Garden Design - Beehives

A beehive is a receptacle used as a home for bees. Most beehives are built by bees, but some are man-made. 
English woodcut 1658


Honey bees weren't native to North America, and were brought over by the English colonists in the early 17th century.

French Apiary 1560

Honey bees are four-winged insects which need to live together in communities composed of one queen, or perfect female; a small number of males or "drones;" and an indefinite number of undeveloped females or "neuters" (which are the workers). Bees produce wax and honey, pollinating plants as they do.
Dutch woodcut 1488

Honey bees fly from flower to flower collecting the plant's sugary nectar. While doing so, the insects' hairy bodies trap the dusty pollen from the flowers' anthers and then transport that substance to fertilize other flowers. Meanwhile, the bees internally process the watery nectar into dense honey, which they store in their hives as a communal food source in the winter.

Medieval Bestiary Bee Gallery

Worker or neuter bees–which live about five weeks in the summer–make wax from about the 10th day of their lives to the 16th. When workers are about 10 days old, they develop special wax-producing glands in their abdomens.

Virgil on Bees

The young bees then eat honey. The glands convert the sugar in the honey into wax, which seeps through small pores in the bee's body leaving tiny white flakes on its abdomen. Bees then chew the bits of wax, mold it, and add it to the construction of the honeycomb. Bees build the combs for the queen to lay her eggs into and to store honey to fed themselves through winter, when there are no flowers. Honeycombs consist of six-sided tubes, which begin as circles pressed side to side, an efficient form that uses less wax for the volume of honey held than other shapes like triangles or squares.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

In 1593, in 2 Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote, "Drones sucke not Eagles blood, but rob Bee-hiues."

Wicker bee hive. (Medieval Italian.)

One of the early English garden books, New Orchard and Garden, written by William Lawson in 1618, stated, "There remaineth one necessary thing...which in my Opinion makes as much for Ornament, as either flowers, or forme, or cleanness...which is Bees, well ordered."

To help his fellow gardeners achieve bees, well ordered, William Lawson wrote The Country Housewives Garden, Containing Rules for Hearbes and Seeds of Common Use...Together With the Husbandry of Bees in 1637. Interest in beekeeping grew, and Lawson's treastise was followed nearly a century later by Joseph Warder's The True Amazons, or the Monarchy of Bees, which was also published in London.

During the 18th and early 19th centuries, American gardeners and farmers harvested honey as an alternative to expensive imported sugar and harvested the beeswax from the hives for a number of commercial purposes.

Bees build their own hives in a dark enclosed, dry space like in a tree trunk or wall cavity or under the eves of a roof. For centuries, people have created artificial beehives to house bees, often in the garden, for the purpose of producing honey and wax while encouraging pollination of nearby precious plants. Many gardeners consider these hives as ornamentation in their gardens as well. Often a special section of the property was set aside to keep the bee hives. They were kept together in a bee-garden, a bee-yard, or a bee-fold.

Wenceslas Hollar - The bear and the honey

Gardeners of the period constructed several types of beehives. A beeskep, made of thick coils of grass or straw worked into the shape of a dome, was popular in 18th century England; but in America, boxhives made of wooden frames, often sitting on tall wooden legs, were more common in the 18th and 19th centuries. In its simplest form, there is a single entrance at the bottom of a beeskep with no internal structure, except what the bees build themselves. Bees attach their wax combs to the garden hive's roof and walls, just like they do in wild hives.

Frontispiece woodcut from John Day's PARLIAMENT OF BEES. 1641

In order to learn about the progress of their hives, beekeepers had only one option -- to inspect beeskeps from the bottom. It was nearly impossible to peek into the interior of occupied beeskeps for diseases and pests; and the removal of honey often meant the destruction of the entire hive. When it was time to harvest the honey, beekeepers drove the bees out of the skep, often to a waiting empty skep.

Honey from these hives was typically extracted by crushing the wax honeycomb to squeeze out the honey. This harvest method typically provided more beeswax but far less honey than modern methods. Many American households used beeswax to make candles in the 18th and 19th centuries. Most churches burned beeswax candles.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

The boxhives, more popular in America, were simple wooden shelters to house a swarm of bees. In 1797, in Annapolis, Maryland, silvermaker William Faris wrote, A (neighbor) "Made Me a pressent of Hive of Bees." Later he noted that he had "put the frame of the bee house together." After a few years, he declared, drove the Bees out of the Old Hive into a nother and took the honey, the Hive was Rotten and Ready to tumble to peaces."

Richard Parkison, an English visitor to the Chesapeake, reported at the end of the 18th century, "Honey-bees are kept in America with equal success as in England...I never saw a hive made of straw."

New Yorker John Nicholson wrote about housing bees early American beer in The Farmer's Assistant in 1820, "The method practised in this Country is, to have rows of beehives set close together, in a building made for the purpose, which is called the bee-house. The apiary, spoken of by British Writers, seems to be quite different from this; as the hives are recommended to stand 6, some say 12, feet apart; and to be firmly fixed in a stake set into the ground. We have, however, never seen any particular advantage pointed out, by having the hives so far apart; while the expense of the apiary must, in this way, be much greater, as every hive must have its separate roof or covering. We shall therefore speak of the apiary, or beehouse, as we have it in this Country.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

"It should be at a suitable distance from any place where cattle are kept, or where Horses are tied; from hogsties, and every other place where filth is collected. It is well to place it in a remote part of the garden, and let some shrubery grow round it for the Bees to light on, if they are so disposed, when they swarm. No trees should be near it. Let it stand leaning forward a little, facing the south, and clear of shade, with the front part of the roof projecting over considerably, to prevent rains from weting the hives. These should be kept clean, dry, and sufficiently warm in Winter; but not so warm as to tempt the Bees abroad in warm Winter-days."

It was also difficult to get honey from these wooden boxhives without damaging or destroying the colony and sending the bees into frenzied stinging. Honey bee stings release pheromones that prompt other nearby bees to attack.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

Angry honey bees inserted themselves into several battles in 18th & 19th century America. In North Carolina, Governor William Tryon wrote in 1771, "The Army marched and crossed Abbets Creek, & encamped on Captain Merril's plantation. A Valuabe tract of Land and well cultivated...This Night a false alarm was given by an uncommon Incident. The Horses of the Army, upwards of one Hundred, were at pasture with Bells Round their Necks, in a field near to the Line of Encampment; and in an adjoining Garden were several Bee Hives some Soldiers taking a Fancy for Honey overturned the Hives about Midnight the Bees being thus disturbed & enraged dispersed themselves among the Horses in the Pasture stinging them to such a degree that they broke in one confused Squadron over the fence, and Came on full Gallop & in full Chorus of Bells, up to the Camp. The out Centinels uninformed on the real Cause joined in the Signal of Alarm; and the Cry through the Camp was 'Stand to your Arms' Stand to your Arms."

A book on the Civil War battle at Antietam, Maryland, Unfurl Those Colors quotes Private John D. Hemmingen of the 130th PA: “In our line of advance a number of beehives were over turned, and the little fellows resented the intrusion, and did most unceremoniously charge upon us, accelerating our speed through the orchard toward the entrenched position of the enemy."

