Tag Archives: Gardens

July 20, 2015

Trip to Bountiful

By daseger

We took a very quick trip this weekend to New York State for a family wedding in Saratoga Springs and stopped at my brother’s house in Rhinebeck on the way back. The weather was midsummer dramatic: dark thunderstorms on the way there and back and hot, hazy and humid in between. The bride was the picture of cool nonetheless, and the wedding was held in the groom’s backyard, which features one of the most spectacular gardens I have ever seen: a powerful mix of the most colorful of perennials and the most architectural of vegetables! And so very well-tended by the groom’s father: I came home a bit ashamed of my weedy patch and more than a bit envious of all those vegetables. Though I’m a notorious non-eater of green things I am always struck by how beautiful they are as plants, and wish I had more land so I could grow some (to look at). In my urban garden, I grow perennials and herbs together because this is what the colonials (and their predecessors) did: in much the same way this Saratoga garden has integrated raised vegetable beds with surrounding perennials. Then there is lawn–which is where the wedding tent was, right on the edge of the garden, or rather in the garden. I’ve been to many garden weddings before, but this was a GARDEN wedding. We drove south on the way back and stopped at my brother’s house for lunch and saw more New York bounty on the way and when we got there–including a transplanted Massachusetts white hydrangea from my mother’s family house (why don’t I have any????)–which seems to be doing particularly well in New York. Once we were on the Pike driving back to Salem I recalled a very distant memory from my early childhood in Strafford, Vermont: there was a well-established farmer who suddenly and inexplicably (to me, who could not imagine any place more perfect than Vermont) sold his farm and moved to New York State. I asked either my mother or my father (I can’t remember which) why? And they said: the farms are so much larger in New York, and there is just MORE: more land, more crops, BIGGER vegetables. I am definitely paraphrasing here but that was the gist of it. I remember that at that moment “New York” became something different than, or additional to, the city, for me, and associated with bounty.

An amazing Saratoga Springs garden (encompassing a wedding celebration), including weird-looking brussel sprouts, and a flourishing white hydrangea (the best kind) in Rhinebeck:

3 Comments | tags: Celebrations, Gardens, Summer, weather | posted in Current Events, Nature, Travel

June 9, 2015

Southern Exposure

By daseger

We are just back from a brief vacation down south, to Raleigh, Savannah and Charleston: three very different cities! Raleigh is clearly booming, but it’s hard to find its center in the midst of all the ring roads and housing developments, while Savannah and Charleston have long embraced their urban cores, first out of necessity, later for tourism. They are perfect walking and biking cities while you clearly need bigger wheels in Raleigh. I’ve been to Savannah and Charleston several times, and always together, inviting comparisons. This time I preferred the former, though it might have been due merely to our better accommodations (The Gastonian) and the fact that we were there on weekdays when it was a bit quieter. By the time we got to Charleston I was tired of walking around with a sheen of perspiration on my forehead, and my camera was so tired it just quit! Savannah is–of course–a city of squares and townhouses, and we saw them all, large and small. We bypassed the more touristy waterfront in favor of downtown, and sought out the full architectural spectrum, which is uniform in form but incredibly diverse in style: townhouses from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, English, French, Spanish, and even Dutch in inspiration, or so they seemed to me. We ate and drank very well (Pinkie Master’s Lounge, Crystal Beer Parlor, Alligator Soul)–probably another reason we were a bit worn out by the time we got to Charleston!

The courtyard garden at our inn and all sorts of Savannah townhouses, above; below: some notable detached houses in Savannah, including the Richardson-Owens-Thomas House (and slave quarters) and the Isaiah Davenport House. Obligatory shots of the impressive cathedral and moss.

A few more observations, some comparative, some not. I love all the outdoor gas lighting in Savannah–and the garden statuary: people really embellish their homes and gardens. Both Savannah and Charleston are cleaner (yes, even Savannah, the “beautiful woman with a dirty face”) than Salem: we should do better. Savannah is very serious about dog poop: there are special receptacles in all of the squares and cemeteries. Both cities are also quieter and more traffic-calmed–the squares of Savannah are particularly effective at that. The educational institutions in both cities, Savannah College of Art and Design and the College of Charleston, are much more integrated than our Salem State University, rehabilitating older structures downtown rather than just building new and big outside. More on Charleston in my next post, and shopping.

