Historic Garden Photos

The Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Gardens has put up a series of images of early 20th century American gardens on Flickr ... in honor of American Archives Month.

The garden above, in Bar Harbor, Maine,  is designed by landscape architects Ann Leighton Smith and Beatrix Farrand.  It is part of the garden archive's glass lantern slide collection, which includes thousands of images that illustrate the design work of some of our country's most important early landscape architects:  Marian Coffin, Lawrence Halprin, Hare & Hare, Umberto Innocenti, Fletcher Steele, Ellen Biddle Shipman and many more.

Three thousand glass slides and tens of thousands of 35mm images were donated to the Smithsonian after the Garden Club of America found them in an old closet at their NY headquarters in the 1960's.  This collection is an important historical record of early American gardens, as many of the landscapes are now lost forever.

The Smithsonia Flickr presentation can be found here ... so take some time, peruse the photos, and then follow links to more images and info on historic American gardens.

(image: Archives of American Gardens)

 

Comments

[Geography Dissertation]

Blogs are so informative where we get lots of information on any topic. Nice job keep it up!!

[Debbie]

Jane,

Thanks for sharing the link to the photos on Flickr. I especially loved the photo of Hammersmith Farms designed in the 1930's - looks similar to an idea I am implementing now in own garden. Many of those gardens look like they could have been designed very recently. It's so interesting to see what was 'in' so many decades ago.