Fixed-comb beeskeps and boxhives remained popular in the United States until the 1850's, and yielded about 10-15 pounds of honey per colony a year, as compared to over 100 pounds in modern, manmade beehives.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

The beeswax collected from beehives may have been even more important than the honey for the local economy. Peter Force's "Tracts on Virginia" reported in 1650, that honey was sold at 2 shillings a gallon and beeswax at 4 shillings for 100 pounds.

In 1771, Pennsylvania exported 29,261 pounds of beeswax; and by 1773, the total had climbed to 64,546 pounds exported by Philadelphia merchants. That figure only represented the amount shipped to other locations, and not the untold pounds cast into beeswax candles by local professional chandlers, housewives, servants, and slaves.

The Pennsylvania Gazette contained ads that solicited beeswax as a barter exchange for merchandise.

In 1791, the shop of George Meade on Philadelphia's Walnut Street Wharf announced that it had hogsheads of Madeira Wine, Irish Linens, and Pork of prime quality that could be purchased with payments of, among other things, quantities of raw beeswax. And Philadelphia druggist George Hunter noted that his shop offered medicines, paints, brushes and dye stuffs that could be purchased by cash, Jersey State or Pennsylvania, or "bees wax."

Beeswax was used to treat cloth to make it water-resistant, including waxed clothes for shrouds, bedticking, and marine supplies. Beeswax was also used in printer's ink, polishes, sealing wax, cosmetics, ointments, grafting wax, and for decorative ornaments of wax fruits, flowers, and portraits.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

In North Carolina, the first record of beekeeping appeared in Albemarle County records in 1697. Court records across the colony show sales & export of beeswax and honey throughout the 18th century. In 1768, Royal Governor William Tryon (1729-1788) allowed the payment of quit rents in beeswax as well as money & other goods.

Elegant beehive

The honey bee was so important in the colonial economy that in 1776, the new state of New Jersey printed its image on its currency. In the 18th and 19th centuries, the beehive became an icon in Freemasonry as a symbol of industry and cooperation.

1772 Honey bees. Encyclopedie, of Dictionaire Raisonne Des Sciences of Denis Diderot.

The beeskep is one of the symbols of the state of Utah; because it was associated with the honey bee, an early symbol of Mormon pioneer industry and resourcefulness.

Garden to Table - Kitchen Garden

The Fuller Garden in the English Village at Plimoth Plantation, in Plymouth, Mass.

Ye Olde Kitchen Garden by Michael Tortorello

New York Times Published: July 6, 2011

Who was Good King Henry?

I first encountered the label in the Fedco Seeds catalog, as a common name for a plant in the genus Chenopodium. It’s an edible perennial with shoots like asparagus and leaves like spinach. But before Good King Henry was a salad green, he was, ostensibly, something nobler: European royalty.

There is no shortage of English Henrys to choose from, though few are remembered as paragons of good government. And did any of them have an appetite for roughage? On this question, history is mostly quiet.

A 1545 French herbal, or primitive botanical guide, mentions a “bon-Henri” (perhaps Henry IV of France), said Kathleen Wall, who cooks and gardens at Plimoth Plantation, a living history museum in Plymouth, Mass. But then Ms. Wall, 53, has also found a “bad Henry,” of German origin: der böse Heinrich.

What if Henry wasn’t a king at all, but an elf? That’s one of the hypotheses the botanical historian Judith Sumner put to me by e-mail.

“Henry (or Heinz or Heinrich) was a typical name for elves,” she wrote. “So the plant name may reflect some presumed magical qualities rather than commemorating an actual king. The ‘good’ part might mean it was safe to ingest.”

The exact namesake for Good King Henry may be lost to time. But then the plant itself, like so many others, has almost vanished as well. In the raised-bed gardens that flank the houses at Plimoth Plantation, Ms. Wall grew Good King Henry for years.

But “I didn’t save the seed,” said Ms. Wall, who bought it every year from catalogs instead. “And then the seed was gone for a long time.”

The mystery of Good King Henry made me wonder about other Colonial-era vegetables that have all but disappeared from our gardens and dinner plates. Gardeners today will routinely raise a dozen varieties of tomato, a plant utterly foreign to early Americans. So why do we neglect common Colonial food plants like burnet, smallage, skirrets, scorzonera, gooseberry and purslane? And how would they taste to us now?

When it comes to Good King Henry, Ms. Wall said, the flavor is easy to describe: bland. “That’s probably why it fell out of favor,” she said. “It wasn’t special. It doesn’t get into the recipe books, so it’s just forgotten.”

In contrast, she said, spinach, a green that “springs up in the English garden scene in the 1580s,” grew stalwartly through the country’s mild summers. And by the 17th century, “suddenly all the recipes called for spinach: salads of spinach, spinach boiled, with added butter and cinnamon and sugar and raisins.”

The story of early American kitchen gardening hides in recipes like these. Another source is herbals — what one modern historian calls “botanical bibles.” Yet botany, as we know it, is just a shadow on these pages. The herbal presents a pre-scientific universe, a realm of astrology and magic.

A “vegetable” could be any plant. An “herb” was a useful one, for the table or the medicine chest.

The colonists relied on popular guides like “The Herball, or Generall Historie of Plantes” (1597), 1,400 pages of reminiscences, folk medicine and superstition written by John Gerard. Domestic handbooks like Thomas Hill’s “Profitable Arte of Gardening” (1568) were more artful than horticultural.

“A lot of the time when they write about gardening,” Ms. Wall said, referring to authors like Hill, “they’re writing about the ancient Greeks” or Romans — that is, beliefs and ideals that dated back to Pliny the Younger.

Actually growing “herbs” to feed a New England household was anything but a scholarly pursuit. The average kitchen garden was about an acre, the historian James E. McWilliams wrote in a monograph titled “ ‘To Forward Well-Flavored Productions’: The Kitchen Garden in Early New England,” from the March 2004 issue of The New England Quarterly. Hired help was practically nonexistent. Given the abundance of land, settlers had their own acres to harvest. And men were preoccupied with tending livestock and sowing grains.

That meant “this arduous task fell almost entirely to women,” Mr. McWilliams wrote. Then, as now, raised beds were standard. The soil needed to be improved, Mr. McWilliams noted: “stirred,” loosened and loaded with dung. A garden often would include an orchard of fruit trees, like apples, pears, quince and plums. And these required their own pruning and picking.

Ms. Wall has tried this kind of labor for herself in the recreated gardens outside each of the 12 historical dwellings at Plimoth Plantation. “I’m a housewife of perpetual visitation,” she said. “I travel between houses and help people.”

After 30 years at the museum, Ms. Wall is past complaining about the period costumes. But going without glasses, as most 17th-century women did, is an abiding nuisance. “It’s really hard for me to put seed in without having my nose in the ground,” she said. And weeds “have to grow large enough that I can tell them from my plants.”

It doesn’t help matters that many Colonial-era “herbs,” like dandelions or patience dock (Rumex patientia), would now be tarred as weeds. Burnet (Sanguisorba officinalis), one of Ms. Wall’s favorites, can be found growing by the side of the road.

The plant has a tireless quality. The flowers, typically maroon, will bloom all summer if you keep picking them, she said. And the little leaves of salad burnet (Sanguisorba minor) can be harvested almost all year.

“Why is this something that doesn’t show up in all these salad mixes?” she said.

