Category: garden design

Vintage landscape: painting the cherry blossoms

Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments

Painting the cherry blossoms, Wash., DC, c. 1920“An artist seen painting the Cherry Blossoms along the Tidal Basin,” Washington, D.C., by E. B. Thompson. The photo is undated, but was possibly taken in the 1920s. Via D. C. Public Library Commons on flickr.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., will begin next week on Wednesday, March 20, and will continue through April 14.  Click here for more information on events and local accomodations.

The National Park Service is predicting that peak bloom (70% of the flowers open) will occur March 26 – 30.  The average date for peak bloom is April 4.

[ADDENDUM: The Capital Weather Gang blog at The Washington Post is departing from the NPS prediction.  They believe that the peak bloom will come between April 3 and 7.]

Here’s another lovely hand-colored photograph of the Tidal Basin from about 1920.

Tidal Basin, Washington, DC, c. 1920The photographer is unknown; the image is via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The cherry trees along Washington’s Tidal Basin were a gift from the Japanese government 101 years ago, so they would have been about 10 to 15 years old at the time of these photos.

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

— A. E. Housman, “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now“

Vintage landscape: Montross Hotel

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

This hotel garden had an interesting combination treehouse-garden seat called a shoo fly. The 10′ to 12′ elevated platforms were popular along the Gulf Coast as places to catch the breezes and maybe avoid deer flies.

Montross Hotel, Library of Congress

The photo was taken from “the porch of the Hotel De Montrose [sic], Beloxi, Mississippi,” ca. 1895 – 1910, by the Detroit Publishing Co.* The Hotel de Montross (or Montross Hotel, later the Riviera Hotel) looked out on the waters of the Mississippi Sound.

“Anecdotal history of the early 20th century relates that the Hotel de Montross or Montross Hotel was the oldest hotel extant at Biloxi,” according to Ray Bellande of the Biloxi Historical Society. “It was operational before the first railroad was established between Mobile and New Orleans in 1870. Here on the central Beach of Biloxi and Lameuse Street, . . . the Montross Hotel was the focus of social life and fashion. Its pier was the disembarkation place for the society people arriving at Biloxi to enjoy its fine food, hospitality, and the gaiety of life, joie de vivre, that was offered to all visitors. The Montross Hotel flourished as a fine hostelry and boarding establishment until the late 1920s, when it became overshadowed by Biloxi’s modern beach front hotels. . . .”

I also like the light fixture.
I also like the light fixture.

A Hard Rock Hotel and Casino is located in approximately the same place today.

Beloxi has been a summer vacation resort since the first half of the 1800s.

*via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Vintage landscape: open-air school

Cindy at enclos*ure4 Comments

Open-air school in London, Library of Congress“Children in chairs on lawn during afternoon rest, London County Open-air School.”

Open-air school, London, Library of Congress“Class on lawn, children in chairs, London Open-air School.”

Open-air schools in Europe and the U.S. were  part of an effort in the first half of the 20th century to combat the rise of tuberculosis.  The first — a waldeschule or forest school — was built near Berlin, Germany, in 1904.

An open-air school was created in England in 1907 by the London County Council. This may be the school pictured here.  A second London school was organized in 1908. By 1937, there were 96 open-air schools in Great Britain.

Photos and captions by Bain News Service via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (no dates provided).

ADDENDUM: More on open-air schools here, on the blog Messy Nessy Chic.

Wordless Wednesday: Oxford garden

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Chaplain’s Quadrangle garden of Magdalen College, Oxford, September 2012.

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Plant supports

Cindy at enclos*ure8 Comments

I just wanted to show off the plant supports that a local craftsperson recently made for the garden from my “design.”   They’re cut and bent from lightweight rebar, and he gave me two sizes — about 30″ and 5′.

Two plant supports in foreground, back to back.
Two plant supports in foreground, back to back.

I can tie plants directly on to them, or I can slip bamboo poles through the loops to make a supporting grid.  They’re much easier to push into the ground than bamboo or wooden poles, and they should last pretty much forever.

Plant supports and bamboo grid -- with my sorry looking tomatoes.
Plant supports and bamboo grid — with my sorry-looking tomatoes.

Painted reddish-brown (more brown than they look in the photos), they’re unobtrusive in the flower beds.  But I think they would also be fun in really bright colors.

plant supports 3