Bridgewater Review

Volume 29 | Issue 2 Article 5

Dec-2010

English Garden Style: Landscape DesignAccording to the Nineteenth-Century AmericanSeed and Nursery CatalogsThomas J. MickeyBridgewater State University, tmickey@bridgew.edu

This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts.

Recommended CitationMickey, Thomas J. (2010). English Garden Style: Landscape Design According to the Nineteenth-Century American Seed andNursery Catalogs. Bridgewater Review, 29(2), 3-7.Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol29/iss2/5

December 2010 3

Frank Scott, a sketchartist from Ohio,loved landscape

design and as a studentspent a summer in NewYork with the foremostnineteenth-century land-scape designersAndrewJackson Downing andCalvertVaux. In 1870,Scott wrote The Art ofBeautifying Home Grounds,a book primarily for the suburban homeowner.Architect and historian DavidHandlin calls it the commuter’s manual.Scott relied heavily on the Englishpicturesque garden style in the book,which he introduced with these words:“In the specialty of decorative garden-ing, adapted to the small grounds ofmost suburban homes, there is muchneed of other works than have yetappeared.” In that short line, Scottindicated the need for homeownersto learn about landscaping or what hecalled“decorative gardening.”His bookinformed generations ofAmerican gar-dening, but his own inspiration camefrom across theAtlantic.Americanlandscape designers like Scott andDowning readily admitted the superior-ity of English gardens,which hadtaken a distinctive style by the earlynineteenth century.

For all their prominence,however, it wasnot elite designers who popularized theEnglish garden in nineteenth-centuryAmerica; it was their commercialbrethren, seed and nursery companies,who conveyed their ideas to middle-

English Garden Style:Landscape DesignAccording to the Nineteenth-CenturyAmericanSeed and Nursery CatalogsThomas J. Mickey

Figure 1.The 1886 edition of Frank Scott’s book Art of Beautifying Suburban Homes includedthis image that depicted suburban home landscape, including the lawn that ran seamlessly intoneighboring properties. Scott’s ideas were repeated in seed and nursery catalogs as well.The sceneepitomizes the English landscape by lawn, large foliage plants, urns, street trees, and shrubs. CourtesyFrances Loeb Library, Harvard Graduate School of Design, Special Collections, Cambridge, MA.

c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brid_Dec10.qxd:c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brvw_Dec10 12/23/10 9:49 AM Page 3

4 Bridgewater Review

class consumers who were hungry forinstruction on how to create artful ortasteful landscapes. In his magazineGardener’s Monthly and Horticulturalist,Philadelphia nurserymanThomasMeehan hailed the new edition ofScott’s book (Figure 1) when it waspublished in 1886:“It is a work of whichAmerican horticulturalists have causeto be proud. Its influence on landscapegardening must be very great, and now,where there promises to be a revival inthe lovely art, its presence is particularlytimely.”Scott was not alone in teachingthe homeowner landscape design.Seedand nursery catalogs took his messagesand broadcast them widely.

The landscape recommended in thecatalogs was predominantly the Englishstyle,which throughout the nineteenthcentury took several forms, such as thenaturalistic view, the gardenesque layout,Victorian carpet bedding and the wildgarden and a more formal trimmedlook;but in all cases the landscapeincluded a lawn.American seed andnursery companies took on the role ofa reliable source from which the middleclass could learn how to landscape thehome lot,no matter what the size.Ahomeowner who wanted to design andplant his own home landscape couldlook to the catalog for both instructionand support and,of course,where topurchase grass seed and plants.