2 Comments | tags: Architecture, Charleston, Gardens, Savannah, travel, urban planning | posted in Houses, Travel

May 31, 2015

Kings and Queens in the Garden

By daseger

I’ve been reading an odd little book titled Queen Elizabeth in the Garden. A Story of Love, Rivalry, and Spectacular Gardens by Trea Martyn which recounts the political/botanical rivalry between Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester and William Cecil, Lord Burghley, to win the favor of Queen Elizabeth I by out-gardening one another. Queen Elizabeth did love her gardens, that is certain, and I suppose lavish landscaping might have been one avenue towards favorite status, but the book also references images of Elizabeth in the garden, some with which I was familiar, others not. This got me thinking about images of other monarchs in their gardens, and wondering about the point of this particular type of projection. We still like to see monarchs, and other leaders (the White House Rose Garden!) in a pastoral setting: why? Is it the age-old mastery of nature thing or just aesthetics? I suppose it matters what they are doing: Queen Elizabeth II seems to enjoy walking around engaging with the roses, while our presidents use them as a mere backdrop for important announcements. My favorite king-in-the-garden painting is of Charles II accepting a native-grown (but still exotic) pineapple from the royal gardener, John Wise, who is appropriately kneeling as he bears the fruit of his labors. The message seems clear here, but the accessible Charles is clad in the equivalent of “street clothes”, adding interest and intimacy to the painting. Most likely it was a memorial painting for Wise, who died in the same year it was painted, 1677. The “pineapple painting”, along with many other examples of horticultural art, is included (conveniently) in the current exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace: Painting Paradise: the Art of the Garden,along with paintings of HR Emperor Elector Wilhelm I and his family in their classical garden (1791) and a the 1897 Jubilee Garden Party with Queen Victoria and Princess Alexandra in attendance.

British School, Charles II Presented with a Pineapple, c. 1675-80; Wilhelm Böttner,Wilhelm IX, Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, later Elector Wilhelm I, his wife, Wilhelmine Caroline and their children, Wilhelm, Friederika and Caroline; Laurits Regner Tuxen, The Garden Party at Buckingham Palace, 28 June 1897, all Royal Collection Trust / © HM Queen Elizabeth II 2015.

The imperial garden party image could date from this year or last, with updated clothes and Queen Elizabeth II and Duchess Kate standing in for Victoria and Alexandra, even though Great Britain is no longer a true global empire. But we would want a close-up, perhaps like that taken of Victoria and her family in the garden of Osborne House a bit earlier. And as for Elizabeth (I), we have two garden paintings which present contrasting images, one featuring a very relaxed queen at Kenilworth (her back to us!) with Leicester and another more formal, symbolic projection of Elizabeth the Peacemaker, olive branch in hand and sword at her feet. In one painting she is in the garden, of the garden, in the other, it serves merely as a backdrop for a working Queen.

Detail of a photogravure of Queen Victoria at Osborne House, 1890 (b/w photo), English Photographer, (19th century) / Private Collection / The Stapleton Collection / Bridgeman Images; Dirck Hals, Queen Elizabeth I and the Earl of Leicester at Kenilworth (detail), early seventeenth century, Royal Cornwall Museum; Marcus Gheeraerts the Elder, The Peace Portrait of Elizabeth I (also call The Welbeck or Wanstead Portrait), between 1580-85, private collection.

7 Comments | tags: Art, books, Exhibitions, Flora and Fauna, Gardens, Queen Elizabeth, Queen Victoria | posted in Culture, History, Nature

May 5, 2015

First Flowering

By daseger

Yesterday was the first truly warm day of 2015 in Salem so I took a long, long walk in order to escape department drama and find some color: successful on both counts! Everyone had the same idea, and so young and old, firm and infirm, and fully-dressed and half-dressed were out and about. This is the time to see flowering shrubs and trees: the dogwoods are not quite out, but the magnolias certainly are, and I’ve got three notable examples below: one particularly lush shrub that everyone drives by without due appreciation on busy North Street, an older, sparer tree in the garden of the Gardner Pingree House, and a perfect tree on the Common (which I think I feature every year at about this time–along with various spring bulbs). There was just one single flower on the old Wisteria that climbs up the Andrew Safford House, so I gave it a spotlight.

