Category: garden design

Vintage landscape: sunflowers

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Miss. house surrounded by sunflowers, via LoC“An old house almost hidden by sunflowers, Rodney, Mississippi,” July 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott on Kodachrome color film, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division on flickr.

I like the little birdhouse on the very tall pole.

Rodney was once a prosperous port on the banks of the Mississippi — until a large sand bar appeared  in the 1870s and changed the course of the river. The city was left two miles from the water.

By 1933, there were fewer than 100 people living there.  Today, it is considered a ghost town.

Life in gardens: happy

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Smiling woman and baby, 1900, Powerhouse Museum“Portrait of woman with infant,” ca. 1900, probably near Sydney, Australia, via Phillips Glass Plate Negative Collection, Powerhouse Museum Commons on  flickr.

You don’t usually see such smiles in Victorian photos.

In the picture below, you can see a little more of the garden and admire the woman’s beautiful sleeves and collar.

Woman in garden, Sydney Aus., 1900, Powerhouse Museum

Vintage landscape: Gore Park

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Gore Park Fountain, 1920, Hamilton Public LibraryGore Park fountain, 1920, Hamilton, Ontario.  Both photos via Hamilton Public Library Commons on flickr, used by permission.

Gore Park Fountain, 1960s, Hamilton Public LibraryGore Park fountain, 1960s.

Life in gardens: animal court

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Jane Addams Housing fountain, via LoC“Sculpture and children in fountains – Jane Addams Houses,” between 1938 and 1940, Chicago, Illinois, by Peter Sekaer for the U.S. Housing Authority, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The Jane Addams Homes public housing project was built in 1938 under the New Deal Public Works Administration Act. The “Animal Court” figures were carved from limestone by Edgar Miller.

The sculptures still exist, although the buildings around them were razed in the early 2000s.  As of September 2013, they were in storage awaiting restoration and a new home.  They may eventually return to a place near their old location, as part of a National Public Housing Museum.

There are more photos here, at the blog Playscapes.

November Bloom Day: early summer

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Technically, because Kigali is a few degrees south of the equator, it is early summer here.

But  — given that the temperature is almost always in the 70ºs or low 80ºs — it is more relevant that we are almost three months into the end-of-the-year rainy season.

In late October, I came back from five weeks in the U.S. to rampant growth in all the planting beds.  Now, I need to wade in and do some serious cutting back all over.

To see what’s blooming for other garden bloggers, visit Carol at May Dreams Gardens here.