06/13/2022 at 5:35 pm
What better way to honor Father’s Day than by celebrating men and their flowers? Here are a few fun photos from the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Gardens, which houses tens of thousands of images and records that document gardens and landscapes from the 1890s to today. David Burpee was a seed seller with a strong […]
10/25/2021 at 11:48 am
Spider Orchid The spotted spider orchid (Brassia maculata) uses tricks and treats to get what it wants: pollination. To spider-hunting wasps this orchid looks so much like an arachnid that female wasps will actually land on the flower lips and try to sting them, hoping to paralyze the “spider” and lay their eggs inside. But […]
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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