Another nice backyard scene via Museum Victoria: John and George Lee with push mowers, September 1956, Greensborough, near Melbourne, Australia.
The photo was contributed by Mrs. Brenda Lee to The Biggest Family Album of Australia project.
Category: vintage landscape
Life in gardens: backyard sprinkler
Gerald Brocklesby of Blackburn (near Melbourne), Australia, jumps over the sprinkler in his family’s backyard, January 17, 1953, via Museum Victoria.
The photo was contributed by Mr Mark Brocklesby as part of the museum’s Melbourne’s Biggest Family Album project in 2006.
Fair seed-time had my soul. . .
— William Wordsworth, from “The Prelude“
Life in gardens: fall flower show
. . . at P.S. 15, Manhattan, New York City, ca. 1921, by Paul & Co., via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
This hand-colored glass lantern slide was used by Frances Benjamin Johnston in her garden lecture series.
The original black and white photo may have been taken for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Its online photo collection has several 1921 pictures of P.S. 15 and P.S. 62 children working in their “nature rooms.”
The Sunday porch: the peacock
Federal Hill, Fredericksburg, Virginia, between 1927 and 1929, Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Peacocks are probably the ultimate garden ornament — if you have the room and patience. (It takes several years for a male to grow a substantial tail covert or “train.”)
Vintage landscape: peony garden
Peony garden, ca. 1890s, by Kusakabe Kimbei, via Museum of Photographic Arts on flickr.
enclos*ure 