Plants in Early American Gardens - Musk Geranium

Musk Geranium (Geranium macrorrhizum)

A European native, Geranium macrorrhizum can be used to scent perfumes and potpourris. In Bulgaria, musk geranium oil is called zdravetz oil, and is sometimes used in perfumery. The scientific name comes from the Greek for crane, geranos, referring to the crane-shaped seed heads, while macrorrhizum translates to big root. Musk Geranium has been cultivated in gardens since at least 1658, when it was grown in the Oxford Botanic Garden in England.

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Bartram &- Botany - William Bartram & The Bartram Garden

William Bartram, 1739-1823 by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) 1808

William Bartram, an important American botanist, was a gentle and reclusive Quaker. Refusing appointments to teach botany or to accompany the Lewis and Clark expedition and never attending meetings of the American Philosophical Society, he was happiest with a quiet life of observation and drawing in the woods and in his father's garden. As his father, John Bartram, noted, "Botany and drawing [were] his darling delight." William's lasting fame is based on his richly descriptive account of a solitary journey that he made through the southern colonies in the 1770s, the Travels Through North & South Carolina, Georgia, East & West Florida, which was published in 1791.

Bartram had known Charles Willson Peale for years before Peale painted him for his museum collection in June 1808. One of Peale's most sympathetic likenesses, it reveals the subject's kindly disposition. The portrait represents a noteworthy American man of science, and may also express Peale's great interest in longevity and the achievements of old age, both Bartram's and his own. The flower emerging from Bartram's waistcoat is the fragrant Jasminum officinale, an exotic plant that had been naturalized in Europe for several centuries. It bears a resemblance to the equally fragrant Linnea borealis, a plant discovered by Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) and reproduced in his 1774 portrait by Alexander Roslin and engravings after it, similarly attached to his lapel. Peale may have intended a visual reference to the great botanist and founder of binomial nomenclature.

This portrait is a complex image that reveals far more than the likeness of a kindly old man. It works on many levels to present Bartram as a man of science, linked to the larger Enlightenment republic of letters, and yet it was also intended to serve as an exemplar of national accomplishment for Peale's museum audience.  The desire to assert a connection with the republic of learning, to participate in the project of the Enlightenment, and to create images that emphasized the scientific life were strong among men of science during the years surrounding the American Revolution.

A little background: Bartram's is America's oldest surviving botanic garden. John Bartram (1699-1777), early American botanist, explorer, & plant collector, began his garden in 1728, when he purchased a 102-acre farm close to Germantown, near Philadelphia in Pennsylvania. Bartram's garden grew into an extensive collection of familiar & intriguing native plants; as he devoted his life to the discovery of examples of new North American species. Bartram's lucrative business centered on the transatlantic transfer of plants.

Bartram died in the midst of the American Revolution; & his sons John Bartram, Jr. (1743–1812) & William Bartram (1739–1823), continued the family's international trade in plants from the beautiful garden. William became a naturalist, artist, & author. Under his influence the garden became an educational center training a new generation of scientific explorers. William’s Travels, published in 1791, chronicled his explorations in America's Southern states.

Between 1812 & 1850, Ann Bartram Carr (1779-1858), a daughter of John Bartram, Jr., maintained the family garden & business on the Schuylkill River with her husband Philadelphia printer Colonel Robert Carr (1778-1866) & his son John Bartram Carr (1804-1839). Their commercial focus remained on international trade in native North American plants..

Plants in Early American Gardens - Bare Root Witch Hazel

 Bare Root Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

Bare Root Witch Hazel (Hamamelis virginiana)

This large, fragrant flowering native shrub is the traditional source of the scent for Witch Hazel liniment. 

Potted plants were sent to England by John Clayton of Virginia, in 1743, and arrived “at Christmas and were then in full bloom.” The recipient, naturalist Mark Catesby, must have been impressed at a time when the majority of plants sent on long sea voyages perished. Catesby illustrated Witch Hazel in his major work, The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahaman Islands, published in sections beginning in 1729. This shrub is not attractive to deer.

