or two acres in size, with the landscape design extending in straight lines from the centrally located building. The straight lines catered to the practical needs of the gardener, especially in simplifying the maintenance of fruiting plants, vegetables, and herbs.
The influence of the English garden style held strong well into the nineteenth century, when Americans began to develop their own way of gardening while remaining dependent on the English style. Garden historian and landscape architect Rudy Favretti maintains that the formal geometric style of Colonial garden design can be dated from 1620 until 1840 because design did not change significantly during that period.72
After Richmond became Virginia’s capital in 1780, Williamsburg, Virginia’s previous capital, was forgotten until the early part of the twentieth century, when it assumed its role as an important site of America’s history. In the 1920s, Williamsburg was, in a sense, rediscovered when the creation of Colonial Williamsburg was begun with the restoration of the buildings and the gardens. In the process, landscape architects researched what colonial gardens looked like. Their resources included letters and deeds but also incorporated garden designs from other cities of that period. The garden design of Colonial Williamsburg, though reconstructed in the twentieth century, displays distinct English characteristics from the earlier period.
Today a visitor to Colonial Williamsburg can see what colonial gardening was like for both the commoner and the wealthy class.73 The style in the gardens, as well as the buildings, is called Colonial Revivalism, a reconstruction of the eighteenth-century design of the home and garden. Though the style was produced in the previous century, some have, perhaps rightly, criticized it as a twentieth-century interpretation.
Some of the colonial plants were native, but most were imported, primarily from England. There were no American seed companies or nurseries offering catalogs yet. If a seed company—such as the David Landreth Seed Company, which emerged in Philadelphia in 1794—printed anything for marketing its seeds, the document was usually a small circular or a handbill. The residents of Williamsburg might have purchased plants through the Prince or Bartram nurseries, two of the earliest eighteenth-century American gardening enterprises, but they had no involvement with the American seed companies and nurseries that would become national businesses in the nineteenth century. Any commercial seeds they planted, except for those few that they saved from the previous harvest, came mainly from English seed companies that exported to America.74
Commercial Sources for Seeds and Plants
America’s additions to the gardens of England during the colonial period were mainly trees, flowering shrubs, and vines. The English perennial garden is also indebted to America for many of its plants, such as the black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), bee balm (Monarda didyma), coreopsis, goldenrod, garden phlox (Phlox paniculata), and the cardinal flower, which Robert Beverley praised in his book on the history of Virginia. Eventually, these plants would return to become part of American perennial beds, but only after American seedsmen and nurserymen began to sell them. Early among these American commercial garden enterprises of the eighteenth century are Bartram’s botanical garden at Kingsessing, near Philadelphia, and the Prince Nursery on Long Island.
Having been encouraged to collect native American plants, John Bartram in 1725 started a business selling his plants. The name “Bartram” was synonymous with botany and horticulture in the fledgling United States, and the Bartram garden became known around the world as a source for American plants.75 Though most of Bartram’s plant sales went to Europe, he insisted on the importance of his plants for American gardens as well, his belief serving as an early plea to American gardeners to use native plants. When the senior Bartram died in 1777, his sons continued the work to the end of the century, traveling the country to find plants and also carrying on their father’s tradition of practical gardening. In 1783, the Bartrams produced a broadside, or catalog, of plants and seeds available for sale from their garden. The garden, referred to as “America’s oldest botanical garden,” can still be seen, along with the Bartram house.
One particular bit of travel, to visit John Custis in Williamsburg (encouraged by Collinson, who corresponded with Bartram and received plants from him), proved a gardener’s delight for Bartram. He had been instructed by Collinson, who, because he wanted Bartram to impress Custis, made suggestions regarding what to wear and how to act. Custis received him with much hospitality, and Bartram, who would never forget that visit, spent two days and one night. Bartram found the garden to be one of the best he had ever seen. Later Collinson wrote to Custis, “Your Intended Kindness to J. Bartram on my accountt [sic] is an Act of Real Fr’ship.”76
Prince Nursery, the second early American commercial source of plants that must be mentioned, was operated from 1737 to 1850 by successive generations of the Prince family. The company issued its first catalog of fruit trees and shrubs in 1771. Because imported stock was essential in the early nursery and seed trade, the firm sold imported fruit trees, ornamental woody plants, and bulbs.77 The Prince Nursery supplied seeds and plants to cities and towns along the East Coast and also shipped them to Europe. Notables such as Thomas Jefferson made selections from Prince’s extensive catalog. Among the items sold were fruit trees—including plum, apricot, nectarine, peach, pear, mulberry, and apple—some of which were propagated by Prince.
A few smaller seed and nursery companies at that time also made important contributions to American gardens. By 1790, the gardeners of Williamsburg had a local commercial nursery, Bellett’s, where Jefferson bought plants. Bellett specialized in ornamental gardening, importing most of his plant varieties from London.78
While the rich of Williamsburg may have had plants shipped to them from England, the cottager, or working-class gardener, depended mainly on seeds. However, the American commercial seed business spread by the mid-nineteenth century, when printing, increased transportation, improved postal service, and the Shakers’ invention of the seed packet enabled gardeners to order their seeds through a free catalog. The general availability of plants increased as more American seed companies and nurseries opened in the nineteenth century. By 1870, there were dozens of companies scattered along the East Coast, in cities such as Philadelphia, Rochester, and Boston, as well as new businesses on the West Coast, in cities such as San Francisco.
Garden Books
During America’s eighteenth-century colonial period there were few garden books, except titles from English writers who discussed gardening in the soil and growing conditions of England, not America. Few American seed companies or nurseries yet printed catalogs; no American newspapers or magazines published garden articles.
A popular information source for gardeners was a friend, as with Custis and his correspondence with Collinson, or a family member with whom a person might trade plants or seeds. Any reading by the more educated was based on an occasional book written by an English author. Personal memories of gardening in England also provided inspiration to the colonists.
The landscape architect and Williamsburg scholar Ian Robertson compiled a list of important English garden books on which the American colonial gardener depended in the eighteenth century.79 The books include The Compleat English Gardner, published in 1670 (with many subsequent editions), by Leonard Meager (1624–70). Meager referred to himself as a practitioner of the art of gardening for thirty years. He wrote for “young planters and gardeners” and covered fruiting plants, trees, shrubs, and the kitchen garden, as well as the flower garden, which he called the “garden of pleasure.”80
Philip Miller was another popular garden author in England. His book, Gardeners Dictionary, was printed in London in 1731 and was reprinted several times, with later editions including double the number of plants mentioned in earlier versions. Many considered it the most important garden book in eighteenth-century England; that it was also popular with American colonists is not surprising.81 Miller covered many garden questions but also wrote about using American plants in the English garden. These included trees, because they were “useful and beautiful” when “added
