Grandmother's garden

the long version

In Grandmother's Garden: The Old-fashioned American Garden 1865-1915, art historian May Brawley Hill traces the development of this indigenous garden style in more than 150 period paintings and photographs and in a vast range of primary sources, including poems, letters, popular journalism, and garden writing. Women make up a large part of this history, because for many gardening was a refuge from the confines of their lives. The writers Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Celia Thaxter, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Anna Bartlett Warner are part of the story, as are the photographers Frances and Mary Allen, and Wallace Nutting. Notables in the Arts and Crafts movement include Gustav Stickley, Adelaide Alsop Robineau, and Maria Longworth Nichols.