constantly enlivened by the passing of the boats which ply on both rivers.

Photo of Druid Hill Later in the 19th Century

Because Druid Hill did not sit directly on the harbor basin in Baltimore, an artificial lake was built on the grounds. Gentry sometimes created a man-made body of water in their pleasure grounds near their dwelling affording recreation, food, ice, and beauty.

In 1806, Rosalie Steir Calvert wrote to her father in Europe from her estate Riversdale in Prince George's County, Maryland. She had been consulting with architect artist William Birch about the design of their grounds.

Birch drew us a plan for the grounds. He thinks an artificial lake would be better on the south of the house than on the north, since the terrain is better adapted and it would be easier to make there.

Two years later she wrote to her father, Lake just finished, which looks like a large river on the southern side, gives a very beautiful effect and furnishes us at the same time with fish and ice for our ice-house.

Garden History - Ornaments - Statue

GARDEN STATUES

Surpisingly, garden statues appeared early in the British American colonies and became even more popular in the early republic. Statues stood in the gardens of the gentry and later in the century at public pleasure gardens, where patrons from all levels of society could enjoy their beauty and symbolism. And occasionally, craftsmen and artisans embellished the grounds around their house with statues as well.

One of England's earliest garden commentators, Francis Bacon, took a dim view of garden statues. Francis Bacon, (1561-1626), English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, & author, wrote in his 1625 Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall in the essay entitled Of Gardens. His essay coincided with the new North American settlements along the Atlantic coast.

Bacon felt that statues added nothing to a real garden except, perhaps, pretense. He wrote, "but it is nothing for great princes, that for the most part, taking advice with workmen, with no less cost set their things together, and sometimes add statues and such things, for state and magnificence, but nothing to the true pleasure of a Garden."

As early as 1718, Judge Sewall in Boston, Massachusettes, complained that, "Quickly after the wind rose to a prodigious height...It blew down the southernmost of my cherubim's heads at the Street Gates." And three years later in 1721, he regretfully reported, "Took down the northwardly cherubim's head, the other being blown down...I suppose ther have stood there near thirty years."

Around 1750, artist William Dering painted young George Booth in Virginia with statues flanking the young man and at the end of the walkway in the distance. Although these are certainly fanciful statues, it is not known if they were really in the landscape at that time. Unfortunately these details are from reproductions of these portraits, so visiting the museum is the only way to really evaluate each painting.

In 1754, New England preacher Ezra Stiles reported that Andrew and James Hamilton's Bush Hill in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania had a "very elegant garden, in which are 7 statues in fine Italian marble curiously wrot." Perhaps curiously wrot is the key phrase, because a year later, when Daniel Fisher visited the same garden, he reported that "It (did not) contain anything that was curious...a few very ordinary statues. A shady walk of high trees leading from the further end of the Garden looked well enough; but the Grass above knee high, thin and spoiling for the want of the Sythe." In 1790, when Abigail Adams visited Bush Hill in Philadelphia, she noted, "A beautiful grove behind the house, through which there is a spacious gravel walk, guarded by a number of marble statues, whose genealogy I have not yet studied." Charles Willson Peale painted these statues in his portrait of Mrs Robert Morris in the 1780s.

In 1760, William Williams portrayed Deborah Richmond in a garden with statues. An illustration of this painting is in the section of this blog describing garden alcoves.

Hannah Callender visited William Peters' garden at Belmont in 1762, near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She noted, "On the right you enter a labyrinth of hedge of low cedar and spruce. In the middle stands a statue of Apollo. In the garden are statues of Diana, Fame and Mercury with urns."

Around 1767, John Singleton Copley painted a fountain statue in Rebecca Boylston's portrait. Copley was known to use English prints as models for his work. And in 1783, he painted John Adams with a garden statue as well.

By 1772, statues of Roman gods Venus, Apollo, and Bacchus graced John Custis' garden in Virginia. Nearby in 1774, while visiting John Tayloe's garden in Mount Airy, Virginia, a young schoolmaster reported, "He has also a large well formed, beautiful Garden, as fine in every Respect as any I have seen in Virginia. In it stand four large beautiful Marble Statues."

