I am a gardener and veteran garden guide at Monticello. I was inspired by my grandfather Harry, who was a first generation Italian American. My grandfather always maintained a wonderful garden. I have fond memories as a young boy climbing high up in his apple tree and dropping apples to him below. I remember the […]
When I was a young girl, Mom had two gardens (circa 1955-1966) in a rural area near Wilmington, Illinois, one at home behind the house, and one on my grandparents’ farm 1.5 miles away. I cannot believe not a single photo exists. We spent nearly the entire spring & summer tending those gardens, cultivating, planting, […]
Hard to believe that my mother has been gone thirty-four years now, she was born in 1911 and seemed as though she could grow anything. She would be 103 years old this October. I was born her youngest child when she was forty-five years of age. She loved all of her children individually as if […]
I’ve been thinking about my mother, as Mother’s Day has just passed. And I’ve been thinking about the Smithsonian Gardens’ new project Community of Gardens. And now the two are intersecting, as things often do in unexpected ways. My mother loved working in her yard. She was an adventurous gardener and did not stick to […]
I grew up listening to stories of my grandmother’s prize-winning roses. She loved to garden and I have photos of her in various gardens she visited around the world. The two photos I have submitted are her house garden in Fort Payne, Alabama. One is from 1975 with my sister in the roses and the […]
Ramon G. is from Toluca, Mexico. Ramon has been gardening ever since he could remember because that’s what he was taught to do since he was young, to work in the fields. Maria: When did your interest in gardening start? Ramon: As a kid I didn’t like gardening as much but once I had my […]
On May 16, 2014 I interviewed Simon. He has a garden and is growing tomatoes. “Gardening is a very great way to relieve stress and enjoy my own time,” Simon said as he watered his garden. He told me about his childhood and how his father was the one that taught him how to garden. […]
I grew up gardening with my mother. She is an avid gardener with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants. One of my favorite childhood games to play with her was to point at plants and ask “what’s that?” More often than not, she would recite the common name and the scientific name as well as describe […]
I live in South Bend Indiana, and most likely always will. Here is the story of a garden in my community. Here in South Bend we have a wonderful Japanese-style garden that has a good backstory. The Japanese garden was built near a park, near a public pool, and the name of the garden is […]
My parents were married in my grandparents’ backyard in Darnestown, Maryland on June 2, 1973. I grew up looking at the photos in their wedding album and obsessing over the 70’s fashion on view in their Super 8 wedding film. It was a true hippie, bohemian wedding, very modern at the time, and very them. […]
Gardens are the one universal and infinite language of man and nature. The pure joy that walking through a garden brings is hard to put into words. Each garden has its own music and palette. As a child in the garden of my grandparents, both native and indigenous gardeners, I marveled at the intricate beauty […]
In the 1960s I learned everything I needed to know about gardening and cooking from one of the original organic gardeners and foodies: my grandmother. After World War II she noticed that it was hard to get good produce anymore; the peddlers who used to sell door-to-door didn’t come around any more. So she bought […]
Brooklyn, New York, 1948. My immigrant father, Francesco Pietanza, a merchant steward and cook from Mola di Bari, Italy arrived at Ellis Island on the S.S. Coronado in search of his younger brother. Despite the racketeering longshore waterfront and the underlying discrimination that peppered the streets of his chance destination of South Brooklyn, he was […]
In the 1860s, an 83-acre property on what was then Smith Road, now South 51st Street, in Franklin, Wisconsin was bought by our great grandfather, Johann (John) Barg and his wife Maria (nee Tietgen). The Barg homestead’s main barn was erected in 1877. Later, his son, our grandfather, Edward J. Barg and his wife Annette […]
The catalpa tree in the front yard of our family farm is still living today. As far as we know our parents planted the tree. There are six of us. Pa and Ma referred to us children as “first and second crop hay” as they had two girls and a boy (like first cutting of […]