America's Romance with the English Garden Thomas J.Mickey. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013.

Abstract

America's Romance with the English Garden Thomas J. Mickey. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2013.Utilizing contemporary seed catalogs, Mickey demonstrates how the English garden became commodity in late-nineteenth century America when consumers were eager to purchase the status symbols of their neighbors, even if that meant uniformity in houses and grounds. A professor emeritus of communication studies at Bridgewater (Conn.) State University, Mickey is also graduate of the Landscape Institute at the Boston Architectural College, is an avid gardener, writes newspaper garden column, has landscape design business, and has co-authored book on horticulture (Best Garden Plants for New England, 2006).Mickey identifies the features of the residential nineteenth century English garden as three-fold concept that includes a lawn, carefully sited trees and shrubs, and individual planting beds with native and exotic (xvi) with any vegetable garden hidden. By contrast, the characteristic Dutch garden was small, geometric, and included display of (3); the French garden required long vista; and the Italian, fountains and sculpture (3). Mickey finds the strong influence of the English garden on Colonial America is at the properties he examines at Colonial Williamsburg and points out that England was the source for garden books, trained gardeners, seeds, and plants.More than half of the author's book is devoted to an overview of the development of American gardening and the seed and nursery business prior to 1870. As English gardens abandoned enclosures and formality in the early-nineteenth century for picturesque style that strived for naturalism, American gardeners followed. Notable examples include the 1850s estate gardens at Rockwood, the home of Joseph Shipley outside Wilmington, Delaware; and Henry Shaw's Tower Hill in St. Louis, Missouri, where large park-like grounds were engineered to seem naturalistic and planting beds provided carpet of flowers filled with tender annuals or exotic plants. The rural cemetery movement's parklike grounds further popularized the picturesque style in the same time period.Mickey details number of social changes after 1870 that enabled US companies to influence the home gardener and the suburban landscape. Railroads and the US Postal service expanded so that plants could be shipped safely. Inexpensive postal rates supported mail order businesses and third-class postage rates made catalog distribution cheap. At the same time, lithography and steam-press printing enabled inexpensive, colorful seed catalogs, while the magazines and illustrated newspapers flooding the American home included seed company advertisements. …