A peaceful view of a magnolia tree blooming in a Washington, D.C., park in 1919 — before any other trees have leafed out.
That winter seems to have been as mild as the preceding year’s was harsh. But the sweet scene may belie the real state of affairs. The influenza pandemic that began in the fall remained pervasive, and in the summer to come, deadly race riots would grip the city.
Photo by Harris & Ewing from the Harris & Ewing Collection of the Library of Congress. Click the photo to enlarge.
Here are some of the textures and patterns from our first four months in Rwanda. Click on the first thumbnail to scroll through the photos.
The garden is made up of plants that have specific relationships to the life cycles of eastern U.S. butterflies. As you walk along, you pass sections that mimic habitats important to the insects: wetlands, meadows, edges of woods, urban gardens.
It’s a long corridor really, bordered by busy 9th Street, N.W., on one side and the museum’s parking lot on the other. Yet, stepping in, you feel enveloped in another world, one that combines a little city polish with naturalism.
I offer these pictures from last summer as more inspiration for those in cold climates who are deep into their nursery catalogs and graph paper, planning for spring.
I haven’t labeled all the plants because the Smithsonian’s interactive map at this link has plant lists for each habitat. (However, they do not include the grey-green plants in the first and seventh photos [It’s dinosaur kale, possibly Brassica oleracea var. acephala ‘Lacinato’ or ‘Cavalo Nero’] or the tall plants with the small, purple, fuzzy blooms in the tenth. [It’s Ironweed, Vernonia. Thanks James Golden.] Can anyone identify them? I feel they are just on the tip of my brain.)
To see much larger versions of the slideshow photos, click on ‘Continue reading’ below and then click on the first thumbnail. You’ll be able to scroll through the images in succession. Continue reading “The butterfly garden”
This photo of a homesteader’s garden in Pie Town, New Mexico, September 1940, was taken by Russell Lee, a photographer of the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information. It was part of a 2006 Library of Congress exhibition of early color images taken between 1939 and 1943, “Bound for Glory: America in Color.” Thanks to links by Studio G and The Denver Post.
Click this link to see a larger version or to buy a print. Click here to see another view of the same homesteader’s garden.
On a hot day in early August, I visited the Heirloom Garden of the National Museum of American History* and took a lot of photos, but because of our move, I never had time to post them. Now that it is seed-ordering time in the U.S., I thought they might be inspirational.
(Click on any image above to scroll through larger photos.)
The garden — huge, raised planters, all the way around the museum building — contains a mix of open-pollinated plants cultivated in America prior to 1950 (heirlooms). The plantings are anchored by crape myrtles and a variety of shrubs.
The colorful annuals, perennials, bulbs, and herbs are all so familiar, but the combinations are often surprising. It’s a splendid ode to the flower gardens of our grandparents.
The museum pipes in a selection of American music from speakers set in the planters (in fake rocks). Normally, I would find this annoying, but in the already noisy, wide open site, it actually drew me in to the garden and enhanced the experience. And their selection is excellent — folk, jazz, blues, musicals. The planters are raised about 3′, which also helps the plants compete for attention in the immense space.
By late summer, the flowers were being allowed to grow a little leggy and fade naturally, which added to the various forms and tones of the groupings.
*The Smithsonian Institution on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., has eight beautiful gardens (ten if you count the inner courtyards of the Freer Gallery and Museum of American Art).