Burnet turns up on a list of 59 seeds that John Winthrop Jr., a future governor of the Colony of Connecticut, ordered in 1631 from a London grocer, Robert Hill. And herbals widely recommended burnet, with its cucumber-like flavor, for doctoring wine after long sea voyages. “I dare say a lot of that wine needed help,” Ms. Wall said.

Yet burnet fell out of favor. For all her research, Ms. Wall has yet to answer the question of what makes something fashionable.

A case study, she said, could be smallage (Apium graveolens). The biennial plant grows a stalk like celery, but thicker and taller. And for 300 years — in between “medieval English cookery” and the “18th century,” Ms. Wall said — it displaced celery in cookbooks.

She discovered why after she and the head Plimoth horticulturist conducted a long quest for smallage, and she finally grew out the seeds herself.

“I was making potato salad,” she said, “and I didn’t have any celery. Then I realized, I have smallage. And in potato salad, it was heaven.”

And then there are the historical plants whose disappearance is no cause for mourning. A good riddance goes out to the root crop skirrets (Sium sisarum), said Clarissa Dillon, 77, who practices historical cooking and gardening at the 1696 Thomas Massey House in Marple Township, Pa.

John Winthrop Jr. ordered three ounces of skirret seed for his father’s Massachusetts farmstead. The medicine of the era attributed some colorful qualities to the plant, notes Ann Leighton’s 1970 classic, “Early American Gardens: ‘For Meate or Medicine.’ ”

“ ‘They are something windie, by reason whereof they also provoke lust,’ ” Ms. Leighton wrote, quoting John Gerard’s herbal. “ ‘The women in Susula ... prepare the roots for their husbands, and know full well wherefore and why.’ ” (If ardor persists for more than four hours, call your physician.)

It’s no great challenge coaxing a bunch of skirrets to fill the yard. The horticulturist who started Dr. Dillon on skirrets “did not tell me how enthusiastic the seeds are,” she said. “And I have them everywhere.”

A cook needs an awful lot of plants to yield more than a teaspoon of roasted pulp. The edible root “is supposed to be the size of a man’s thumb,” Dr. Dillon said. But “my skirrets tend to be, as a friend said, the size of her dog’s toenails.”

And these toenails need to be peeled, too. “What’s really awful,” Dr. Dillon added, is the “wire” that runs through another forsaken and fast-spreading root crop, scorzonera (which botanists know as Scorzonera hispanica and civilians call viper’s grass). This core runs through the center of the root and must be removed. Far easier, she said, is to substitute parsnips, which are bigger, sweeter, better.

Gerard had his notions of why a woman would favor skirrets in the kitchen (and the bedroom). But Dr. Dillon wrote her dissertation on women and 18th-century kitchen gardens in eastern Pennsylvania, while she was teaching elementary school and raising a child. The experience helped her formulate a rule about why a taxing plant like skirrets might fall into the compost heap of history.

“Women don’t make work for themselves,” Dr. Dillon said. “They have enough to do.”

Clarissa Dillon at the 1696 Thomas Massey House in Marple Township, Pa.

Growing History

A PACKET of 250 purslane seeds costs about $3.60 from Seeds of Change, (888) 762-7333 or seedsofchange.com. Not a bad price, though it may be 249 purslane seeds too many. Like a lot of the “sallet” greens that the colonists brought with them to the New World, purslane (Portulaca oleracea) can colonize a yard all on its own.

A single specimen can produce a million seeds. Let a purslane patch go, said Clarissa Dillon, a food and garden historian, and “it’s the plant that eats your driveway.”

“It will come up through asphalt,” she said.

You can spray the thick red stem and the sprawling oval leaves with weed killer, Dr. Dillon added, which is what most gardeners do. Or you can pickle the whole plant with “equal parts vinegar and stale beer,” which is what she prefers.

Dr. Dillon recommends blanching the purslane first for a quick three-count. “I don’t want it to be limp,” she said. She learned this preparation from a “receipt” (that is, a recipe) in her 1750 edition of “The Compleat Housewife: Or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman’s Companion.”

Tricks like these were once common knowledge among kitchen gardeners, said Joel Fry, the curator at Bartram’s Garden in Philadelphia, which dates from 1728. “One of the reasons they’ve disappeared,” he said of some colonial-era food plants, “is we don’t know what to do with them.”

Dr. Dillon learned a method for removing the stringy core from scorzonera. Overbaking the root crop for a few minutes can make the “wire” less unwieldy. There’s only one way to find out if it’s worth it: Fedco Seeds, fedcoseeds.com or (207) 873-7333, lists a 1/8-ounce packet for $1.30. (A trial packet of smallage, available under the name Afina Cutting Celery, is even cheaper at just 90 cents.)

Fedco sold out of skirret seed this spring. But Amishland Heirloom Seeds offers a packet of 20 seeds for $2.50; amishlandseeds.com.

The sallet green Good King Henry (Chenopodium bonus-henricus) can be found at Fedco as well. And to the long list of aliases for the plant, Fedco adds Lincolnshire spinach and goosefoot.

Like goosefoot (and goose itself), the gooseberry (Ribes hirtellum or uva-crispa) seems to have dropped off the nation’s menu at least a century ago. The cause was no mystery: federal authorities started to quarantine and eradicate the thorny shrub in 1917 to limit the spread of white pine blister rust. In 2003, New York State finally legalized the gooseberry and its close cousin, the red currant. (Sales of gooseberry and various currant shrubs remain restricted in a cluster of Eastern states, including parts of New Jersey.)

Hardy gooseberries were native to the New World. But that didn’t stop the English from importing their own varieties, said Kathleen Wall, a historical culinarian. These plants bore bigger, sweeter fruit. They also died in the warmer climate. Raintree Nursery, raintreenursery.com or (800) 391-8892, sells a dozen cultivars (most for $11.50), including a few American gooseberries that have a resistance to powdery mildew.

The English never lost their taste for gooseberries, Ms. Wall said, but colonial gardeners were typically pragmatic. When a tart called for small, sour fruit, they looked to the yard and started cooking with cranberries..

Tho Jefferson's (1743-1824) Legacy in Gardening & Food

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

 Thomas Jefferson's Legacy in Gardening and Food

Jefferson's Monticello garden was a Revolutionary American garden. One wonders if anyone else had ever before assembled such a collection of vegetable novelties, culled from virtually every western culture known at the time, then disseminated by Jefferson with the persistence of a religious reformer, a seedy evangelist. Here grew the earth's melting pot of immigrant vegetables: an Ellis Island of introductions, the whole world of hardy economic plants: 330 varieties of eighty-nine species of vegetables and herbs, 170 varieties of the finest fruit varieties known at the time. The Jefferson legacy supporting small farmers, vegetable cuisine, and sustainable agriculture is poignantly topical today.

Thomas Jefferson's 1,000-foot-long, terraced vegetable garden is the true American garden: practical, expansive, casual, diverse, wrought from a world of edible immigrants. Although the variable continental climate of Virginia presents unique horticultural challenges, few places on earth combine tropical heat and humidity with mildly temperate winters like those at Monticello. The microclimate, and really the genius, of the south-facing, terraced Monticello garden exaggerates the summer warmth, tempers the winter cold, and captures an abundant wealth of crop-ripening sunshine. To grow so many tropical species like sweet potatoes, peanuts, and lima beans in the same garden as traditional cool-weather crops like cauliflower, endive, and celery, without artificial hot beds, had likely never been done before Thomas Jefferson accomplished this feat at Monticello.