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Bartram &- Botany - Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia

PHILADELPHIA (Interview on CBS from April 18, 2011)

Bartram’s Garden is like a hardy perennial, persisting, even thriving, in the toughest conditions.

It’s a lush 18th century oasis in the midst of an industrial desert. And I’m not exaggerating — there are oil tanks looming right across the river. It’s the oldest botanic garden in the United States, and includes a massive house. Located on the west bank of the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia’s Kingsessing neighborhood, Bartram’s Garden is named for Early American botanist, naturalist, and explorer John Bartram, the original do-it-yourselfer.

“He started out as a farmer, but he had a lifelong interest in plants and medicine. And according to correspondence, he often felt the lack of education,” said Stephanie Phillips, the development director. “And he wrote that if he’d had a better education, he probably would’ve gone into medicine. But not having that, he discovered botany, and decided that he was going to collect all the plants in North America, or perish in the attempt. He was a very determined individual.”

He did neither, but his achievement is still staggering.

“He went as far south as Florida, as far west as the Ohio River, and almost up to Canada. He travelled by foot, by horseback, and also by boat. And he did this in between his farming duties, so it was just a couple of months out of every year.”

Native and exotic plants he and his son William collected, including trees, still grace the property. One is the Franklinia, a flowering tree discovered in Georgia, named for Bartram’s friend Ben Franklin, another self-educated polymath. All of the Franklinias growing today are descended from those collected by the Bartrams; it hasn’t been seen in the wild since 1803.

Then there’s the decidedly un-Quakerish house, which alone is worth the trip.

“It was a rural outpost of Philadelphia, and actually people would approach the garden by river, which is why the river side of the house has this very fancy facade. One of the things he was accomplished at was stone carving and masonry. He created this house over several decades to look a little bit like an Italian villa. He carved the stone out of the Wissahickon Creek; some of the slabs are as long as 17 feet.”

Perhaps the most surprising part of a visit to Bartram’s Garden is this:

“Our grounds are free and open to the public, because we’re part of the City of Philadelphia’s park system. Guided tours are available on the weekends — you can just walk in. They’re available from 10 to 4; it includes a house or a garden tour.”

Best of all is just how alive this historic property feels.

“A lot of people feel this place is magical, and that the views year-round are great, because in the winter is the best time to see the river without all the greenery there.”

To plan a visit to Bartram’s Garden, check out the website: Bartram’s Garden.org..

History Blooms at Monticello - Roman Chamomile

Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile)

This ancient European herb remains a popular and useful plant in gardens today. The single-flowered Roman Chamomile has been considered the most potent medicinal form since the 13th century. 

It was grown in American gardens by the 1600s and Jefferson listed Chamomile as a kitchen garden herb in 1794. Low-growing plants produce single, white, daisy-like flowers and fragrant, lacy foliage.

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Garden Design - Topiary

Much Wenlock Priory, Shropshire, England

Springtime, sunshine, ruins, topiary...who could ask for more.

18th Century depiction of a gardener clipping

We live near the Ladew Topiary Gardens in Monkton, Maryland. They were built on a 250 acre estate by Harvey S. Ladew (1887-1976) after 1920. Ladew, who loved to "ride to the hounds," designed topiaries depicting a fox hunt with horses; riders, dogs, & fox clearing a hedge; elegant swans; an exotic giraffe; & even a landlocked Chinese junk with sails.

Ladew Topiary Gardens

A short ride north is a more traditional topiary garden at Longwood Gardens in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. In 1700, a Quaker farm family purchased the property from William Penn. Joshua & Samuel Peirce began planting an arboretum on the farm in 1798. By 1850, the site contained one of the finest collections of trees in the nation & one of the first public parks. The farm was purchased in 1906 by Pierre du Pont, so he could preserve the trees; and from 1907 until the 1930s, du Pont created today's gardens, where beauty is as important as scientific botany.

Longwood Gardens

Traveling a few hours further up the Atlantic coast reveals the 100 year old Wellesley, Massachusetts, Hunnewell Arboretum topiary of native American white pine & arborvite.

