Tag: Harris & Ewing

A show of mums

Cindy at enclos*ure1 Comment

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.

Vintage landscape: repurposed

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Formal victory garden, ca. 1918, Library of Congress

World War I victory garden in a formal setting, location unknown,* ca. 1917 – ca. 1920, by Harris & Ewing, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

The photo seems to have been taken for the National War Garden Commission, also known as the National Emergency Food Garden Commission.

The organization was created in early 1917 by Charles Lathrop Pack.  It sponsored a campaign of pamphlets, posters, and press releases aimed at “arous[ing] the patriots of America to the importance of putting all idle land to work, to teach them how to do it, and to educate them to conserve by canning and drying all food that they could not use while fresh.”

Like it or not, what you do with the land around your house tells the world what sort of citizen you are.

— Abby Adams, The Gardener’s Gripe Book

*Harris & Ewing was located in Washington, D.C.