Aside from its diverse population of mostly introduced crops, the Monticello garden was American in its size and scope, experimental character, and expansive visual sweep. 600,000 cubic feet of Piedmont red clay was moved with a cart and mule to create the "hanging garden," and the terrace was supported by a rock wall as tall as fifteen feet and also running 1,000 feet. Below is the six-acre fruit garden that contained 170 varieties of the most celebrated varieties known at the time. As it stretches to the western horizon, seemingly limitlessly against the background of Montalto, Jefferson's "high mountain" to the southwest, or as one looks across the garden terrace to the forty miles of rolling Piedmont, the "sea view," one is struck by the garden's uniquely continental panorama.

Thomas Jefferson liked to eat vegetables, which "constitute my principal diet," and his role in linking the garden with the kitchen into a cuisine defined as "half French, half Virginian" was a pioneering concept in the history of American food. The Monticello kitchen, as well as the table at the President's House in Washington, expressed a seething broil of new, culinary traditions based on these recent garden introductions: French fries, peanuts, Johnny-cakes, gumbo, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pudding, sesame seed oil, fried eggplant, perhaps such American icons as potato chips, tomato catsup, and pumpkin pie. The western traditions of gardening—in England, France, Spain, the Mediterranean—were blended into a dynamic and unique Monticello cookery through the influence of emerging colonial European, native American, slave, Creole and southwestern vegetables.

Jefferson's daughter, Martha, left a recipe for okra soup, in effect, gumbo, a compelling metaphor for the Monticello garden: a rich blend of American native vegetables grown by American Indians like lima beans and cymlins; South and Central American discoveries adapted by both northern (potatoes) and southern (tomatoes) Europeans; and tied together by an African plant, okra, grown by both the French and enslaved blacks in the West Indies, rarely known among white Virginians, and prepared by African-American chefs at Monticello.

Jefferson, according to culinary historian Karen Hess, was "our most illustrious epicure, in fact, our only epicurean President," and his devotion to fresh produce, whether in the President's House at a state dinner, or at Monticello for the large numbers of celebrity tourists who crowded the retired President's table, remains a central legacy of Jefferson's gardening career. Jefferson also promoted commercial market gardening. The remarkable calendar he compiled while President, delineating the first and last appearance of thirty-seven vegetables in the Washington DC farmer's market, is among the most revelatory documents in the history of American food. As well, it was Jefferson himself who obtained new vegetable varieties from foreign consuls, passed them on to Washington market gardeners, and ordered his maitre'd to pay the highest prices for the earliest produce.

In 1792 Jefferson, while serving as Secretary of State in Philadelphia, received a letter from his daughter, Martha, complaining about the insect-riddled plants in the Monticello Vegetable Garden. His response is a stirring anthem to the organic gardening movement. "We will try this winter to cover our garden with a heavy coating of manure. When is rich it bids defiance to droughts, yields in abundance, and of the best quality. I suspect that the insect which have harassed you have been encouraged by the feebleness of your plants; and that has been produced by the lean state of the soil." Jefferson's rallying cry on the remedial value of manure, the horticultural rewards of soil improvement, has inspired gardeners of all kinds. Jefferson not only enjoyed the garden process and relished eating fresh produce, but the garden also functioned as an experimental laboratory, in some ways, as a vehicle for social change. He wrote that, "the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture," and Jefferson ranked the introduction of the olive tree and upland rice into the United States with his authorship of the Declaration of Independence. A Johnny Apple seed of the vegetable world, Jefferson passed out seeds of his latest novelty with messiahinistic fervor: not only to friends and neighbors like George Divers and John Hartwell Cocke, his family of daughters, granddaughers, and sons in law, but to fellow politicians—from George Washington to James Madison—and the leading plantsmen of the early nineteenth century like McMahon, William Bartram, William Hamiton of Philadelphia, and Andre Thouin of Paris.  Although few species can be proven as Jefferson introductions into American gardens, the recitation of vegetables grown at Monticello is a meditative chant of rare, unusual, and pioneering species: asparagus bean, sea kale, tomatoes, rutabaga, lima beans, okra, potato pumpkins, winter melons, tree onion, peanuts, "sprout kale," serpentine cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussells sprouts, orach, endive, peanuts, chick peas, cayenne pepper, "esculent Rhubarb," black salsify, sesame, eggplant.

Although a modest endeavor, Jefferson's only published horticultural work was "A General Gardening Calendar," a monthly guide to kitchen gardening that appeared in a May 21, 1824 edition of the American Farmer, a Baltimore periodical of progressive agriculture. Here Jefferson authoritatively instructed gardeners to plant a thimble spool of lettuce seed every Monday morning from February 1 to September 1, as if the Monday morning lettuce sowing was a life lesson or discipline akin to dutifully saying your prayers or cleaning one's dinner plate; the rites of Monday morning led to a long life, happiness, and good teeth.

In 2009, White House chef and Coordinator of the White House Food Initiative, Sam Kass, reserved a discrete section of this garden in honor of Thomas Jefferson. In the spring of 2009 it was planted with seeds and plants of Thomas Jefferson's favorite vegetable varieties: Tennis-ball and Brown Dutch lettuce, Prickly-seeded spinach and Marseilles fig. The Jefferson legacy in gardening and food is not a mere historical curiosity, but is a compelling force in the movement toward a more sustainable agricultural future.

Peter J. Hatch, Director Monticello Gardens and Grounds, 2010

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

Tho Jefferson's (1743-1824) Letters mentioning Gardening

 

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

1786 May 4.  (Jefferson to John Page).  "The gardening in that country [England] is the article in which it surpasses all the earth. I mean their pleasure gardening. This indeed went far beyond my ideas."

John Page (1743–1808) of Rosewell in Gloucester County was a noted amateur astronomer & served in the Virginia legislature & as governor of the state.

1890 Advice on teaching Boys to Garden

The Christian Recorder, August 21, 1890, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Boys and Gardens

"By all means, let the boy have a garden, If it be only a bunch of sunflowers in a six-feet square city back yard, let him have something of his own to plant and watch the growing of.

"But if you live in the country, you can let him have a considerable plot of ground, where he can raise flowers, and also edible vegetables. Nothing will ever taste so good to him as his own lettuce and beets and radishes.

"Don’t imagine for a moment, however, that your boy, unless he be a genius, will know how to take care of these plants of his. No matter how much he loves them, he will require a good many weary hours of careful teaching and training before he is able to do efficiently even his small duty by his garden patch.

"The trouble is that boys love so many things. If they loved their garden only, or their lessons only, or ball-playing only, or stamp-collecting only; but it is with them as it is with the perplexed lover – “how happy could they be with either were t’other dear charmer away!” It is a good deal more trouble to see that the boy keeps his garden well than it would be to keep it yourself; but it is a good deal of trouble to bring up a boy right anyhow, and that is something that a mother might as well understand at the outset. Those who try to do it by easy means generally rue it with anguish of soul in the end.

