19th century gardening books

To all my gardening friends. I've just laid my hands on a load of marvelous gardening books from the 19th century. These are the years when the great plant hunters were scouring the earth and introducing the plants that are common in our gardens now. I've only gotten to give them a quick glance through but they are fascinating. They give an insight to the plant culture and varieties that were available to our great grandmothers. I promise, I'll share them with you. I'm just so absolutely tickled I can't believe my hoard. I feel like Aladin in his cave. The one on lily culture is the best so far.

When we went to Longwood Gardens, there was a Library of gardening books. You'd just love to sit and thumb through them!
I was researchng something for DG once, and found a Google book version of an old book by one of the famous 'names' in woody plants..It felt neat to connect with the previous generation of gardening.

Sally

I know what you mean. I've often said that if I hadn't gone to nursing school (my family of surgeons is still writhing in shame) I'd have gotten my degree in museum science. I say that because I'm absolutely fascinated by anything earlier than WWI. Yes I have enough antiques to open a shop. I absolutely went into orgasms of delight when my daughter came home and said she was assigned to portray Boticelli for a class project. We spent Sunday at the Smithsonian and have plans to hit the Met and I've pulled out all my books on Renaissance costume. If I even thought I could get the time off we'd be on our way to London.

As much as I hated living in MO I have to admit living across the street from an historic village and helping out in their garden as well as the costume collection was heaven. That's why I'm just jumping up and down with delight. There's also one other thing. The more I learn the more I'm so very very grateful to have been born in the 20th century. G-d has truly blessed us.

That's wonderful news! You've got good browsing for many cold winter nights, I bet.

We've all got our favorite books (21st century too) on or about gardening... can anybody come up with a good way to do a book exchange, set up so the books eventually go back to their original owners? hmmm Problem is, not everybody makes it to every MAG event, so it would be hard to accomplish in person. Does the USPS still do a low "book rate" postage? Or think about how many books would fit into a regional flat rate box, maybe...

In the meantime, I want to hear more about the lily book, please! Maybe you could take a couple photos of favorite pages to share here?

Thanks for sharing your excitement with us -- what a find!

Period costumes are fun to look at too. The Library has a series of clothes of decades of the 20th century along with books of older stuff. Fun to browse even tho I am not into dressing up personally. I can sew and have thought it might be fun to make clothes for re enactors. I used to embroider and took classes in hand quilting.

Jill, I can't think of much of a good way to do that. Postage seems a bit pricey all around, these days.

I have my HORT 101 text by James and Louise Bush-Brown, probably written first in the 40s or 50s? Mostly very good but you can tell how dated it is when they discuss pesticides (2,4 D !!!) and lead lined garden pools (!!)

Here's one I used, 1936.
http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1936-4--the-best-philadelphus.pdf
But the one I was thinking of, I can't find, or even remember which article it was for. It was so neat when I opened the link and realized it was one of the big names in horticulture, like he has an arboretum named after him somewhere.

WOWEE Yehudith, what a treasure trove of books!!! Where/how were you able to acquire these??

Jill, the USPS has what they now call "media mail" (formerly known as "book rate"). Y'all can read about it here: https://www.usps.com/ship/media-mail.htm

Here: http://pe.usps.com/text/dmm300/173.htm#1113509 is a list of approved content for "medial mail" services. Books are the first thing on the list! =)

A book exchange is a really cool idea, gonna have to see what we can do about that! I've got a couple lovelies that I would really enjoy sharing around!

Yehudith, how exciting! I am also a big fan of antiques - my house is full of late 1800s to early 1900s furniture and other odds/ends. I am also a big fan of gardening, so I think it is so cool when they are combined. I have an old book on forcing winter bulbs that I picked up in an antique shop.

What a great thread topic, and a nice idea for re-browsing that old book I have on this cold wintry Saturday.

This message was edited Feb 15, 2014 10:37 AM

I pulled that gardening book from my library shelves to re-browse this morning. It isn't actually that old after all - copyrighted in 1965. Neat book all the same - "Flowering Bulbs for Winter Windows, Easy Schedules for Four Months of Color" by Marian C. Walker. Still so relevant!

I also re-discovered another one, not old either, but something that might interest you - "Two Gardeners, A Friendship in Letters". It contains twenty years (~1958 - 1977) of correspondence between Katharine S. White and Elizabeth Lawrence, two legendary gardeners, edited by Emily Herring Wilson. Nice.

Wow Aspen, that second one sounds like a REALLY cool book!!

Umm... how's your Mom doing??

I have a few older gardening books, always fun to flip through.
The D. Landreth Seed Company has a really neat catalog, I bought one last year and really enjoyed it, all kinds of descriptions, tips, and plant facts.

I should look through the books that have been left on the book shelf at work, there are some pretty old ones there as well. Stuff on lawns, trees, ponds, all sorts of stuff.

I'm working my way through the one on lilies right now. It was written in the 1870's. Right now I'm on the chapter about hybridizing. It seems they were just starting to hybridize lilies at this time using L. auratum and L. speciosum. After reading the trials and tribulations of the poor soul who hybridized L. parkmanii I'll tell you I'll look much differently at the cost of bulbs from now on. I'm working on getting my husband to adjust my scanner so I can scan in pages as a word doc and share them with you. The engravings are unbelievable. The detail is awe inspiring. This book is over 200 pages and is just jam packed. I can't wait to share.

Yehudith