Charles Willson Peale painted statues in several of his portraits. His 1770 portrait of John Beale Bordley and his 1772 painting of William Paca both pictured prominent statues not mentioned elsewhere in period records.

While statues sat in the middle of green squares, or flanked garden walks or sat on garden gates, others found more exotic positions. In 1791, Reverand William Bentley visited the garden of Boston merchant Joseph Barrell. "His garden is beyond any example I have soon. A young grove is growing in the background, in the middle of which is a pond, decorated with four ships at anchor, and a marble figure in the centre...The Squares are decorated with Marble figures as large as life." More modest statues began appearing in craftsmen's gardens as well. In 1795, in Annapolis, Maryland, silversmith William Faris noted, "In the evening Cut the Sage by the Statue."

Garden statues produced by both Amerian and European artists became more widely available in the last years of the 18th century. In 1796, Philadelphia newspaper advertised, "To be sold...Six elegant carved figures, the manufacture of an artist is this country, and made from materials of clay dug near the city, they are used for ornaments for gardens, or ballustrades, at the tops of houses or manels in the parlour, they are well burned and will stand any weather without being injured. and the represent Mars, and Minerva, Paris and Helen, A Male and Female Gardner."

By the end of the century, American gentry were coming up with ingenious places to place their ornamental statues. Many statues made it from garden to housetop roof. Margaret and Gerard Briscoe placed full sized statues perched on marble pedestals at the end of each row of apple trees in their orchard at Clover Dale in Frederick County, Maryland. Artist Charles Peale Polk painted her proudly seated before a view of her orchard with statues in 1799.

In 1801, Timothy Dexter placed statues around the wall of his house as well as on its roof in Newburyport, Massachusettes.
Garden statues were gaining in visibility in the early republic as owners of public pleasure gardens began reflecting the ideals and heros of the new nation as icons in their gardens. In 1798, at the Columbia Gardens in New York City, a visitor reported, "I have been to...the Columbia gardens...placed all around were marble busts, beautiful figures of Diana, Cupid and Venus." And soon other garden owners followed suit. A newspaper advertisement for the Mount Vernon Gardens in New York City boasted in 1800, "lately imported from Europe...nineteen statues...Socrates, Cicero, Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Milton...the illustrious and immortal Washington...and miscellaneous figures from Greek mythology."

Five years later, Vauxhall Gardens in New York City advertised, "procured from Europe a choice selection of Statues and Busts, mostly from the first models of Antiquity, and worthy the attention of Amateurs...Washington, Cicero, Ajax, Antonious (in two poses, Hannibla, the Belvidere Apollo (in four sizes), Venus, Hebe (in two poses), Hamilton, Demostenes, Plenty, Hercules, Time, Ceres, Security, Modesty, Addison, Cleopatra (in two poses), Niobe, Pompey in two poses, Pope, The Medici Apollo, and Thalia."

The public settings of these gardens occasionally invited mischief. In the same year, in Charleston, South Carolina, the Botanic Garden offered, "One Hundred Dollars Reward. On Thursday Evening last, after sun-set, some evil minded person, taking advantage of the Gardener's absence, knocked at the Gate, and on being admitted treated the servant insolently for not admitting him sooner; he went directly to the Statue of Mercury, which was standing in the middle of the Garden, and threw it down, by which means it is entirely destroyed. The man was well dressed."

Maryland's Revolutionary War officer John Eager Howard's home Belvedere on a hill in Baltimore, was noted for its magnificent gardens graced with statues, much as the gardens at the papal Belvedere of Julius II boasted statues during the Italian Renaissance.