“I never knew a boy who was fond of a garden,” said a wise man who had brought up many boys , “to go far astray. There seems to be something about working in the soil and loving its products that does the boys good morally as well as physically.”

And honest Jan Ridd says, “The more a man can fling his arms around Nature’s neck, the more he can lie upon her bosom like an infant, the more that man shall earn the trust of his fellow-men.” Again he says, “There is nothing better to take hot tempers out of us than to go gardening boldly in the spring of the year.” And every one who has tried this can testify that it is true.

"A certain little boy , who left a garden at home to take a trip with some friends, wrote home to his mother,” I am having a splendid time, but I wish every morning that I was sitting on my little green cricket in the backyard, watching my plants grow.” This little boy always thought that some time, if he watched closely enough, he should see a flower open, but beyond a few four o’clocks, he has never witnessed this ever-recurring but magically secret phenomenon.

"If possible, supply your own table with your boy’ s produce at ruling market rates, having it well understood beforehand how the money will be expended. Praise whenever you consistently can; offer prizes for the best fruits, flowers and vegetables, if you have several boys at work; and in every way treat the enterprise with consideration and respect. Many a boy who has put his best efforts into his garden loses heart when he hears it sneered at or made light of ” Your garden? Oh dear! I never thought of that! What does that amount to?”

"It cannot be too early impressed upon a boy that whatever he does should be done well. Therefore make his garden seem as important as you can without dwelling unduly upon it; and remember that the physical and moral effects of the garden are not all. The information that a boy gets from it concerning a variety of seed and soil may be invaluable to him later on.".

Interior of 1873 New York Seed & Plant Store

Inside the Store Wood engraving from Vick's Illustrated Floral Guide for 1873

History Blooms at Monticello - Dwarf Crested Iris

Dwarf Crested Iris (Iris cristata)

This charming woodland iris is native to the eastern North American deciduous forest where it often grows on rocky slopes. Peter Collinson, an English patron and regular correspondent of John Custis from Williamsburg and the Bartrams of Philadelphia, grew this plant from roots sent to him during the mid 18th century. 

In 1766 Jefferson began his Garden Book with observations of wildflowers along the Rivanna River, including the “Dwarf flag” flowering May 4th “in our woods.” Dwarf crested iris spreads slowly creating large mats of handsome light green foliage that deer do not find attractive. A white form, Iris cristata ‘Alba’, also occurs in the wild.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

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

Women & Gardens - 19C Gardening Manuals from Seed & Plant Dealers entice Women to Garden

When Gardens Replaced Children
Justor Daily By: Livia Gershon May 4, 2018

"Historian Robin Veder explains that the way we associate female nurturing with gardens goes back to the way ideas about gender & work changed in the mid-19C.

"Think about gardening, or tending houseplants, & you most likely think of a woman—perhaps a woman who has plenty of leisure time & loves taking care of living things. Historian Robin Veder explains that the way we associate female nurturing with raising flowers goes back the way ideas about gender & work changed in the mid-19C...

"Gardening manuals of the 19C described flowers taking “the place of children in bereaved homes” or in families where adult children had moved out.  Wealthy households depended on skilled horticultural workers—either hired or enslaved—to care for their flowering plants. But middle-class homeowners were limited to their own amateur efforts. So professional horticulturists, who stood to benefit from new customers at their nurseries & greenhouses, began writing manuals, magazines, & columns.

"Before 1840 or so, Veder writes, most authors of gardening manuals assumed their readers were male. But from the 1850s through 1870s, there was a flurry of books about flower gardening & indoor floral decorations. Women’s magazines including Ladies Home Journal actually grew out of horticultural & agricultural publications’ efforts to reach a female audience.

"Gardening manuals written in this period described flowers taking “the place of children in bereaved homes” or in families where adult children had moved out. 

"Prolific California gardener Mrs. Annie C. Brown explained in Ladies Home Journal in 1887 that her only daughter was now grown “so all my spare time is given to my flowers. They are to me as children…” 

"Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that a successful gardener treats her plants as children: “She loves them; she lives in them; she has in herself a plant-life & a plant-sympathy. She feels for them as if she herself were a plant...”

"In books & articles from this era, to buy a plant was to remove it from the cold world of market forces & transform it into an object of love...Veder writes that 19C gardening manuals drew on a long tradition of sentimental pastoralism—a tradition that “aestheticizes economically significant work by framing it as leisure.” Gardening, like parenting, clearly involves mental & physical labor, & both provide something of value to the household. But books & articles portrayed both activities as a natural extension of women’s being, rather than “work.”

To read about women's changing roles in the 2nd half of the 19th century. see:
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:Random House, 1973.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984.
Cott, Nancy. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Cott Nancy. History of Women in the United States, Part 6, Working the Land. New York: K. G. Saur, 1992.
Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family from Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Juster, Norton. So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982
Mintz, Stephen and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988.
Ryan, Mary P. Womanhood in America front he Colonial Times to the Present. New York: F. Watts, 1983.
Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York Pantheon Books, 1982.
Welter, Barbara. Dimity Convictions : the American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens : Ohio University Press, 1976.

South Carolina - Plants for the Table - Slaves & Rice in Georgetown

"The intricate steps involved in planting, cultivating, harvesting, and preparing rice required an immense labor force. Planters stated that African slaves were particularly suited to provide that labor force for two reasons: 1) rice was grown in some areas of Africa and there was evidence that some slaves were familiar with the methods of cultivation practiced there, and 2) it was thought that the slaves, by virtue of their racial characteristics, were better able than white laborers to withstand the extreme heat and humidity of the tidal swamps and therefore would be more productive workers. Rice cultivation resulted in a dramatic increase in the numbers of slaves owned by South Carolinians before the American Revolution.

"In 1680, four-fifths of South Carolina's population was white. However, black slaves outnumbered white residents two to one in 1720, and by 1740, slaves constituted nearly 90% of the population. Much of the growing slave population came from the West Coast of Africa, a region that had gained notoriety by exporting its large rice surpluses.

"While there is no consensus on how rice first reached the American coast, there is much debate over the contribution of African-born slaves to its successful cultivation. New research demonstrates that the European planters lacked prior knowledge of rice farming, while uncovering the long history of skilled rice cultivation in West Africa. Furthermore, Islamic, Portuguese, and Dutch traders all encountered and documented extensive rice cultivation in Africa before South Carolina was even settled.

"At first rice was treated like other crops, it was planted in fields and watered by rains. By the mid-18th century, planters used inland swamps to grow rice by accumulating water in a reservoir, then releasing the stored water as needed during the growing season for weeding and watering. Similarly, prior records detail Africans controlling springs and run off with earthen embankments for the same purposes of weeding and watering.

"Soon after this method emerged, a second evolution occurred, this time to tidewater production, a technique that had already been perfected by West African farmers. Instead of depending upon a reservoir of water, this technique required skilled manipulation of tidal flows and saline-freshwater interactions to attain high levels of productivity in the floodplains of rivers and streams. Changing from inland swamp cultivation to tidal production created higher expectations from plantation owners. Slaves became responsible for five acres of rice, three more than had been possible previously. Because of this new evidence coming to light, some historians contend that African-born slaves provided critical expertise in the cultivation of rice in South Carolina. The detailed and extensive rice cultivating systems increased demand for slave imports in South Carolina, doubling the slave population between 1750 and 1770. These slaves faced long days of backbreaking work and difficult tasks.

