10/05/2021 at 9:15 am
While October is American Archives Month, the Archives of American Gardens (managed by Smithsonian Gardens) celebrates the importance of archives year-round! Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, staff who manage Smithsonian Gardens’ Archives of American Gardens (AAG) have been primarily teleworking from home. Despite the fact that they have not been […]
08/25/2021 at 12:36 pm
Women from all backgrounds and interests have shaped the course of American gardens. Read on to learn about a few famous names – and some lesser-known garden heroes. Carrie Lippincott, plant breeder and businesswoman 1863 – ? One of the first American women to establish a seed-selling business was Carrie H. Lippincott, who built a […]
01/06/2021 at 2:00 pm
Now that the holidays are officially over it’s time to shift gears and start thinking about the upcoming spring gardening season. While 2020 proved to be a difficult year in some ways for gardeners, the surge in popularity of both vegetable and ornamental gardening was a great boost for seed companies. This sudden demand left […]
06/24/2020 at 4:33 pm
It all began during a conversation about archival description with my mentor at the Archives of American Gardens, Kelly Crawford. We stumbled onto the topic of describing sexuality when I wondered aloud about the existence of LGBTQ-related records preserved in the collections. I was intrigued to learn that Perry Hunt Wheeler (1913-1989), a renowned landscape […]
09/11/2016 at 6:00 am
Last year, I had the opportunity to design an exhibit in the Ripley Center, “Design for Small Spaces.” Featuring stumpery, fairy gardens, green walls, terrariums and dish gardens, I hoped to inspire visitors with some ideas they could try at home, even in the smallest of spaces. A favorite component of the exhibit was the […]
04/08/2016 at 6:51 pm
What better way to celebrate National Garden Month in April than to spend some time enjoying historic garden images from the J. Horace McFarland Company Collection! Thanks to a Smithsonian preservation grant, thousands of images from this collection at the Archives of American Gardens (AAG) were digitized recently and are now available online through the […]
02/12/2016 at 6:40 pm
Floral clocks started appearing in outdoor public spaces at the turn of the twentieth century. Not to be confused with botanist Carl Linnaeus’ flower clock which laid out a variety of flowers in a clock-like design according to the hour of the day they opened and closed, the floral clocks referred to here were large-scale […]
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