North American gardens – Page 40

The Sunday porch: Bon Echo

August 21, 2016August 15, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment

Rustic birch lattice on the porch of the North Cottage of the Bon Echo Inn, near Cloyne, Ontario, 1935, via Cloyne and District Historical Society Commons on flickr (both photos).

The Bon Echo Inn was established in 1889 on Mazinaw Lake. It attracted wealthy guests who were also tea-totalers, as the religious owners did not serve alcohol. Later, it was purchased by a founder of the Canada Suffrage Association, who made it into a retreat for artists and writers, notably James Thurber. In 1936, the Inn and many of its outbuildings were destroyed by fire and never rebuilt. The surrounding area is now Bon Echo Provincial Park.

Tea service on the verandah of the Inn, between 1920 and 1936.

Life in gardens: group portrait

August 19, 2016August 19, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

Unidentified girl holding doll and cat, probably taken in the Jackson area, Mississippi, date and photographer unknown, via Daniel, Al Fred, Photograph Collection, Mississippi Department of Archives and History Commons on flickr.

Life in gardens: natural light

August 10, 2016July 5, 2017 Cindy at enclos*ureLeave a comment

Elizabeth and Marilyn Watson, probably in the Berkeley, California, area, 1921, by Dorothea Lange, via Museum of Photographic Arts Commons on flickr (all photos here).

Above, Marilyn Watson; in both photos, the sisters seem to be under a grape arbor. Below, they are with their mother, May V. Landis Watson, still outdoors, I believe.

In 1921, Lange was 26 years old and running her own portrait studio in Berkeley. She had many well-to-do clients, as the Watsons appear to be. Ten years later, she would begin the work that made her famous: capturing the faces of the Great Depression and of the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans.

There’s a little clip from a PBS documentary on Lange here. It shows a number of her early photographs.

Life in gardens: wildflowers

August 8, 2016August 8, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

Children costumed as flowers or insects for an event of the Wild Flower Preservation Society, Illinois Chapter, probably in a Chicago park, ca. 1920, hand-colored glass lantern slides by an unknown photographer, via The Field Museum Library Commons on flickr (all images here).

The Wild Flower Preservation Society of America was founded in 1902 with money given to the New York Botanical Garden by Olivia E. and Caroline Phelps Stokes. The funds were to be used for the protection of native plants.

The Society dissolved in 1933, but much of its work was taken up by the Garden Club of America and by another Wild Flower Preservation Society, founded in 1925 in Washington, D.C. (which seems no longer to exist).

Above and below: Mayapples.

Above: a bee.

Click here to see several more of the slides.

The Sunday porch: Kentucky

August 7, 2016August 7, 2016 Cindy at enclos*ure2 Comments

Farmhouse porch with plants in painted lard buckets, Morehead, Kentucky, 1940, by Marion Post Wolcott for U.S. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.