In 1802, Eliza Southgate visited Hasket Derby in Salem, Massachusettes, and dramatically reported, "From the lower gate you have a fine perspective view of the whole range, rising gradually until the sight is terminated by a hermitage...The hermitage...was scarcely perceptible at a distance; a large weeping willow swept the roof with its brances and bespoke the melancholy inhabitant. We caught a view of the little hut as we advanced thro' the opening of the trees; it was covered with bark; a small low door, slightly latched immediately opened at our touch; a venerable old man [stone statue] was seated in the center with a prayer book in one hand while the other supported his cheek, and rested on an old table which, like the hermit, seemed moulding to decay...a tattered coverlet was spread over a bed of straw...I left him impressed with veneration and fear which the mystery of his situation seemed to create."
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Plants in Early American Gardens - Karl Rosenfield Peony

Karl Rosenfield Peony (Paeonia lactiflora cv.)

Both European and Asian peonies have been cultivated since ancient times. Those native to central China and Siberia (varieties of Paeonia lactiflora) were first introduced to the West by the 18th century and by 1784 breeding with the European peony was occurring in France and Britain. Because peonies are such long-lived plants, many 19th-century cultivars are still available. Thomas Jefferson noted “Piony” in a list of hardy perennials as early as 1771. ‘Karl Rosenfield’ was introduced in 1908 by John F. Rosenfield, an American peony breeder. The brightly colored flowers attract butterflies.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Nurseryman - Prosper Julius A Berckmans 1830-1910–Augusta, Georgia

"Louis Mathieu Eduoard Berckmans was born in 1801 in Lierre, Belgium, a small town between Brussels and Antwerp, known for lacemaking, textiles and the crafting of musical instruments. His coming of age experience included the Napoleonic Wars, the consolidation of his country with Holland following the Congress of Vienna in 1815 and the subsequent unrest and eventual secession of Belgium years later. A member of the lesser nobility, he was well-educated, spoke French and German, enjoyed and played music, and created art. Trained as a physician, he also loved the natural world and became well-known in his homeland as a talented horticulturist. 

"In the 1820s, he married the love of his life, Marie Gaudens. More than 40 years after her death he would remark to friends, “My first wife…was an angel from heaven, God bless her.” In October 1830 Marie gave birth to a son, Prosper Jules Alphonse, and died soon after. Prosper became Louis’s “dear boy,” the apple of his eye. Four years later Louis remarried Holland-born Elizabeth Charlotte Arnoldine Rubens who gave him a second son, Emile, in 1837. According to the Smithsonian, Prosper was educated in France in horticulture and at age 17 returned to his father’s estates while studying at the Botanical Gardens in Brussels. 

"At age 20, with his father’s blessing, Prosper sailed to the United States to search for a good home for the family. There he travelled extensively, including a sojourn in Georgia to examine Rome, where a colony of Belgian expatriates had already settled. In July 1851, he returned North for the arrival from Belgium of his stepmother, younger half-brother and father, who had brought horticultural specimens from the homeland. 

 "In spite of his son’s enthusiasm for Georgia, the elder Berckmans decided to settle in Plainfield, N.J., where he and Prosper began a nursery to cultivate pears and experiment with other plants. The family was well-received and met some American luminaries. New Yorker Andrew Jackson Downing, often considered the father of American landscape, and author of the 1845 Fruit and Fruit Trees of America, sought out Louis Berckmans who he declared would “be a great acquisition in the society of American fruit growers and pomologists…. We rejoice that such a man has settled among us.” Downing’s unfortunate death in July 1852 cut short what might have been a long and productive relationship. By 1856 Dr. Berckmans was prominent enough that he was asked to judge in the United States Agricultural Exhibit. In New Jersey, Prosper married New Jersey-born Mary Craig, who in 1857 gave birth to the first of three sons, Louis Alphonse. 

"After several New Jersey winters, the South’s climate began to beckon. In 1857 Dr. Berckmans bought almost 145 acres on the south side of Washington Road and dubbed it Pearmont. To the west was the Fruitland Nursery property of Dennis Redmond who, like Dr. Berckmans, was an immigrant. Born in Ireland, Redmond had settled in Utica, N.Y. Hired by Daniel Lee, a fellow New Yorker who had moved to Augusta to become editor of the Southern Cultivator, Redmond became first a correspondent, then assistant editor, for the magazine. Both Lee and Redmond were proponents of agricultural reform in the South, including fruit cultivation, which they promoted in the pages of their publication. 