As early as mid-century, the seed andnursery companies wrote about theimportance of home landscapes foreveryone,not only the wealthy estateowners.Overman and Mann said in1862:“It is now deemed rational toadorn and beautify the surroundings ofhouse,however humble.And what moresensible idea can the owner of the soilentertain than to draw in his mind fromits wanderings, and to surround hisfamily with the cheap comforts anddelights of home?”Home symbolized asense of national identity as the countryentered the CivilWar.That same Over-man and Mann catalog of 1862-63 said:“The foregoing is premised upon the

fact that notwithstanding the hard times,and the horrors of war,no former seasonhas been so characterized by the treeplanting spirit as the past.Everywherethe prevailing disposition seems to be tocircumscribe ambition and concentrateits energies within the domestic circle— to make home what it should be.”

After 1870, the advances of industrial-ization brought about larger seed andnursery inventories, easier shipping,cheaper printing and increased advertis-ing and allowed the garden to assumea central role for middle-class home-owners. Seeds and plants from nationalcompanies enabled homeowners to cre-ate landscapes much like the ones pic-tured in their catalog, as in Henderson’s

in 1886 (Figure 2).Through his land-scaped grounds the homeowner feltlinked with otherAmericans of thesame status.While the wealthy neededgardeners to tend the landscape ontheir large estates,middle-class homegardeners - often referred to as“amateurgardeners” - could, according to thecatalogs, easily maintain home gardenswithout hired help on their smallerparcels of land.

Like so many other mail-order gardencatalogs, the Lovett nursery in 1882 gavethe homeowner lessons in landscaping.“[This] is a handbook of all that isnecessary to aid in improving andadorning the home grounds,witha complete catalogue of species and

Figure 2.Henderson in this catalog cover of 1886 shows the home landscape withlawn,water garden, and carpet beds,which imitate the English garden of that time.Warshaw Collection,Archives Center,National Museum ofAmerican History,Smithsonian Institution.

c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brid_Dec10.qxd:c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brvw_Dec10 12/23/10 9:49 AM Page 4

varieties, naming and describing themso fully and accurately and in such aclear and instructive manner that it isa task of ease and pleasure to makejudicious selections and to plan outintelligently the proposed improve-ments. Nothing has been neglectedthat will teach the reader how to layout home grounds to advantage.”

If it was important for them to land-scape the home property,homeownersalso knew that nurseries and seed com-panies would supply the necessaryplants. In 1894,Lines and Coe of NewHaven,Connecticut,wrote about hownecessary the landscape was:“Throughthe zeal of the collectors [plant collec-tors, often from England,who suppliedthe nursery],‘nature’s scattered excellen-cies’ are now available. Instead of beingrestricted to the varieties that grownative about us,we have the whole flora,practically,of the world at our com-mand, as well as the greatest numberof the varieties that have been fosteredinto existence by much care andpainstaking.”Seed companies andnurseries helped their suburban middle-class readers enjoy exotic plants that atone time only the wealthy could culti-vate. Now middlingAmericans couldshow off their own Chinese shrubs onthe lawn, Japanese vines clinging to thewalls of their houses or SouthAmericanalternanthera plants in containers orcarpet beds. In 1898,Boston seedsmanJoseph Breck illustrated the importanceof the home landscape at a time whenthe middle class was becoming wealthier(Figure 3).He wrote in his catalog:“As this country grows in taste andwealth, the importance of the house andgrounds,which together constitute thehome,making an harmonious whole, isbecoming more and more apparent, andthese remarks are as applicable, if notmore so, to the lot containing five orten thousand square feet, as to the greatestate comprising many acres.”

The picturesque, and later the garde-nesque, English style demanded first alawn, and then the careful placement of

trees and shrubs, so that the lawn wouldkeep its sweeping look and not be lostby the overuse of trees and shrubs. In hisbook’s introduction,Scott credited JohnClaudius Loudon and Edward Kempwith teaching landscape gardening tothe English.He saw his task as providingAmericans the principles of Englishlandscape gardening.Although Scottrecognized that, compared to theEnglish,“we are yet novices in the finearts of gardening,”he considered thewell-kept lawn as the essential elementin theAmerican domestic landscape.Tothe English, the lawn was a status symbolby which one was judged by his peers.The lawn,Scott suggested, should beopen so that neighbors and passers-bycould see and enjoy it.His book pre-sented landscape plans along with a list-ing of trees, shrubs, and vines suitablefor the suburban home landscape. Inhis book Scott borrowed from NewJersey seedsman Peter Henderson’sbookManual of Floriculture in recom-mending the amount of seed neededfor a lawn.The lawn was the essentialingredient of the home grounds becauseit created a picturesque,park-like look.The lawn connected one house to thenext by its placement at the front ofthe property, along the street and sides

