reflected in similar designs around the country, often with the Olmsted firm hired as the designer. In 1888, the Mount Hope Nurseries, the premier nursery in the country owned by Ellwanger and Barry, in Rochester, New York, gave the city twenty acres not far from the nursery. That gift later became Mount Hope Park, which Olmsted also designed.
Rural Cemeteries
In Paris in 1804, Père Lachaise Cemetery had become an international model of the rural cemetery, inspiring the creation of garden cemeteries abroad.42 Across the channel, in London, cemeteries had become a problem as the city’s population increased dramatically in the nineteenth century. The amount of space available for burying the dead was diminishing in large cities, both in America and in England, creating the threat of health problems, including the fear of miasmas, for the urban residents. But more than fear of disease prompted calls for a new type of cemetery; aesthetic appreciation also played a role. Loudon, for example, proposed in his magazine a parklike cemetery with trees and shrubs in an extensive landscape that would ensure a natural, picturesque view of nature and also give city dwellers a chance to enjoy a Sunday stroll along the cemetery’s winding paths and grassy hills, dotted with stately trees. England’s first suburban, parklike cemetery in London was Kensal Green Cemetery, laid out in 1832.
At about the same time, Boston joined the movement toward the rural cemetery, a newly emerging style of burial ground. In 1831, with the support of the leadership of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, Mount Auburn Cemetery was built in Cambridge in the manner of the rural cemetery of Europe. Hovey referred to Mount Auburn as “the sacred garden of the dead.”43 Later, in 1848, Boston’s Forest Hills Cemetery was also built, as an expression of the best style of landscape or picturesque gardening.
Vick encouraged the rural cemetery, with its lawn, trees, and shrubs. Figures 1.2 and 1.3 show illustrations from his magazine. He wrote in 1878, “Although the laying out and general treatment [of a rural cemetery] should be as for a gentleman’s ground or park, still the Cemetery may and must have a character of its own, not forced or artificial, or severe, but natural and graceful. This character can be expressed in no way so well as by judicious planting.”44 He thus encouraged the use of lawn, trees, and shrubs in a cemetery, much in the tradition of the English as represented in the writings of Loudon.
Figure 1.2. The cemetery as it existed in many areas
Figure 1.3. The cemetery as it should be, with trees and shrubs in the English style of cemetery landscape.
Plant Collecting and Greenhouses
As noted earlier, the English had been avid plant collectors since the 1700s, when English horticultural societies and botanic gardens hired plant collectors to search the world for plants. To a large extent, the work of plant collectors was what made fashionable horticulture possible, as they sent thousands of intriguing new species to the gardens and herbaria of Europe.45 Plant collectors from England were representatives of the horticultural societies, of botanical gardens such as Kew, and even of British plant merchants such as Veitch Nurseries, which were always on the lookout for new plant varieties.
In America, the century began with the Lewis and Clark expedition to the northwest, which included a hunt for plants. Later, Asa Gray, the Harvard botanist, would provide a scientific listing of American plants. By the end of the century, botanic gardens such as Boston’s Arnold Arboretum would sponsor their own plant collectors, who traveled to Asia to bring back plants suitable for the American garden.
Historian Philip J. Pauly has written that nineteenth-century nurserymen were deeply involved in the work of selection, hybridization, and improvement of plants.46 For example, by the end of the century the Reasoner Nursery in Florida had made significant contributions to botany and agriculture by introducing plant varieties that are still grown in the mild climates of America.47
Hovey stands as a particularly good example of plant improvement, for throughout his life he sought better plant varieties. As he wrote in his nursery catalog of 1849, “From the best sources in Europe, all the new and choice varieties have been procured.” Philadelphia nurseryman Thomas Meehan agreed, saying, “Numbers of the best new plants and fruits were first introduced to the public from [Hovey’s] nurseries and seed house in Boston.”48 Hovey’s own fruit, the ‘Hovey’ strawberry, held a prominent place in the market for thirty years. Some claim that it was the start of the commercial sale of strawberries in this country.
Owners of commercial nurseries were not the only source of plant selection and improvement, however. At the historic English garden Chatsworth, the Duke of Devonshire collected orchids, which were housed in a glass house built by Paxton in 1834. Several orchids were named after Paxton and the duke. The glass house still stands on the original site.
The glass house is the most characteristic garden structure of the nineteenth century.49 Plants such as orchids and camellias became popular for greenhouse cultivation for the wealthy, but by midcentury the cheap price of glass had come to allow even the middle class to overwinter plants in a glass house. At the end of the century, Cornell horticulturalist L. H. Bailey wrote, “Even the humblest gardener, if he is thrifty, can afford a green-house.”50
By 1848 Hovey had built four greenhouses on his nursery grounds. One visitor wrote, “He erected one of the largest span-roofed houses in the country, being ninety-six feet long and thirty feet wide, chiefly for the growth of specimen plants.”51 His camellia collection had its own conservatory, called the Camellia House, which was eighty-four feet long and twenty-two feet wide.
Garden Publications
The English published several popular garden magazines in the nineteenth century. As Meehan wrote in his Gardener’s Monthly of 1878, “The Horticultural, or as they are justly more proud of saying, the Gardening press of England, is a great power. On the tables of the most intelligent, although you might not anticipate any gardening proclivities, you may not be surprised to see the Gardener’s Chronicle.”52 In 1844, The Gardener’s Chronicle was proposed as a new English garden journal by John Lindley, a garden writer and botanist who headed Chelsea Physic Garden in London. Lindley offered this editorial evaluation of his market: “Gardening is admitted to be better understood in Great Britain than in any other country, and the number of works on the subject prove the patronage it receives, and the desire there is to extend the knowledge of its various branches.”53
Lustig considers Loudon, Lindley, and Paxton the three great horticultural writers of mid-nineteenth-century England.54 Although England created a stream of publications for the middle-class gardener, Loudon’s was the first and most famous. It was for the businessman who gardened on the weekend, when he, too, could enjoy the pleasures of botany and horticulture, once solely the domain of the wealthy aristocrat.
The English gardening press maintained its influence but not its exclusivity, however: garden publications in England were soon imitated in America, with American seedsmen and nurserymen providing the lead. Hovey’s publication, with the original name The American Gardener’s Magazine, was America’s first magazine devoted solely to horticulture. It remained in publication for thirty years. Though America published its own garden magazines, the country still relished the garden instruction from England. American nurseries and seed houses looked to England for garden inspiration and then passed that experience on to their customers in the catalogs, articles, and books they wrote.
Botanic Gardens
The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries founded London’s Chelsea Physic Garden in 1673. Today its research continues to promote the study of the properties and origins of over five thousand plant species