6 Comments | tags: Flora and Fauna, Gardens, Peabody Essex Museum, Spring, weather | posted in Nature, Salem

April 23, 2015

Botanical Sisters

By daseger

My garden looks like it might have survived our harsh winter so I’m starting to turn my thoughts outward–slowly, and in a rather detached manner. There’s still quite a bit to do inside as the end-of-semester end game is pretty busy, and once I get fixated on the garden I become less productive in the interior realm! The other day I was showing my students a beautiful painting of a famous Royalist family, the Capels, whose prominent garden is featured in the background. While my eyes were lingering on the garden, their questions were about the children in the foreground: what were their fates after their father followed King Charles I to the execution block in 1649? I couldn’t account for every Capel child in the picture at the time (now I can) but I could relay the horticultural history of the two Capel girls on the right, Elizabeth and Mary. I don’t think this kind of information was what my students were looking for, but they were quite polite about it.

Cornelius Johnson, The Capel Family, c. 1640, National Portrait Gallery, London; Peter Lely, Mary Capel, later Duchess of Beaufort, and her sister Elizabeth, Countess of Carnarvon, c. 1658, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As you can see in both paintings, the youngest Capel sister, Elizabeth (who is on the left of her elder sister Mary in the Johnson portrait and the right in the Lely) is associated with flowers in both her childhood and her adulthood. She is extending a rose to her baby brother Henry above, and below she holds one of her own flower paintings–a noted personal preoccupation during her relatively short life (1633-1678). Around 1653 she married Charles Dormer, the 2nd Earl of Carnarvon, with whom she had four children. During their marriage she maintained the Dormer residence at Ascott House in Buckinghamshire, and continued to explore her interest in flowers through both gardening and painting. One of her botanical compositions, a Dutch-inspired still life, is in the Royal Collection. Mary Capel, later Seymour, then Somerset and the first Duchess of Beaufort (1630-1715), moved well beyond her sister’s aesthetic interest in plants into the realm of scientific botany, becoming an avid collector and cataloger of the vast collection of worldly plants she assembled for the Beaufort gardens and conservatories at Badminton House in Gloucestershire and Beaufort House in Chelsea. She commissioned both a 12-volume Hortus Siccus, comprised of dried specimens of her plants, many “pressed by the Duchess herself”, and a two-volume florilegium to document her collection, ensuring her reputation in the long line of notable British plantswomen.

Vase of Flowers by Elizabeth, the Countess of Carnarvon, 1662, Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014; Specimens from the Duchess of Beaufort’s Hortus Siccus, Natural History Museum, London.

3 Comments | tags: 17th century, Art, England, Flora and Fauna, Gardens, horticulture, Teaching | posted in Culture, History

April 21, 2015

Green and Purple

By daseger

At this time of year I crave two colors: green and purple, alone but especially together. This is one of my favorite color combinations, in all shades: lavender and spring green, purple and emerald, violet and chartreuse. I’ve never had a house that could carry off these colors either on its exterior or interior—I suppose I wouldn’t want to live with them–but they always catch my eye. I grew up in the Laura Ashley age, and two of my favorite prints (on a dress and a comforter) bore purple and green rather boldly, and my late spring wedding featured touches of these two colors, anchored by more neutral gray and ivory. The spectrum of green and purple can take you through the year if you’re so inclined: with paler shades for spring and summer and richer tones for fall and winter. So here is my palette, starting with a wonderful picture of the Elizabethan scholar, art and cultural historian, public intellectual, super gardener, and all-around Renaissance Man Sir Roy Strong, standing in the midst of his Laskett Gardens in Herefordshire.

Photograph of Sir Roy Strong by Clive Coursnell from Remaking a Garden: the Laskett Gardens Transformed (2014); “Royal Garden” and “Versailles Grand” wallpapers from Cole & Son; Bedroom at the 1716 Warner House, Portsmouth, New Hampshire (photograph by Geoffrey Gross for Antiques & Fine Art Magazine); two Salem houses on Oliver and Daniel Streets (the first one looks rather blue in this photo, but more purple in real life–love the chartreuse trim–and the plaque on the second house: Historic Salem’s plaques are not usually so informational).