"A slave's daily work on an antebellum rice plantation was divided into tasks. Each field hand was given a task--usually nine or ten hours' hard work--or a fraction of a task to complete each day according to his or her ability. The tasks were assigned by the driver, a slave appointed to supervise the daily work of the field hands. The driver held the most important position in the slave hierarchy on the rice plantation. His job was second only to the overseer in terms of responsibility.

"The driver's job was particularly important because each step of the planting, growing, and harvesting process was crucial to the success or failure of the year's crop. In the spring, the land was harrowed and plowed in preparation for planting. Around the first of April rice seed was sown by hand using a small hoe. The first flooding of the field, the sprout flow, barely covered the seed and lasted only until the grain sprouted. The water was then drained to keep the delicate sprout from floating away, and the rice was allowed to grow for approximately three weeks. Around the first of May any grass growing among the sprouts was weeded by hoe and the field was flooded by the point flow to cover just the tops of the plants. After a few days the water was gradually drained until it half covered the plants. It remained at this level--the long flow--until the rice was strong enough to stand. More weeding followed and then the water was slowly drained completely off the field. The ground around the plants was hoed to encourage the growth and extension of the roots. After about three weeks, the field was hoed and weeded again, at which time--around mid-June or the first of July--the lay-by flow was added and gradually increased until the plants were completely submerged. This flow was kept on the field for about two months with fresh water periodically introduced and stagnant water run off by the tidal flow through small floodgates called trunks.

"Rice planted in the first week of April was usually ready for harvesting by the first week of September. After the lay-by flow was withdrawn, just before the grain was fully ripe, the rice was cut with large sickles known as rice hooks and laid on the ground on the stubble. After it had dried overnight, the cut rice was tied into sheaves and taken by flatboat to the threshing yard. In the colonial period, threshing was most often done by beating the stalks with flails. This process was simple but time consuming. If the rice was to be sold rough, it was then shipped to the agent; otherwise, it was husked and cleaned--again, usually by hand. By the mid-19th century most of the larger plantations operated pounding and/or threshing mills which were driven by steam engines. After the rice had been prepared, it was packed in barrels, or tierces, and shipped to the market at Georgetown or Charleston. In 1850 a rice plantation in the Georgetown County area produced an average yield of 300,000 pounds of rice. The yield had increased to 500,000 pounds by 1860."

See The U.S. National Park Service

Women's Work 1873 - US Women Packaging Seeds & Herbs for Sale

The Packing Room Wood engraving from Vick's Illustrated Floral Guide for 1873

The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work by Virginia Panny Published Walker, Wise & Company, 1863

"Seed Envelopers and Herb Packers. 

"In a seed store in Philadelphia, we found, they employ women in January and February, at $2.50 a week, to put seeds up in paper bags, seal them, and paste labels on. They go at eight in the morning, and remain until dark. 

"At a large drug store in Philadelphia, we were told they employ nine women. They have seven distinct branches for the women, and separate apartments for each branch, consisting of weighing and putting up powders, sorting herbs and roots, putting up liquids, &c., &c. The women earn from $3 to $5 a week, and spend nine hours, from eight to six, having an hour at noon. In busy seasons they remain till eight or nine, and receive additional wages. There is nothing unhealthy in the business. They are paid $3 a week from the time they are taken to learn, and deduction made for absence. 

"A seller of botanic medicines in Boston writes me: “He employs women in putting medicines in small packages for the retail trade, bottling the same, and labeling. He pays $5 a week to his women, and $3 a week while learning, the time for which is six months. Common sense, neatness, and integrity are the qualifications needed. The girls work from nine to ten hours. He will not employ any but American women. He pays men $8 or $9, because they can take them off, and put them upon work that girls cannot do. Women would be paid better if they were stronger, and did not need so much waiting upon in the way of lifting and arranging their work. Rainy days they want to stay at home, or, if they come, it takes half a day for them to dry their clothes. Men they can depend on in all weather. Women might keep their books, if their crinoline was not too extensive: that alone would bar them from the counting room. Women are inferior only in physical disabilities. Girls are good for nothing until after sixteen years of age; and nine in ten will get married as soon as they are fairly initiated in workhence the time spent by women in acquiring a business education is to a certain extent lost—lost to their employers, but of assistance to them in the education of their children.” 

"Mr. P., botanic druggist says: “There are but three establishments in New York, for this business, and twelve women would be quite enough for them. They put up herbs in packages. One day's practice is enough for a smart person. The women are paid from $3 to $5 a week.” 

"At the United States Botanic Depot they employ one girl, and pay her $4 a week. She only works in daylight. Mr. J. L. employs two girls to put up botanic medicines. He has men to cork the bottles. They work ten months in the year. Nothing is done in December and January. They pay $4 a week, of ten hours a day. 

"In Louisville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, few women are employed in this way. Some seedsmen and florists near Boston employ four ladies in enveloping seed. One of the ladies writes: “ We presume more ladies are employed in Europe to put up seed than in this."

To read about women's changing roles in the 2nd half of the 19th century. see:
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:Random House, 1973.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984.
Cott, Nancy. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Cott Nancy. History of Women in the United States, Part 6, Working the Land. New York: K. G. Saur, 1992.
Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family from Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Juster, Norton. So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982
Mintz, Stephen and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988.
Ryan, Mary P. Womanhood in America front he Colonial Times to the Present. New York: F. Watts, 1983.
Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York Pantheon Books, 1982.
Welter, Barbara. Dimity Convictions : the American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens : Ohio University Press, 1976.

Women's Work 1863 - US Women as Landscape Gardeners

Landscape Gardeners. 

"Mrs. R. often goes & looks at gardens, directs how to lay them out, & what to buy for them. She then orders the plants of others, & sells on commission, having them arranged according to her own taste, influenced by that of the purchaser. Her purchases are made of a German, living some distance from town, who can raise them cheaper than she could in the city. Her compensation, of course, varies greatly. 

"A landscape gardener writes : “ What a lady could do as landscape gardener at the West, I do not know. I am rather inclined to doubt her success at the East. It would require too much time & space to enter here into the details of what are required to constitute a landscape gardener: First, one must have a decided love for it, & a willingness to sacrifice much to the pleasure of the occupation. Nor can I say a great deal in favor of the profits. I have never been able to make a living by the profession, although I have often thought if I had gone to New York, or farther West, the case might have been different. In pages 381 & 382 of Country Life,' & in many other parts of the book, you will see what I consider essential to the making up & preparation of a landscape gardener, & better expressed than I can condense into a letter.”

"Mr. C., of Massachusetts, writes : “I have never known a lady to undertake the profession of landscape gardening; & much of the labor which I find it necessary to perform, would be impossible for a lady. Still, there is much in which female taste would find abundant field for exertion, if the labor could be so divided as to make it profitable. My first work  on any estate is to make an accurate topographical survey of the ground, &draw a plan of it in its natural state, & then proceed to make my designs for its arrangement; & when that is done, if required, I undertake the superintendence of the work at the ground. 