of the house.Thus one property seemedto flow right into the next, forming asense of neighborhood.

Discussion of the English lawn as thebasis of the home landscape was quitecommon in the seed and nursery cata-logs. In 1886 the seedsman C.A.Reeserwrote:“A beautiful lawn, it is hardlynecessary to say, is one of the most satis-factory and pleasing outside adornmentsthat can be procured, and is rightlydeemed a most essential adjunct to ruraland suburban homes.”Verdant, sweepingfront lawns began to appear in the earlynineteenth century among the homes ofwealthyAmericans but later became asymbol of the middle class.The lots inthe Maryland suburbTakoma Park, forexample, included a large setback fromthe street to provide for a lawn.

The seed companies, of course,offeredlawn seed.They were happy to tell thereader the amount of seed needed forthe size of a particular property.Down-ing in his book wrote about the lawnin these words:“We advise him whodesires to have speedily a handsome turf,to follow the English practice, and sowthree to four bushels of seeds to theacre.” In his 1873 catalog,Rochesterseedsman JamesVick echoed the words

December 2010 5

Figure 3. This illustration for a grass seed ad that appeared in Breck’s seed catalog promotes theEnglish lawn for theAmerican gardener. Courtesy of theWorcester County Horticultural Society,Tower Hill,Boylston,MA.

c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brid_Dec10.qxd:c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brvw_Dec10 12/23/10 9:49 AM Page 5

of Scott:“In the first place, I wouldremark that the space in front of thehouse, and generally the sides exposedto view from the street, should be ingrass.No arrangement of beds,orborders of box,or anything else,willlook so neat and tasteful as a well keptpiece of grass.”

Once planned and grown, the lawn hadto be adorned.By the end of the cen-tury the cast iron garden vase or urn hadbecome a sign of status for the middleclass.Vick recommended in the FloralGuide of 1873 that on the lawn theowner place two vases, filled usually

with annuals:“Of all the adornments ofthe lawn,nothing is more effective thana well filled and well kept vase.All theornamental-leaved plants are appropri-ate for the top or center of the vase,while a few drooping plants should beplaced near the edges and allowed tohang or droop at least half way to theground.For this purpose the verbenaor the petunia will answer.We often seeseveral small vases scattered over thelawn,but the effect is bad. It is best tohave one or two that command atten-tion by their size and beauty.”Figure 4shows two vases in this style on the lawn

of a nineteenth-century middle-classresidence in Gloucester,Massachusetts.

Beyond the lawn,ornamental trees wereoften recommended in the catalogs’ arti-cles.The E.D.Putney Company fromBrentwood,NewYork,wrote about theuse of evergreen trees to give an all-yearbeauty to the property: “Where onlydeciduous trees are grown there is a lackof tone and character to the landscape.This is particularly so in winter,whenthe barrenness is really depressing. Inbleak localities they are indispensableas wind breaks. Single specimens ofNorway spruce,hemlock, juniper andthe Retinisporas are very effective insmall yards.”

