eighth edition, he mentioned the black-eyed Susan, or Rudbeckia hirta, which he wrote “grows naturally in Virginia, and several other parts of North America.”83
Among the many who read the work of Englishman Thomas Whatley, author of Observations on Modern Gardening, published in 1770, was Thomas Jefferson. Whatley discussed the importance of the popular naturalistic view of landscape, which Jefferson later employed in designing Monticello. This same style would later become the primary English landscape design promoted in the American seed and nursery catalogs of the nineteenth century.
The English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744) also inspired Williamsburg’s gardeners. English views of the natural landscape were aligned with the arts of poetry and painting, and the English at that time particularly relished the horticultural and agricultural ideas of the classical Latin authors. In a 1713 article in the Guardian, Pope praised the Roman poet Homer’s enclosed garden of four acres, mentioning the trees, the fruits that never failed, the vineyard, and, at the extremity of the enclosed area, the kitchen garden. Pope noted, “How contrary to this simplicity is the modern practice of gardening.”84
For Pope the “modern” form of gardening included topiaries: the heavily pruned and unusual shapes of shrubs and trees. Using his own garden as an example, he indicated his preference for a natural look to the landscape. He wrote, “Persons of genius and those who are most capable of art, are always most fond of Nature.”85 Pope inspired English landscape writers and designers with his preference for the picturesque view. That view later became important in nineteenth-century American landscape design through the writings of Andrew Jackson Downing.86
English garden writers Robert Bradley, John Abercrombie, William Marshall, and Charles Marshall were also popular in the colonies.87 The first edition of John Abercrombie and Thomas Mawe’s Every Man His Own Gardener was issued in 1767. Mawe was “gardener to his Grace the Duke of Leeds” and Abercrombie a “gardener” in Newington, Surry.
The English books presupposed farms of large acreage with existing well-cultivated grounds and the services of at least one well-trained gardener. Many of the plants discussed, however, were not available; procedures advised were not appropriate for the soils and climates of North America; and many topics were simply of no value to settlers engaged in the struggles of colonizing.
For these and other reasons, the need for American works on gardening became more apparent during the late eighteenth century.88 After 1820, farm journal publications began to appear in many states. Such journals were written for the dirt farmer and gentleman farmer alike, both of whom were facing a climate different from that of England. But a handful of American books that preceded those journals established the foundation for American farming and gardening literature.
The first American treatise on agriculture was written by Jared Eliot, a minister, physician, and farmer from Killingworth, Connecticut.89 His book, Essays upon Field Husbandry, appeared between 1747 and 1759. He wrote in the preface, “There are many sundry books on husbandry wrote in England. Having read all on that subject I could obtain, yet such is the difference of climate and method of management between them and us, arising from causes that make them always differ, so that those books are not useful to us.”90
A few decades after Eliot’s book, circa 1788, John Randolph, a lawyer and resident of Williamsburg, wrote the first American book on kitchen or vegetable gardening, Treatise on Gardening, which became popular among Williamsburg colonists. Before he wrote the book, he practiced Miller’s garden instructions for several years to adapt English methods to the Virginian conditions. The book is mostly a list of plants, primarily vegetables but also herbs such as mugwort and artemisia. At the end of his book, he included a calendar with garden duties for each month.
Samuel Deane, vice president of Bowdoin College, presented a dictionary of farming terms in The New England Farmer, published in 1797. He wrote, “Americans speak the English language, yet the diction peculiar to different farmers on the east and west of the Atlantick, and the manner of their communicating their ideas on husbandry are so little alike, as to render it highly expedient that we should be instructed by our own countrymen, rather than by strangers.”91 It seemed to him that English writers had instructed American gardeners for far too long. Deane focused his book on farming in North America, specifically in New England, to address the lack of such information. He wrote not for the wealthy landowner but for farmworkers, so they could understand the importance of applying certain agricultural techniques.
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