Green Animals Topiary Gardens

Nearby is the 19th century Green Animals Topiary Gardens in Portsmouth, Rhode Island.

Columbus, Ohio

For years we drove on Interstate 70 from Maryland to Indiana & back again almost monthly. About midway between, an ambitious 1990s topiary garden at Old Deaf School Park right in downtown Columbus, Ohio, replicates Georges Seurat's painting Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, consisting of 54 topiary people, 8 boats, 3 dogs, a monkey, a cat, & a pond.

Even a visit to Epcot in Florida with the grandchildren yeilds a topiary dinasour created, one might imagine, by Edward Scissorhands.

Levens Hall in 1833, Cumbria, England

My favoite topiary garden is Levens Hall (see above 1833, see below recent) in Cumbria, England. It was begun in the 17th century & restored in the 20th century. You can just sit on the benches there surrounded by the towering topiary feeling transported to another time & another world. You might even imagine yourself as a lady-in-waiting at Queen Elizabeth's court. In the photo at the beginning of this posting, the grounds at Much Wenlock Priory, a 12th century church, located in Shropshire, England also boast some mature, but less fanciful, topiary.

Levens Hall, Cumbria, England

Hidcote Manor in Gloucestershire, England, offers intimate topiary in herbaceous borders in the 20th century Arts and Crafts "rooms" of its garden.

Hidcote Manor, Hidcote Bartrim, near Chipping Campden, Gloucestershire, England

Penshurst Palace Kent, England

The more traditional topiary at Cliveden in Buckinghamshire, England, and at Drummond Castle Gardens in Perthshire, Scotland, are a review of Versailles with its balls, globes, cubes, obelisks, pyramids, cones, and spirals. Victorian Knightshayes Court in Devon, England, presents some amusing topiary in its gardens.

Cliveden, Taplow, Buckinghamshire, England

Drummond Castle, Ochtermuthill, Perthshire, Scotland

Knightshayes Garden, Tiverton, Devon, England

Great Dixter Gardens in East Sussex, England

Harry Potter runs through the great yew topiary gardens at Beckley Park in Oxfordshire, England, in the film Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Even the rugged clifftop Pormeirion in Gwynedd, Wales, overlooking Cardigan Bay, has topiary tucked into its woodland gardens. Go there only if you are in good shape, which I am not.

Beckley Park, Oxfordshire, England

Topiary is the art of creating sculptures using clipped trees and shrubs. For centuries, gardeners commonly have used evergreen, small leaf or needle, compact plants with dense foliage for topiary, including boxwood, arborvitae, bay laurel, holly, myrtle, common yew, and privet.

The term topiary had appeared in England as early as 1592, when it was referred to as "Topiarie woorke." In 1644, John Evelyn recorded in his diary, "There was much topiary worke, and columns in architecture about the hedges." And in 1680 another English work stated, "No topiary Hedge of Quickset Was e're so neatly cut."

In England, Alexander Pope shot and nearly killed figural topiary in his essay on "Verdant Sculpture" in The Guardian of September 1713, which mockingly described in his imaginary topiary-for-sale catalogue:

Adam and Eve in yew;

Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm;

Eve and the serpent very flourishing;

The tower of Babel, not yet finished;

St George in box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in condition to stick the dragon by next April; and

a quickset hog, shot up into a porcupine, by its being forgot a week in rainy weather.

Some of Pope's contemporaries turned from figural topiary, now held in some distain, to clipped hedges. The clipped hedge is a simple form of topiary used to create boundaries, walls or screens in a garden.

In 1729, Sir Thomas Lee married heiress, Elizabeth Sandys and set about to transform the gardens at Hartwell in Buckinghamshire County, England. Nothing in England's American colonies would match these enormous paths of clipped yew hedges, which served as paths for riding and walking; boundries for playing at bowls, and directing the visitor's line of sight from the formal grounds to the surrounding farmland.