"Redmond’s property had been the orchard portion of James Coleman’s Bedford Nursery. As early as 1853 Redmond had begun advertising in The Augusta Chronicle the sale of fruit, fowls and trees from Bedford Nursery. And in 1854 he purchased 315 acres that included the Bedford orchard and gave the nursery the name Fruitland. In 1858 Louis Berckman purchased Fruitland from Redmond and combined it with Pearmont. Redmond then bought the land to the east of Pearmont naming it Vineland for the vineyards he began to cultivate there. (For an interesting analysis of Fruitland and Redmond, readers might enjoy an article by Dr. Philip Herrington, Augusta native and history professor at James Madison University, in the November 2012 issue of the Journal of Southern History.) Dr. Berckmans and Prosper’s young family moved to Augusta in 1857 with Emile following in 1858. Louis’s wife Elizabeth never joined him in Augusta, staying in Plainfield where son Emile later returned. Elizabeth, along with an Irish servant named Anna, appeared in the 1860 census living with $20,000 in real estate and $3,000 in personal property. In 1863 Emile, living in Plainfield, registered for the U.S. Army draft enacted in that year. Emile evidently remained in the North for life. In 1870 he married a New Jersey girl named Elizabeth, a fellow music teacher. In the Plainfield city directory of 1883, his occupation was still music teacher. ”

"In 1858-59 the first ads for the Descriptive Catalogue of Fruit and Ornamental Trees, Shrubs, Vines, Roses, Evergreens, Hedge Plants, &c., cultivated and for sale at Fruitland Nursery in Augusta, Ga., by P. J. Berckmans & Company” began appearing. The catalog could be obtained at Berckmans or at Mr. V. LaTaste’s Grocery Store in town. By 1860 Prosper appeared in the census with real estate worth $18,000 and a personal estate valued at $8,000. In addition to his father, wife and son, the household included Joseph Tice, a laborer from Belgium; Peter Benne, a nurseryman from France; Albert Coles, a clerk from New Jersey; and Rose Kelly a servant from Ireland. They were building one of the largest and most successful nurseries in the South. 

Prosper Julius A Berckmans 1830-1910

"During the Civil War, they provided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy and donated to the mayor’s charity for wounded soldiers. Prosper and Mary added two more sons to their family—Robert Craig, born in 1864, and Prosper Julius Alphonse Jr., born in 1866. During the Civil War they provided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy… In 1870 Dr. Louis M.E. Berckmans left the business in the capable hands of his son and, upon the invitation of Georgia author and newspaper columnist Charles Smith, better known as Bill Arp, he moved to Rome, Ga., where he lived on Horse Leg Mountain, which he nicknamed Mt. Alto. In a fascinating article on Rome’s Belgian colony in 1977, author Bernice Couey Bishop described his contented life there. His home was a 12- by 15-foot cabin of stone and wood, which he termed his “castle,” surrounded by a wall and terraces of flowers. On the hillside he planted orchards that fed him on pears, apples, peaches, plums and cherries. Inside the cozy home, books of the classics paintings of heroes lined the walls. There he cooked for himself, mainly vegetables and fruits, rice and grits. According to the article, the sounds of his violin often reverberated through the mountainside. Du Drovided vegetables and fruits for the Confederacy… 

"Periodically he walked the four miles down the mountain to town where he occasionally accompanied some of the accomplished local pianists on his violin. His character is reflected in letters of advice to his grandsons, whom he urged to follow the example of their father Prosper for honorable careers: “not seeking for…ambitious aims but shaping your course so as to deserve the esteem of your fellow man.” Distinction, he cautioned, “too often converts to vanity…a man can be happy and more so by following a plain, honorable course than by glitter.” 

 "On a visit to his beloved family 82- year-old Louis walked from Fruitland to downtown Augusta and back on December 6, 1883; he died the next day. Prosper buried him in Summerville Cemetery where he himself would one day rest. 

