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).
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 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.
All the photos here are by Harris & Ewing, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
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.
The garden terrace of the Myron Hunt house, 200 North Grand Avenue, Pasadena, California, 1917, a hand-colored glass lantern slide by Frances Benjamin Johnston, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
This looks like such a tranquil and comfortable garden space — while at the same time, just a little mysterious. If you look closely, you can see that there is a simple rope and board swing hanging from a tree limb in the center, and at least one of the chairs is a rocking chair.
Hunt was a successful architect in Southern California in the first half of the 20th century. He designed this house and garden for himself in 1905. Today, the house survives, but the garden is gone.
There is another Johnston image of the garden here, looking across an open garden room to the steps and elevated bust shown above.
Back garden and porch of Hungarian-American coal miner’s home, Chaplin, West Virginia, September 1938, by Marion Post Wolcott, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (all three photos).
Wolcott was on assignment for the U.S. Farm Security Administration.
Her neighbor — top left, in the straw hat — seems to have had a good flower garden, as well.
“L. E. side,” 1967, by James Jowers, via George Eastman Museum Commons on flickr.
James Jowers worked in New York City and lived on the Lower East Side about the time this photo was taken.
enclos*ure 