By the middle of the 18th century, Charles Bridgeman and William Kent pretty much pruned the English garden clean of clipped hedges, mazes, and topiary. Fashion banned topiary from England's aristocratic gardens, however, it continued to flourish in cottagers' gardens, where balls, cones, and trees with several cleanly separated tiers were meticulously clipped year after year throughout the 19th century.

The term topiary was seldom, if ever, used in 18th century British America. In the designs of formal gardens around personal dwellings and public buildings especially in the first half of the 18th century, the method of clipping yew or other hedging into realistic or fanciful shapes--columns, balls, or obelisks was simply refered to as clipping.

1766 William Williams (Colonial American artist, 1727–1791) Deborah Richmond

The Sir Christopher Wren Building at the College of William and Mary in Virginia is the oldest college building in the United States. In 1732, Willliam Dawson reported that the garden in front of the Wren Building was, "...planted with evergreens kept in very good order."

Williamsburg, Virginia, Bodleian Plate England 1740

Ten years later, gardener John Custis noted in Williamsburg, "...the balls or standards having heads as big as a peck and the pyramids in full shape...I had very fine yews balls and pyramids which were established for more than 20 years." And in 1777, Ebenezer Hazard reported seeing the College of William and Mary at Williamsburg, "At this Front of the College is a large Court Yard, ornamented with Walks, Trees cut into different Forms, & Grass."

By 1736 in Boston, Thomas Hancock on Beacon Hill was writing, "Let me know also what you'l Take for 100 Small Yew Trees in the Rough, which I'd Frame up here to my own Fancy."

In July of 1734, the first notice of hedges appeared in Philadelphia, although we cannot be sure the gardener was clipping his hedges into unusual shapes, was a sad one, when the newspaper reported that, "Jacob Lee, a Gardiner, being overcome with the Heat as he was at work clipping of a Hedge, fell down and expired."

Garden planners in Pennsylvania added hedges clipped into a variety of forms to their garden alley ways. In 1754, at Springettsbury near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Ezra Stiles reported, "...passing a long spacious walk, set on each side with trees, on the summit of a gradual

In Alexander Graydon's memoirs, he noted the during the 18th century, Israel Pemberton's country seat near Philadelphia, was, "...laid out in the old fashioned style of uniformity, with walks and allies nodding to their brothers, and decorated with a number of evergreens, carefully clipped into pyramidal and conical forms."
d soon after."

John Bartram, son of Pennsylvania botanist William Bartram, wrote to Peter Collinson in 1740, of the garden at William Byrd's estate in Virginia, "Colonel Byrd is very prodigalle...new Gates, gravel Walks, hedges, and cedars finely twined."
ascent...besides the beautiful walk, ornamented with evergreens...Spruce hedges cut into beautiful figures."

Even artisan gardener & silversmith William Faris in 18th century Annapolis, regularly collected holly trees from nearby woods to plant on his city lot and kept them clipped into the form of sugar cones.

In America, topiary re-emerged with a fervor in Colonial Revival gardens 1880–1920. This continued as interest in restoring gardens around historic sites increased. A topiary maze was planted at the Governor's Palace, Colonial Williamsburg, in the 1930s.

The art of Pearl Fryar

The art of topiary, with its living medium, is alive and well in 21st century America. If you have been reading this blog, you already know that I am drawn to self-taught art. One of the most amazing contemporary garden artists is South Carolina's self-taught, outsider topiary artist Pearl Fryar.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Guinea Hen Flower

Guinea Hen Flower; Checkered Lily (Fritillaria meleagris)

This delightful bulb is native to English meadows and was grown in American gardens before 1700. If well-situated in moist ground, it can persist for many years naturalized in lawns or beds rich in leaf mold. Guinea Hen Flower is known by several names, including Snakes-head Lily, Madam Ugly, and Drooping Tulip. 

The 1597 edition of John Gerard’s Herbal lists it as Checkered Daffodil and Ginnie Hen Flower and describes the flowers as “…checkered most strangely... surpassing…the curiousest painting that Art can set downe.”

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

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