One of the most popular early nineteenth-century books on gardening published in America was John Gardiner and David Hepburn’s American Gardener (1804). Hepburn gardened for twenty years in England and for the next twenty years in America. He partnered with Gardiner, who was skilled enough in horticulture to write this practical manual, which gave great detail about the kitchen garden and also discussed the importance of flowers for the home landscape. The book appealed to the American gardener who had a small home lot.
Not specifically a gardening book but showing the importance of gardening was The History and Present State of Virginia, in Four Parts, written by Robert Beverley, the son of a Virginia planter. His purpose in writing this book was to lure English citizens to the new land. In it he discussed the plants that were native to the area and their value, which included nuts, berries, flowering trees such as the tuliptree, muskmelons and watermelons, corn, and potatoes—all well known to the residents of Williamsburg. Beverley said, “A kitchen garden don’t thrive better or faster in any part of the Universe than here.”92The garden included herbs and vegetables from England, but he argued that they grew better in Virginia. These gardens also contained native Virginia fruits and herbs.
Although books to instruct the gardener in colonies such as Williamsburg were primarily the work of English authors, the nineteenth century opened the door for American gardening writers such as Charles Mason Hovey and Andrew Jackson Downing, who, like so many other garden writers of that time, were also the owners of seed houses or nurseries.
Because of his wealth and connections in England, where he had attended school, John Custis was able to receive the latest seeds and plants for his garden, which many claimed was the best garden in all of Williamsburg. Though many of his imports failed to grow, he never gave up asking Collinson for the newest variety of plant. He imported more European plants into the Tidewater region of Virginia than anyone else.
Through several growing seasons, Custis learned the lesson important to every gardener: persistence and patience mark the journey. Custis enjoyed his garden, which, according to some, was graced with the best collection of lilacs in America. Custis wrote to Collinson, “I am att [sic] a loss what Returns or acknowledgements to Make you for your Many Favours.” The plants Custis sent and the splendid garden he tended in Williamsburg were thanks enough to Collinson.
George Washington, who married John Custis’s daughter-in-law, Martha, after her husband died, years later spent a night at the Custis home. By then John Custis was gone, but Washington, a gardener himself, likely enjoyed the plants, both native and from England, in a garden that many once considered the best in Williamsburg.
featured plant
Rudbeckia hirta / Black-Eyed Susan
As I walk around my garden in late summer, I see the yellow flowers of Rudbeckia hirta, or black-eyed Susan, popping out of crevices in the rocks that form a wall near the lamppost. How they get there I do not know, but every year they appear.
From the seventeenth century on, the English perennial garden included plants from America. This plant is native to eastern North America and was first sent to England in 1714. It appeared in the Bartram listing of native American plants in 1783, which was during the period when colonial Williamsburg’s gardens attained their prominence. In the nineteenth century, Rudbeckia hirta returned to become part of American gardens when American seedsmen and nurserymen offered it in their catalogs. Philadelphia’s Robert Buist sold it in his 1845 catalog for twenty-five cents.
Linnaeus, the Swedish naturalist, named the flower Rudbeckia after Olav Rudbeck and his son, who were both professors at the University of Uppsala. In 1918 the black-eyed Susan became Maryland’s official flower when it was designated the “Floral Emblem” of Maryland by the General Assembly. The story is told that its common name, black-eyed Susan, may refer to a Susan in England searching for her long-lost love, William.
The word hirta, the designation of the largest group from the twenty-five species of Rudbeckias, means “hairy” and refers to the short, stiff hairs on the stem. The black-eyed Susan is very easy to care for and has no special needs. However, it does best—growing two feet in height—when it is in well-drained soil and full sun. Its leaves are diamond-shaped, have three prominent veins, and reach four to seven inches in length. The yellow flower with the dark center blooms from June through August, and it can be annual, perennial, or biennial. It is often confused with the sunflower. This plant is usually found in dry fields, roadsides, prairies, and open woods.
3: Early Wealthy Americans and Their English Landscapes
Banker Joseph Shipley felt the pain from gout run through his body. When confined in his chair near the window, he enjoyed looking out at the extensive lawn and trees in the picturesque landscape outside his Liverpool home. Though his English landscape gave him some consolation, his illness often made him think about returning to his native America.
Shipley wrote to his nephew, requesting that he purchase on Shipley’s behalf the Weldin property in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. To his English friends it was no surprise, therefore, that in 1851, at the age of fifty-six, Shipley set sail for America, where he would retire and build the estate he called Rockwood.
After he arrived in America, Shipley could have read Cambridge nurseryman C. M. Hovey’s 1850 seed catalog, for on the inside front cover Hovey recommended the English picturesque landscape style: “The cultivation of ornamental trees and shrubs is rapidly increasing, and with the increasing taste, a desire to possess a greater variety than has usually been enumerated in catalogues in this country. The publication of that magnificent work, the Arboretum Britannicum, by the late Mr. Loudon, has made known a vast number of trees and shrubs, which, through the exertions of foreign collectors, have been introduced into Great Britain and the Continent and have already added so much to the embellishment of their gardens and grounds. A great portion of these being perfectly hardy, their introduction into our grounds is an object of great importance.” Hovey encouraged his readers to use exotic, imported plants in the home landscape to replicate the style of the English garden.
Shipley built his Delaware landscape in that English fashion. He provides an example of the early period of American gardening, when wealthy businessmen, with English garden books to guide them, chose to design their home landscape in the English manner. They would, however, buy their seeds and plants from an American company.
There had been no seed or plant catalogs in colonial Williamsburg, and inspiration for gardening came from English writers. That began to change during the nineteenth century, especially after 1870, when a large commercial trade in seeds and plants emerged, centered on the East Coast. While most Americans would continue to regard gardens primarily as a source of food and medical supplies, the wealthy could enjoy a landscape designed and planted as an art form. However, even though the words and images of the new catalogs opened up a world of possibilities to American gardeners, the inspiration remained the same: the tradition of the English garden.
The English Picturesque Design Comes to America
Eighteenth-century English garden designers such as William Kent, Capability Brown, and Humphry Repton promoted landscape designs that rejected the earlier formal geometric plan. Their encouragement