1 Comment | tags: Architecture, books, Color, England, Gardens, Interior design, Interiors, Seasons | posted in Houses, Nature, Salem

October 29, 2014

Scary Vegetables

By daseger

In honor of Halloween and the ongoing harvest season, as well as my continuous fascination with anthropomorphism, today I have a portfolio of images which I have labeled “scary vegetables”, some of which are scary because of the human-like characteristics assigned to them (in both the mandrake and pumpkin-head traditions) and others which are simply scary. I’ve featured this topic before, but this variation is a bit more creepy and much more focused on vegetables in general and root vegetables in particular. There’s nothing particularly modern about these images: the aforementioned mandrake with its humanoid roots was a medieval forerunner, and Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s whimsical portraits definitely made plants-in-human-form the embodiment of grotesque in the Renaissance and influenced surrealistic expressions centuries later. Some plants are scary just on their own–especially their roots–but others require a bit of artistic embellishment. I’m not quite sure why Diego Rivera’s radishes are so very menacing, but they certainly are!

Sources of Scary Vegetables: Bloodroot from Bigelow’s American Medical Botany, 1817; Turnip, Radish & Parsnip “Roots” from Kirby‘s Wonderful and eccentric museum; or, Magazine of Remarkable Characters, 1820; C.J. Grant colored lithographs/”advertisements” for Morrison’s vegetable pills, 1831, Wellcome Library; an old postcard from my collection, c. 1910-30?; Diego Rivera’s The Temptation of St. Anthony, 1947, Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City; “Tragedy 29: Turnip Seeds” print by BenjaminDewey;”Look Pa” print by CathyHorner.

4 Comments | tags: Art, books, Collectibles, ephemera, Etsy, Gardens, Halloween | posted in Culture, History

August 31, 2014

Sunshine and Shadow

By daseger

It seems appropriate to focus on sundials in these waning days of Summer. I know, I know–there are technically several more weeks–but I am a college professor, so for me Fall definitely begins on Tuesday. There is just no question; it’s the least transitional of the seasons. Sundials have a long history and are aesthetically pleasing, but the main reason I like them is for their representation of another transition: from the technological and practical to the simply decorative. A sundial sits right in the middle of my Colonial Revival garden but there is also one (in more portable form) front and center in one of my favorite Renaissance paintings, The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein the Younger.

Hans Holbein the Younger, Jean de Dinteville and Georges de Selve (‘The Ambassadors’), 1533, The National Gallery, London | Photograph ©The National Gallery, London

There’s a lot going on in The Ambassadors, but if you can get past the anamorphic skull and focus on the instruments on the table, your eye (at least my eye) focuses on the sundial, right in the middle of these two handsome Renaissance men. In their time, the sundial was already almost anachronistic with the coming of the mechanical clock, but still, there it is. Obviously, like the other instruments on the table, it had come to symbolize more abstract things: the ability to harness time and (conversely) the limited amount of time that is available to man, any man (or woman), even men as magnificent as these. This sentiment is very evident in a print from about a century later, Stefano della Bella’s cartouche for the funeral of Francesco de Medici, with the central image of a sundial and the emblem Umbrae Transitus Tempus Nostrum: “Our Time is the Passing Away of a Shadow”.

Stefano della Bella, A cartouche with a sundial, a skull with feathers on its head at top, from ‘Eight Emblems for the Funeral of Francesco de Medici’ (Huit emblèmes pour les funérailles du prince François de Médicis), c. 1640-1660, Metropolitan Museum of Art

These words, this sentiment, are expressed in multiple variations on sundials over the next centuries: shadows we are, like shadows depart, as a shadow, so is life, man fleeth as a shadow. When they were not strictly utilitarian, sundial inscriptions expressing morose mortality seem to peak in the Victorian era and then shift to the light, rather than the shadow: Robert Browning’s popular plea to Grow Old along with Me; the Best is yet to Be is certainly a more hopeful (and trite) inscription. Visually, sundials cease to be macabre and become romantic, associated not with death but with the pleasures of life and with a world that was slower-paced and less technological: the perfect symbol for taking time away from that busy world, in the garden.