"A lady would have to employ a surveyor, in the first place, & would labor under many disadvantages in directing the operations upon grounds; &, to judge from my own experience, the business could not be made profitable under such circumstances. Loudon's 'Encyclopædia of Gardening' will give the best directions I know of for the necessary operations of designing & executing plans, & Downing's work, with Sargent's appendix, comprises enough suggestions, on matters of taste, for the use of any person who is possessed of innate natural taste, without which I would advise no one to attempt to be a landscape gardener.”

The Employments of Women: A Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work by Virginia Panny Published Walker, Wise & Company, 1863

To read about women's changing roles in the 2nd half of the 19th century. see:
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:Random House, 1973.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984.
Cott, Nancy. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Cott Nancy. History of Women in the United States, Part 6, Working the Land. New York: K. G. Saur, 1992.
Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family from Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Juster, Norton. So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982
Mintz, Stephen and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988.
Ryan, Mary P. Womanhood in America front he Colonial Times to the Present. New York: F. Watts, 1983.
Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York Pantheon Books, 1982.
Welter, Barbara. Dimity Convictions : the American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens : Ohio University Press, 1976.

18C Jane Colden (1724-1766) 1st female American Botanist

Jane Colden (1724-1766) was described as the "first botanist of her sex in her country" by 19C botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888) in 1843. Although seldom mentioned in early botanical publications, she wrote a number of letters resulting in botanist British naturalist John Ellis (1711-1778) writing to Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) of her work applying the Linnaean system of plant identification to American flora, "she deserves to be celebrated." Contemporary scholarship also maintains that she was the first female botanist working in America. She was regarded as a respected botanist by many prominent botanists such as: John Bartram, Peter Collinson, Alexander Garden, & Carl Linnaeus. Colden is most famous for her manuscript without a title, in which she describes the flora of the New York area, & draws ink drawings of 340 different species of them.

Colden was born in New York City, the 5th child of Cadwallader Colden (1688-1776), who was a physician who trained at the University of Edinburgh and became involved in the politics & management of New York after arriving in the city from Scotland in 1718, & his wife Alice Christy Colden, the daughter of a clergyman, brought up in Scotland in an intellectual atmosphere. Daughter Jane Colden was educated at home; & her father provided her with botanical training following the new classification system developed by Carl Linnaeus.  His scientific curiosity included a personal correspondence between 1749-1751 with Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778).

Her father thought women should study botany because of "their natural curiosity & the pleasure they take in the beauty & variety of dress seems to fit them for it."  It was true that floral illustrations filled British American colonial homes on English textiles and soft paste & porcelain tableware ordered by the gentry through their factors or sent in the holds of English ships to be sold in local shops.

Moreover, he viewed such study as an ideal substitute for idleness among his female children, when he moved his family to the country in 1729. He believed gardening & botany "an Amusement which may be made agreable for the Ladies who are often at a loss to fill their time."  He went so far as to recommend that perhaps from Jane's example "young ladies in a like situation may find an agreable way to fill up some part Of their time which otherwise might be heavy on their hand May amuse & please themselves & at the same time be usefull to others."

1748-52 John Wollaston (American colonial era painter, 1710-1775) Cadwallader Colden

The family's move to a 3,000-acre estate in Orange County stimulated the botanical interests of both Cadwallader & Jane Colden. Cadwalleder Colden had been the first to apply the system of botanical classification developed by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (Linnaean Taxonomy) to an American plant collection & he translated the text of Linnaeus’ books into English.

A letter of 1755 from Colden to Dutch botanist Jan Gronovius (1666-1762) her father explained. "I have a daughter who has an inclination to reading and a curiosity for natural philosophy or natural History and a sufficient capacity for attaining a competent knowledge. I took the pains to explain to her Linnaeus' system and to put it in English for her to use by freeing it from the Technical Terms which was easily done by using two or three words in place of one. She is now grown very fond of the study and has made such progress in it as I believe would please you if you saw her performance. Tho' perhaps she could not have been persuaded to learn the terms at first she now understands to some degree Linnaeus' characters notwithstanding that she does not understand Latin."

Jane Colden far surpassed her father's idleness theory. She was the 1st scientist to describe the gardenia. She read the works of Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) in translation, and she mastered the Linnaean system of plant classification perfectly. She cataloged, described, & sketched at least 400 plants. She actively collected seeds & specimens of New World flora & exchanged them with others on both sides of the Atlantic.

Due to the lack of schools & gardens around the area, her father wrote to Peter Collinson, where he inquired about getting sent "the best cuts or pictures of [plants] for which purpose I would buy for her Tourneforts Institutes & Morison’s Historia plantarum, or if you know any better books for this purpose as you are a better judge than I am I will be obliged to you in making the choice" in order for Jane to continue her studies of botanical sciences.

In addition to obtaining books & illustration samples for his daughter, Cadwallader also surrounded her with like-minded scientists, including Peter Kalm & William Bartram. In 1754, a notable gathering with South Carolina scientist Dr. Alexander Garden (1730-1791) & William Bartram sparked Jane's interests even more & allowed the fruition of the collaboration & friendship between Jane & Garden to flourish. Garden, an active collector of his local flora, later corresponded with Jane, exchanged seeds & plants with her, & instructed her in the preservation of butterflies.  Garden wrote in a letter to British naturalist John Ellis (1711-1778) in 1755, that Jane Colden “is greatly master of the Linnaean method, and cultivates it with assiduity.” 

Of his daughter, Cadwallader wrote in a 1755 letter to Dr. John Frederic Gronovius, a colleague of Linneaus, that she possessed "a natural inclination to reading & a natural curiosity for natural philosophy & natural history." He wrote that Jane was already writing descriptions of plants using Linnaeus' classification & taking impressions of leaves using a press. In this letter, Cadwallader sought to earn her a position with Dr. Gronovius sending seeds or samples.

Between 1753 & 1758 Colden cataloged New York's flora, compiling specimens & information on more than 400 species of plants from the lower Hudson River Valley, & classifying them according to the system developed by Linnaeus. She developed a technique for making ink impressions of leaves, & was also a skilled illustrator, doing ink drawings of 340. For many drawings she wrote additional botanical details as well as culinary, folklore or medicinal uses for the plant, including information from indigenous people.

On January 20, 1756, Peter Collinson (1694-1768) wrote to John Bartram that "Our friend Colden's daughter has, in a scientific manner, sent over several sheets of plants, very curiously anatomized after this [Linnaeus's] method. I believe she is the first lady that has attempted anything of this nature." 

Colden participated in the Natural History Circle where she exchanged seeds & plants with other plant collectors in the American colonies & in Europe. These exchanges within the Natural History Circle encouraged Jane to become a botanist.

Through her father she met & corresponded with many leading naturalists of the time, including Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778). Carolus Linnaeus knew of Jane's work.  He corresponded directly with her father; and in a 1758, letter to British naturalist John Ellis (1711-1778) tells Linnaeus that he will let Jane know "what civil things you say of her."  One of her descriptions of a new plant, which she herself called Fibraurea, was forwarded to Linnaeus with the suggestion that he should call it Coldenella, but Linnaeus declined calling it Helleborus (now Coptis groenlandica).  Collinson reported to Carolus Linnaeus, "Your system, I can tell you obtains much in America. Mr. Clayton and Dr. Colden at Albany of Hudson's River in New York are complete Professors....Even Dr. Colden's daughter was an enthusiast."   He later wrote to Linnaeus, that  Jane Colden “is perhaps the first lady that has so perfectly studied your system. She deserves to be celebrated.” 

