Garden History Subscriptions

Subscriptions are another easy gift choice for the budding garden historian...I've already mentioned the journal of the Garden History S...

Garden History books for Christmas

I've had a request for suggestions as to garden history books for Christmas gift-giving, and am much behind on answering it. But there...

Habit de Fontainier

Very sorry to be away so long...I've just finished 9,000 words on a seventeenth century Fontainier--fountain engineer---for publication ...

Speaking Picture Gardens

The emblem is thought to have its roots in the impresa; that device by which people of wealth created a peculiarly personal mythology by se...

Printing from the Garden, Then and Now

"Capturing the exact details of a plant or insect by printing directly from the natural object has been a goal of printers for hundreds...

Garden Bookcases

from 'Patio Gardens', by Helen Morgenthau Fox, 1929: "In Spain there is a unique garden ornament not found in any other lands; ...

Japanese Bonsai, 1848

From the special collections of the National Agriculture Library of the US Department of Agriculture, beautiful images of Japanese bonsai f...

I could do this! The Home Depot sculptures of Stefanie Nagorka

From the New York Times: "In spring 2002, the sculptor Stefanie Nagorka was walking the aisles of Home Depot in Clifton, looking for c...

How to Grow Cabbages and Cauliflowers Most Profitably

Those inclined towards horticultural and agricultural history will be pleased to find a very thorough bibliography devoted to the History of...

Fractals in the Garden

[the leaf] [the Mandelbrot set] Given the amount of time that I must currently spend in the lab, (and I do in fact write this from beside th...

More Outsider Art in the Garden: Roadside Grottoes

Rustic, do-it-yourself garden endeavors, by untrained artists at Pluto-like distances from any traditional art milieu, seem much more common...

Outsider Art in the Garden: the sculptures of William Edmondson

While recently in Nashville I got to see an exhibition of sculpture by William Edmondson, the first African American to have a one-man show ...

Saki, The Occasional Gardener, c. 1910

"My dear Elinor," said the Baroness, "you would save yourself all this heart-burning and a lot of gardener's bills, not t...

Wang Tingna's Gardens of the Hall Encircled by Jade

I have been searching, without success, for an online version of the Chinese garden classic, 'Yuan Ye' to share with you. Completed...

The trees of Myoung Ho Lee

Given the emphasis on the shape and form of individual plants in the Oriental gardening tradition, it is perhaps not surprising that the cre...

Chinese gardens - the naming of the pavilions

Another of my 'take-home' ideas from China is the naming of garden buildings, often connected not only to a sensory experience but a...

Chinese gardens - Serenity, and the importance of an open center

With the latest scientific manuscript written and submitted I can at last return (with relief) to the contemplation of gardens, and to some ...