Founded in 1876, W. Atlee Burpee & Company grew to be the largest seed company in the world by the early twentieth century. In 1924 the company advertised a contest in its Seed Annual asking customers to write in about “What Burpee’s Seeds Have Done for Me,” with prizes for the best stories ranging from […]
Founded in 1876, W. Atlee Burpee & Company grew to be the largest seed company in the world by the early twentieth century. In 1924 the company advertised a contest in its Seed Annual asking customers to write in about “What Burpee’s Seeds Have Done for Me,” with prizes for the best stories ranging from […]
Founded in 1876, W. Atlee Burpee & Company grew to be the largest seed company in the world by the early twentieth century. In 1924 the company advertised a contest in its Seed Annual asking customers to write in about “What Burpee’s Seeds Have Done for Me,” with prizes for the best stories ranging from […]
In the summer of 1902, the land that would become New York City’s DeWitt Clinton Park, just a few blocks from Central Park, was described as a place so run-down that even “The most vivid imagination could not have conceived a more desolate spot than this…Approached form the east, through filthy streets…it loomed up a […]
Founded in 1876, W. Atlee Burpee & Company grew to be the largest seed company in the world by the early twentieth century. In 1924 the company advertised a contest in its Seed Annual asking customers to write in about “What Burpee’s Seeds Have Done for Me,” with prizes for the best stories ranging from […]
Founded in 1876, W. Atlee Burpee & Company grew to be the largest seed company in the world by the early twentieth century. In 1924 the company advertised a contest in its Seed Annual asking customers to write in about “What Burpee’s Seeds Have Done for Me,” with prizes for the best stories ranging from […]
When mayor Hazen S. Pingree (1840-1901) began his term, he did not plan to make Detroit a garden city. An influential reformer on many fronts, he became a major proponent of vacant lot cultivation during the economic crisis of 1893, which left him searching for solutions to help unemployed laborers in the city, many of […]
For the past three years, Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum has been leading a collaborative Smithsonian project on Urban Waterways. The project comes out of a desire to explore the various issues facing urban communities and document the diverse responses to such challenges. Rivers, typically imagined in the context of a wild, natural landscape, are often “forgotten” […]
Chewonki is a non-profit environmental education center in Wiscasset, Maine, with a semester school for high school juniors, an Outdoor Classroom program for visiting school groups, and a summer camp for boys on its 400-acre saltwater peninsula, Chewonki Neck. Chewonki also leads a variety of wilderness programs for boys and girls elsewhere across the state […]
Until late winter of 2007, my only productive interactions with plants had been with the most common houseplants. Neither our family’s efforts during my childhood to grow tomatoes nor my obstinate individual ones to grow watermelons in conditions I later realized were completely ill-suited to the plant had been successful. But in 2007, after having […]
In January 2014 Michelle interviewed her neighbor Kelly, a first-time beekeeper in Watertown, Massachusetts. The transcript of their conversation follows. Michelle: Tell me a little bit about your garden? Kelly: We have a pretty small urban garden. It is actually mostly flowers because I just love growing flowers. But, we also have a small (maybe […]
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 have built a raised garden bed out of previously utilized pallets. This garden is approximately 46 square feet in surface area and raised approximately 20 inches. Currently started there are beets, radishes, bush beans, carrots, cucumbers and ‘Cascadia’ snap peas. Though my eventual goal is provide a bounty of vegetables for my friends and […]
Sixteen teenagers. Four iPads. Two days. One summer on an urban farm in Washington, D.C. Lots of questions. Every summer Common Good City Farm welcomes a group of local teens as part of their Summer Youth Program. The teens in this employment program spend six weeks weeding, selling produce from the garden, learning to farm, […]