As the country expanded into the west,Overman and Mann from Illinois wrotein their 1860 catalog about the impor-tance of planting trees in the landscape:

In our heart we pity the man whocan dole out a lifetime, and rear afamily on the bare prairie,withouta vestige of a tree or a shrub, toshield his tenement from thescorching heat of summer,or thehowling blast of winter. Suchanomalies of the ‘genus homo’wehave seen, and their souls are asdesolate as the arid desert theirhomes so aptly represent … It isthe duty of everyone to plant trees— in the orchard — in the door-

6 Bridgewater Review

TheMina Lobata Vine

The Currie Brothers Seed Company in Milwaukee had a successful business in the 1880sand 90s. Like other seed and plant companies, they published a garden magazine; theirswas called Currie’s Monthly (CM). In an 1888 issue of CM, the editor mentioned a vine calledmina lobata. “This is one of the most beautiful climbing plants we are acquainted with,and one that is well worthy the attention of all plant lovers. It was introduced into thiscountry last year for the first time, and, judging from the reports we have received regardingit, no climbing plant has ever given more satisfaction.” This is high praise for a simplevine. English gardeners had acquired this vine as early as the 1840s when the plant wasbrought fromMexico and named after Mexican minister Don Francisco Xavier Mina. TheRoyal Horticultural Society of London featured it in its gardens, according to the BotanicalRegister of 1842.Mina lobata is easy to grow in any garden and features long colorful white,red, and orange flowers at the end of the summer. This vine is one that English gardenersfirst enjoyed forty years before it appeared in American gardens.

Figure 4. This 1870s family from Gloucester,Mass. poses for a portrait outside where twovases were carefully placed on the lawn.Courtesy PortsmouthAthenaeum,Portsmouth,NH.

revise pgs_brid_Dec10.qxd:Layout 1 1/5/11 12:43 AM Page 6

ing tree varieties:“That the utility andbeauty of ornamental trees and plantsare now becoming generally recognizedand appreciated,no better proof isafforded than the great demand whichhas been created for them.They havebecome a necessity in the garden, andevery one who has a garden must have

yard — in the grove — on thelawn — by the roadside — to tellposterity that he once lived.Thesetreeless plains are to be peopled bya generation of tree-planters suchas the world has not yet seen.

In 1875,Rochester’s Mount HopeNursery catalog wrote about introduc-

December 2010 7

Figure 5.The Johnston Nursery from Ohio in the 1870s included this image in the book that their treepeddlers used to sell the nursery’s plants.Notice the dramatic change to the ‘Pleasant Home’ represents theEnglish style of landscape.The D.M.Hewey Company in Rochester produced the lithographs for thiscollection.Courtesy of the Newton Historical Society,Newton,MA.

them.” JosephT.Phillips fromWestGrove,Chester County,Pennsylvania,summed it up in that same year when hewrote in his catalog:“In no departmentof cultivation is improvement of taste tobe more distinctly seen than in the dec-oration of our grounds and the universallove of trees.”

Thus English landscape design,withits lawn, carefully spotted trees, andgrouped shrubs, became popular amongnineteenth-centuryAmerican home-owners.The M.V. Johnston Nursery inOhio presented a before-and-after lookto the landscape according to the nurs-ery catalog (Figure 5).The home gardenprovided the middle class with a tasteof the country.Well-tended groundsbecame a place of both connection toa rapidly disappearing rural way of lifeand isolation from the city and its dis-turbing chaos. Seed and nursery catalogstaught the middle class how to designhome grounds themselves.The land-scape they recommended - picturesqueor gardenesque - followed the recom-mendations of English writers such asJ.C.Loudon and hisAmerican follow-ers, such as Downing and Scott.Thenineteenth-centuryAmerican seedcompany and nursery industry pro-moted the English model of landscapein the catalogs, books, and magazinesthey published.And we have lovedthat style ever since.

Thomas J. Mickey is a Professor in theDepartment of Communication Studies.This article is an edited excerpt from hisbook Seduction of the English Garden:The Story of American Gardening accordingto the Nineteenth Century Seed and NurseryCatalogs which the University Press ofKentucky will publish next year.

c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brid_Dec10.qxd:c1-c2_01-32_c3-c4brvw_Dec10 12/23/10 9:49 AM Page 7