"...Prosper continued to operate the nursery, within a decade shipping catalogs throughout the region, nation and world. He served his profession well, founding the Georgia State Horticultural Society in 1876 and the Richmond County Agricultural Society in 1885, serving as president of each from its establishment until his death. In 1885-1886 he collected horticultural exhibits for the United States government for the New Orleans Exposition and the following year his peers elected him president of the American Pomological Society. For a number of years he presided over the editorial board of the Farmer and Gardener. In 1893 he gave the opening address at the Horticultural Congress held at the Chicago World’s Fair. A generous man, he also donated money and plantings to organizations and institutions such as the state mental institution in Milledgeville. 

"Having become a naturalized citizen, Berckmans took his civic responsibility seriously and participated in many community activities. Having become a naturalized citizen in 1854, Berckmans took his civic responsibility seriously and participated in many community activities. In the 1870s he became president of the Cotton States Mechanical and Agricultural Fair Association and in 1888 a leading member of the board of Augusta’s National Exposition. Active in political affairs as well, he served as the manager of elections in his precinct of Richmond County, as a grand juror and as a delegate to the Congressional Convention. His sons lived and worked with him at Fruitland while growing up and acquiring their educations. He sent sons Robert and Allie (Prosper Julius Alphonse Jr.), whom the paper called “two of the brightest and most popular Augusta boys,” to the University of Georgia. They, in turn, along with older brother Louis, who became a known designer of golf courses and the gardens at Radio City Music Hall, would become active professionals and community members, carrying on their father’s work. 

 "In 1897 Prosper’s wife Mary Craig died after more than 40 years of marriage. The next year Prosper, by then more than 70 years old, married 38-year-old Edith Fromm Purdy of New York, the editor of a fashion magazine. They met when he was on a visit to relatives in New York. The couple lived in Augusta and spent summers up North. In fact, in the 1900 census Prosper was enumerated with his new wife in Essex, N.J. 

 "In November 1910 Prosper J.A. Berckmans died after a long and productive life. At their first conference since the loss of their founder and long-time president, the Georgia State Horticultural Association dismissed their business agenda to pay tribute to their colleague and friend, whom one member said was the “greatest pomologist the South has ever seen.” Professor T. H. Hatten of the University of Georgia, whose campus landscape reflected Berckmans’s expertise, praised not only his “encyclopedic knowledge,” but his character: “His course was not that of the money-accumulating merchant but rather that of altruistic scientist who preferred the good of all before any considerations.” Although he was 80 when he died, Hatten said, “old age of the spirit was never his.” 

 "In 1903 Prosper had rewritten his will leaving the bulk of the estate, both in New Jersey and Georgia, to his second wife, including all the couple’s horses, carriages and personal belongings, 100 shares of stock in the company and 200 acres of Fruitland, including the dwelling house and the greenhouses of the nursery. The deed, however, was subject to the lease of the nursery portion to P.J. Berckmans and Co. Nursery until 1918. The rest of the estate, including the remaining Fruitland property was left jointly to the three sons, who already had received the largest share of the moneys from their father’s own inheritance of “patrimonial estates in Belgium” in the 1890s. The three brothers continued to run P.J. Berckmans & Company with Louis as president, Robert as vice-president and Allie as secretary-treasurer until the company lease on Edith’s portion ended in 1918 when they left the business. 

"In a few years, the new story of the estate as the Augusta National Golf Club began, with Louis and Allie both involved. It is fitting that the Augusta National keeps the name of the Berckmans family alive as a reminder of their remarkable legacy of beauty there and in landscapes throughout the world." 

