Category: life in gardens

Parc de Bagatelle, Paris

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A re-post from 2013. . .
Bagatelle/enclos*ure Strolling in Bagatelle Park, Paris, France, ca. 1920, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by an unknown photographer, via Archives of American Gardens, Garden Club of America Collection, Smithsonian Institution (used here by permission).

(Click on the picture to enlarge it.)

The park has been a botanical garden inside the Bois de Boulogne since 1905. Today, it’s best known for its over 9,000 rose bushes. The land was originally laid out in 1777 in a fashionable Anglo-Chinois style as a garden for the Chateau de Bagatelle — built by the Count of Artois in only 64 days as part of a bet with Marie Antoinette.

Another well-dressed lady in the same garden, also ca. 1920, an autochrome by an unknown photographer, via Photographic Heritage on flickr (under CC license).

The Archives of American Gardens (top image) holds over 60,000 photos and records documenting 6,300 historic and contemporary American gardens.  At its core are almost 3,000 hand-colored glass lantern and 35mm slides donated by the Garden Club of America, which is the source of this image.

Balmoral, Victoria

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“Two children on a seesaw,” Balmoral area, Victoria, ca. 1925, from The Biggest Family Album in Australia Collection, via Museums Victoria Collections (under CC license).

This is a small circus. I love the bench in the back bending under the weight of the plants.

(You can enlarge the image by clicking on it.)

Boys, dogs, and a squash

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“Boys with prize marrow and dogs,” Swan Hill, Victoria, 1923, by Kate Bradbury, via The Biggest Family Album in Australia, Museums Victoria Collections.

The boys are Gordon and Colin Bradbury.

The Sunday porch: concert

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Children of Dalton McLeod, Fuquay Springs (now Fuquay Varina), North Carolina, September 17, 1935, by Arthur Rothstein, via New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Their father was a sharecropper and the house was new, built under the New Deal Resettlement Administration (later the Farm Security Administration).

A show of mums

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The Library of Congress labels this photo “Agriculture Department Dahlia Show,” 1911, but I’m sure it’s from the USDA’s annual Chrysanthemum show, which was held in one of the Department’s greenhouses in Washington, D.C.

The show in 1917.

The first of the annual exhibitions opened in October of 1902. I haven’t been able to find out anything more about them, but they were still being held in 1937.

In 1917.

All the photos here are by Harris & Ewing, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Between 1915 and 1923.
In 1917.
Also 1917.

My advice to the women of America is to raise more hell and fewer dahlias.

— William Allen White (1868 – 1944)

I’m sure the same applied to mums.