In 1756 Colden discovered the Gardenia & proposed a name after the prominent botanist Garden. In her manuscript she wrote that this plant was without an Order under the Linnaean system. In her description Colden wrote, " The three chives only in each bundle, & the three oval-shap'd bodies on the seat of the flower, together with the seat to which the seeds adhere, distinguish this plant from the hypericums; & I think, not only make it a different genus, but likewise makes an order which Linnaeus has not."  However, the name was not allowed because an English botanist named John Ellis had already named the Cape jasmine as Gardenia jasminoides, & was entitled to its use because of the conventions of botanical nomenclature.

1963 Reprint of the British Museum copy of Jane Colden's manuscript

Colden's manuscript, in which she had ink drawings of leaves & descriptions of the plants, was never named. Colden's original manuscript describing the flora of New York has been held in the British Museum since the mid-1800s. Her manuscript drawing consisted only of leaves & these drawings were only ink outlines colored in with neutral tint. Her descriptions  were "excellent-full , careful, & evidently taken from living specimens."  Colden's descriptions include morphological details of flower, fruit, & plant structure, as well as ways on how to use certain plants for medicinal or culinary purposes. Some of the descriptions include the month of flowering & the habitat where they are found.  Latin & common names for the plants are given.

In her section "Observat" (now known as observations) she pointing out to Linnaeus that "there are some plants of Clematis that bear only male flowers, this I have observed with such care that there can be no doubt about it." This shows the long hours she spent doing observations, which were consistent, accurate & replicable.

Colden married Scottish widower Dr. William Farquhar on March 12, 1759. She died in childbirth only 7 years later at the age of 41, along with the newborn. There is no evidence that she continued her botanical work after her marriage.

Her work on plant classification was noted in a Scottish scientific journal in 1770, 4 years after her death. Americans did not become aware of Colden's manuscript until 75 years later, when Almira Lincoln stated that another female botanist before her was the first American lady to illustrate the science of botany.  In spite of all of Colden's accomplishments, she was never formally recognized during her lifetime by having a plant named after her. The genus Coldenia is named after her father.

Gardener, Nurseryman & Seed Dealer - Thomas Bridgeman 1786-1850

Thomas Bridgeman –(1786-1850)–New York City, New York–

1843 The Fruit Cultivator’s Manual by Charles E. Weir (American artist, 1823-1845)

Thomas Bridgeman was born in Abingdon, England, and sailed for America c 1820-24. He had married Catheine Hannah Eastmond on May 23, 1807 at St. Helena's Church in Abingdon, England.  At least 3 of his children, Thomas, Deborah, & Amelia were born in England. He opened a seed store in 1824.

Bridgeman was an English gardener, who came to New York in 1824, leased land on what is now 874 Broadway, where he built greenhouses & sold seeds. "Like so many of the gardeners of the Old World, at that date, he was a man of broad intelligence, and he wrote valuable works on fruits, vegetables and flowers. His “Young Gardener’s Assistant” (published in 1829) went through several editions, and has a good sale even unto this day. He died in 1850."  See: Meehans' Monthly: A Magazine of Horticulture, 1899.

Thomas Bridgeman authored
The Young Gardener’s Assistant (1832)
Florist’s Guide (1835)
The Kitchen Gardener’s Instructor (1836)
The Fruit Cultivator’s Manual (1844)
The American Gardener’s Assistant (1867) with his son, Alfred Bridgeman

The Horticulturist, and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste from of 1858 reviewed a late edition of the Young Gardener's Assistant with these details:
"We like to record the success of practical men. In the case of the Messrs. Bridgemans, we find an industrious and thoughtful father successful through a lengthened career, and leaving his sons established in the same business and in the someplace, after his death.

"Nos. 876 and 878 Broadway, New York, are now the property of the two sons, Andrew and Alfred. The seed department is managed by Alfred, and the greenhouses by Andrew Bridgeman, in two well-built stores, with their dwellings above. 

"The business was first commenced in 1828, by the father, and continued by him until 1850 (the period of his decease), when the sons erected two four-story houses, well adapted to their objects; the southerly one is devoted to the sale of vegetable, herb, flower, and grass seeds, horticultural books, and garden tools and implements; the walls are plastered on all sides with cement, and the floor is of concrete, making it secure from dampness and the attacks of vermin. In the house devoted to the plant department, the basement is divided into a flower-room for keeping and making-up cut flowers, and a packing-room and general stowage; the store is appropriately fitted up with shelvings, counters, &c, and floored with encaustic tiles; in connection with it is a greenhouse, eighteen feet wide and one hundred and thirty feet long. A neat fountain with gold fishes in the front part, attracts much attention from the Broadway loungers. 

"This greenhouse is heated by two of Hitching's hot-water apparatus, advertised in this journal, and which Mr. B. assures us answer admirably. 

"The country establishment is at Astoria, where there is a fine propagating house, five greenhouses, two rose-houses, one rose pit, and about forty sashes of frames for violets, pansies, &c. The grounds are ornamented with different varieties of fruit-trees, and are occupied principally in growing roses, ornamental and flowering shrubs, fruit, herbaceous and greenhouse plants, asparagus, rhubarb, strawberries, &c. &c.  Mr. B. is prepared to execute orders to any amount for forest trees, dwarf pears, &c.

"In the city store will be found one of the finest collections of bulbous roots; a number of each kind are potted for those who desire to have them already started —a convenience which many salesmen cannot afford. Here will also be found fancy flower-pots, bulb-glasses, and baskets for flowers, of which latter ornaments they fill innumerable orders during the winter season, as well as hand-bouquets and designs for parties and suppers. The greenhouse in the city is filled with plants suited for private houses during winter, and, in spring, they are replaced with bedding-out plants, for which the establishment is famous throughout the Eastern and Middle States..." 

The 1885 edition of New York's Great Industries reported:
"Alfred Bridgeman, Importer, Grower and Dealer In Vegetable, Farm and Flower Seed, No. 37 East 19th Street.

"Among the old established houses which have been identified with the growth and development of the metropolis and which have kept pace with the improvement and progress of the time, is that of Mr. Alfred Bridgeman, importer, grower and dealer in vegetable, farm and flower seed.  

"This business was established in 1824, and has always enjoyed a career of prosperity. The house was for many years located at No. 876 Broadway, and some time ago was removed to the present elegant quarters. The premises now occupied are of modern construction and are artistically finished in a most pleasing manner. 

"A large and valuable stock is carried and a business is done which extends to all points in the United States. Mr. Bridgeman is an old resident of this city, and is one of our old time merchants. During a long and busy career he has always maintained the principles of integrity and honorable dealing. He has always taken an active interest in every movement that has for its object the advancement and welfare of his fellow citizens, and is esteemed by all with whom he has had business transactions." 

In 1913, Volume 17 of Horticulture Magazine from the Horticultural Publishing Company in Boston offered these intriguing details, "The British Encyclopedia of National Biographies says that Thos. Bridgeman who settled in New York in 1824 and wrote on horticulture is a descendant of the Bridgeman who planned the Kew Gardens and who is mentioned by Horace Walpole in his “Memoirs” as the one who revolutionized landscape gardening in England and who was a friend of Alexander Pope."