Plants in Early American Gardens - French Lavender

French Lavender (Lavandula stoechas)

French or Spanish Lavender (also once known as Stickadove Lavender) is native to the Mediterranean coastline of Europe. British herbalist John Gerard noted in 1633 that the apothecaries used it as a cure for headaches and chest colds and he recommended that the plants be protected during winter or put into pots or tubs and brought indoors. In fact, north of Zone 8, this lavender species should be maintained in an unheated room or porch during the winter months. Jefferson cultivated the hardier English Lavender (Lavandula angustifolia).

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

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

Reading in the Garden

1720 Anne Pollard. Anonymous colonial era American Limner.  The background of this painting is so dark, I cannot tell if she is inside or outside, perhaps in one of those dark storms.

1750 Joseph Badger (American Colonial Era artist, 1798-1765) Mrs. Nathaniel Brown (Anna Porter Brown)

1750-1760 Joseph Badger (American Colonial Era artist, 1798-1765)Mrs. John Edwards (Abigail Fowle)

1755 Benjamin West (American colonial era artist, 1738-1820). Mrs George Ross Anne Lawler

1764 John Singleton Copley (American Colonial Era artist, 1738-1815) detail Mary Greene Mrs Dan Hubbard

1764 John Singleton Copley (American Colonial Era artist, 1738-1815) Sarah Prince Gill

1767 James Claypoole, Jr. (American Colonial Era artist, 1743-1814) Ann Galloway Mrs Joseph Pemberton

1789 Ralph Earl (American artist, 1751-1801) Esther Boardman

1793 James Peale (American artist, 1749-1831) Ramsey Polk Family in Cecil County MD

1798 William Clarke (American painter, fl. 1785-1806) ) Mrs William Frazer  (Mary Reah) (1783-1816) of Delaware

Plants in Early American Gardens - Pheasant's Eye Daffodil

Pheasant's Eye Daffodil (Narcissus poeticus var. recurvus)

This species of daffodil grows wild in mountain meadows from France into Greece. It has been grown in Britain since Roman times and in this country since the 1600s. Though various forms were illustrated in seventeenth-century British herbals, the variety recurvus, or old Pheasant’s Eye, was not known until the early 1800s. Pheasant’s Eye is a late-blooming daffodil that naturalizes well in lawns and meadows.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

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

Primary Source - 1734 Gardener Dead

Philadelphia, July 11. The Weather has been so excessive hot for a Week past, that a great Number of People have fainted and fallen into Convulsions, and several have died...Tuesday one Jacob Lee, a Gardiner, being overcome with the Heat as he was at work clipping of a Hedge, fell down and expired soon after.

Pennsylvania Gazette

July 11, 1734.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Bare Root Sourwood

Bare Root Sourwood (Oxydendrum arboreum)

This very attractive native tree normally grows on slopes and ridges and along the edges of forests. It is common in woodlands from Pennsylvania southward through the mountains into western Florida and west into Louisiana, Tennessee, and Indiana. Also known as lily-of-the-valley tree, its flowers are extremely attractive to bees, and sourwood honey is a specialty in regions where the tree is common. Sourwood was introduced into cultivation by the 1750s and illustrated by North American plant explorer and botanist Mark Catesby. Philip Miller first successfully grew it in the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. Known in the 18th century as Andromeda arborea, Thomas Jefferson requested that plants of this species be sent to him in Paris while he was serving as Minister to France: twice in 1786, and again in 1788, specifically for his friend, Madame de Tessé.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

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

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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