Back cover of Walter Crane’s A Floral Fantasy in an Old English Garden (1899), available here; Front cover of Alice Morse Earle’s Sun-Dials and Roses of Yesterday (1902), available here. One of my favorite sundials, in the sunken garden of the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, Massachusetts.

5 Comments | tags: Art, books, design, Gardens, Home, Seasons | posted in Design, History

August 2, 2014

The Last Week of July

By daseger

The last week of July was full of contrasts and transitions for me: we spent most of it in York Harbor, but I traveled back every other day for my evening class, we left for Maine on a dark rainy day in which a tornado swept down in a town just to the south of Salem (very unusual for Massachusetts) and enjoyed clear sunny days thereafter, the late-summer flowers are of course also a study in contrasting color. For the most part, we’ve been so fortunate this summer to have beautiful weather: often sunny, never too hot, with rain occurring often enough to keep everything green. I hope this continues throughout August but the dog days do threaten……anyway, here are my favorite photographs from the week, mostly of gardens and flowers. I have included a photograph of the best ice cream stand in the world, Brown’s in York Beach, my father’s prized Swiss chard, and the gardens at Stonewall Kitchen’s company store in York, which are always inspiring–even the vegetables look beautiful (actually my father’s Swiss chard looks pretty good too). There are “soft” spots in nearly every picture so I apologize in advance: my camera lens got a bit smudgy when I was trying to take the first picture in the rain, and I never noticed until just this morning.

3 Comments | tags: Flora and Fauna, food, Gardens, Maine, Shopping, travel, weather | posted in Home, Nature

July 7, 2014

Boscobel (American)

By daseger

A few more road-trip posts—then it’s back to Salem and work: I’m prepping for two summer courses and have several scholarly projects on the back burner. Every time I am in the Hudson River Valley visiting my brother, I go to see one or more of the grand estates in the region. On this particular trip, I was looking forward to seeing two Gothic Revival houses in the southern part of the Valley: Washington Irving’s Sunnyside, and nearby Lyndhurst. However, I presumed too much; I happened to be passing through on a dreaded Monday when most museums are closed, these two house museums included. Next time. Proceeding north toward my brother’s house in Rhinebeck I passed by the grounds of another estate which I had not seen–and the gate was open, so to Boscobel I went. I have to admit to a certain snobbiness on my part regarding Boscobel; it’s never been high–or even on–my “must visit” list for several reasons. First of all, it’s a Federal house, built between 1804 and 1808 by Loyalist States Dyckman (actually he died just after the foundation–his wife Elizabeth oversaw its completion). Now of course I love Federal architecture, but being from Salem I always assume that we have the best Federal houses right here: it’s Samuel McIntire or nothing for me! And as an English historian, the word “Boscobel” means only one thing to me: the English house where Prince Charles/Charles II hid out from Cromwell’s troops following the Battle of Worcester in 1851. So this Boscobel could only be a pale imitation–of either McIntire or the original. I also have a slight prejudice against historic houses that are transplanted, as this American Boscobel was: it was originally built in the slightly-more southern Hudson hamlet of Montrose, but moved to its present location in Garrison in 1961 (in pieces!) after it was threatened by demolition by a Federal construction project. But all of these “reasons” were stupid: Boscobel is well worth seeing: it has been meticulously reconstituted and its present site is simply stunning, with beautiful grounds and one of the most striking Hudson views I have seen–just across from West Point.

Boscobel: front, back (entrance from street), views from the house and river’s edge; herb garden and orangerie.

The interpretation of the house was also interesting–how it came to be and how it was reconstituted–particularly in regard to its furnishings. As a Loyalist, Mr. Dyckman had spent the Revolution in England and had bought lots of pieces while there, but Mrs. Dyckman seems to be have been more devoted to American furniture makers–including Duncan Phyfe. As all the furnishings were dispersed when the house went into decline from the late nineteenth-century on, its recreators had to either find original pieces or choose appropriate substitutes. It has been an ongoing process, but the house’s interior certainly gleams in perfect Federal fashion. I couldn’t take any pictures but the website seems to feature all of the rooms. The grounds were adorned with sculptures, the herb garden (though decidedly not in the right place) was in full bloom, and I got some more clues for my evolving research into in the relationship between English Royalists of the seventeenth century and American Loyalists of the eighteenth: altogether a very enlightening visit.