This article appears in the April 2016 issue of Augusta Magazine. by Dr Lee Ann Caldwell of Augusta University

Plants in Early American Gardens - Eastern Ninebark

Bare Root Eastern Ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius)

Eastern Ninebark grows from Quebec to Virginia, Tennessee, and Michigan. A member of the rose family, it resembles Spirea in character and forms a dense, fast-growing shrub for naturalistic shrub borders. Philadelphia nurserymen John Bartram and Bernard McMahon, and the Prince Nurseries on Long Island, each included this unusual native shrub in their plant lists around the turn of the 19th century.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden History - Ornaments - Sundial

When I was a little girl traipsing through colonial revival & reconstructed 20th century colonial gardens along the Atlantic coast with my parents, I was completely captivated by the sundials measuring time by the shadow of the sun. Seems like every garden had one of those ancient mathematical contraptions.

In the Bible, the book of Isaiah mentioned, "Behold I will bring again the shadow of the degrees, which is gone down in the sundial of Ahaz."

Ancient Sundial.

Perhaps even Stonehenge was a sundial of sorts, but a tad larger and much more powerful than the sundials in the "colonial" gardens on this side of the Atlantic. Wildly intimidating experienced as a child and only a little less overwhelming viewed as an adult years later.

Once again at windy Stonehenge a few years ago.

Those I saw in the "colonial" gardens of my childhood were flat, geometric horizontal sundials, and the sun's shadow was cast by a style (a thin rod or a sharp, straight edge) onto a the flat, circular surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. As the sun moved across the sky, the shadow-edge aligned with different hour-lines on the plate.

Dad at a Virginia Sundial

They were mounted on wooden or stone bases, about 5-7 inches across, and just the right height for a curious little girl to look right down on them.

With Mother in a Garden

I was absolutely convinced that every colonial garden was supposed to have a sundial. It was required gear. But when I began researching 18th century gardens in the British American colonies, I just couldn't find many of them.

There is record of John Endecott ordering a sundial to be sent to Salem, Massachusettes from London in 1630, which William Bentley bought in 1810, donating it to the Peabody-Essex Institute in Salem.

Sundial at Mount Vernon, Virginia. Collection of the Mount Vernon Ladies Association.

I remember seeing one at Mount Vernon, greened brass & octagonal (similar to one George Washington ordered in 1785) supported on a wood pedestal, which I suppose has been replaced over & over. (I think the sundial at Mount Vernon was donated to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association in 1938.) There is also a sundail on a stone pedestal at the home of George Washington's mother, reported to be original.

Mary Ball Washington (1709-1789)'s Sundial, Fredericksburg, Virginia.

And Thomas Jefferson wrote to Mr. Clay in 1811, that he was amusing himself with "an horizontal dial for the latitude of this place." There is an unusual sundial mounted at Monticello overlooking the terrace.

Sundial on Porch at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia.

None of the other journals or letters that I poured over even mentioned them, and I only found one noted in an old Maryland deed.

Perhaps they were uncommon in 18th century America, because clocks were beginning to apprear with some frequency. Or perhaps many colonials carried portable, hand-held sundials with them, similar to the one Lafayette presented to George Washington. Or perhaps sundials became popular garden ornaments in America in the 19th century, which would explain their explosion in colonial revival gardens.

Or perhaps, truth be told, I missed them. I would be grateful to anyone who might point me to an 18th century American reference to a sundial.

In the meanwhile, in 1768 in Queen Anne's County Maryland, one deed did refer to: "one sun dial set on cedar post."

Plants in Early American Gardens - Great Blue Lobelia

Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)

This native wildflower has been grown in American flower gardens since at least the beginning of the 19th century. At one time it was thought to be a cure for venereal disease, thus the botanical name. Philadelphia nurserymen John and William Bartram sent seed of the Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis) and the Great Lobelia (L. siphilitica) to Europe in 1784. In The American Gardener’s Calendar, 1806, Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon named “Lobelias of various kinds” first among the “beautiful ornamental plants [that] may now be collected from the woods, fields, and swamps [to] embellish the Flower-garden and Pleasure-grounds...” McMahon advertised seeds of this species in his 1804 broadsheet and the William Prince Nursery on Long Island offered it in 1818. Bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds are attracted to the tubular flowers, but deer typically avoid this plant due to its toxicity.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello