This post originally published on the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives’ blog, Unbound.

A garden is a place to rest, relax, rejuvenate. It also provides an opportunity to learn about nature. Staff at Smithsonian Libraries and Archives are also learning and developing new skills. Some of these new skills are related to digitization and accessibility of biodiversity literature.

During these months of telework, I am assisting the Digital Library and Digitization Department to enhance page-level and image-level access to previously digitized books for the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL). This involves improving page-level metadata for items in BHL, uploading full-page illustrations to the BHL Flickr, and tagging the images in Flickr with species’ common and scientific names. These digitized books include a variety of content: plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, crustaceans, insects, and so much more. In the course of this work, I have the opportunity to view lovely illustrations. Recently a horticultural catalog caught my attention. The item is titled Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878) by James Vick.

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), title page. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

James Vick was born in England and arrived in New York City at a young age. There, he learned the printer’s trade. He later moved to Rochester, New York. In Rochester, he set type for several newspapers and went on to serve as writer, editor, owner, or publisher of various publications. In 1862, he issued the first Floral Guide and Catalogue. Due to his past experience in the printer and journalist fields, he created a personal style offering gardening advice, anecdotes, correspondence, a complaint section, a children’s section, and color prints. James Vick also began a seed store which later became a well-known seed-display garden. After his death, the company continued into the 20th Century until it was sold to Burpee Seed Co.

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), page preceding page 99, Perennials including (1) Aquilegia, (2) Perennial Pea, (3) Digitalis (Fox Glove), (4) Double Pink, (5) Perennial Larkspur, (6) Campanula (Canterbury Bell), (7) Sweet William, (8) Picotee, (9) Pentstemon. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

This particular item, Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878) by James Vick, is filled with gardening advice, botanical descriptions, and many illustrations. It seems to speak directly to the reader with a conversational tone and focus on learning. As it states on page 5,

“The study of Agriculture and Horticulture has engaged the attention of the wisest from the earliest ages, and yet what wonderful discoveries and improvements have we witnessed in our own day; and we are still learners.”

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), page preceding page 109, Tender Bulbs including (1) Tritoma uvaria, (2) Gladioli, (3) Tuberose, (4) Dahlia, (5) Tigridia. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

The catalog includes practical suggestions for selecting seeds, preparing soil, and planting gardens. On the subject of garden design, it suggests keeping the future in mind. When planting trees, it emphasizes the awareness of knowing the size, form, and habits of the full-grown tree as opposed to only thinking of its small size when planted. For those with little outdoor space, there are ideas for creating balcony gardens and window boxes.

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), page 20, Entrance Court and Balcony Garden. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Another section focuses on floral decorations, such as incorporating greenery and flowers into decorations. This might include covering letters with greenery to form welcoming words for a guest, adorning a table with a floral centerpiece, decorating a room with garlands, or creating bouquets and button-hole flowers.

Let’s take a closer look at one of these floral decorations, forming and covering letters with greenery and flowers. Perhaps, someone wanted to welcome a guest by displaying a “Welcome” sign or, as in the example below, decorate the words, “Peace on Earth.” As the catalog explains, the first step was to determine the height of all letters. Then, the width of each letter was determined proportional to its height. For example, if six inches was chosen for the height of all upper-case letters, the proportional width for “P” would be four inches, “E” three and a half inches, “A” four and a half inches, and so on, as detailed in the explanation shown in the image below. Once the letters were outlined on heavy straw board, each letter was cut out and dark thread was used to fasten small branches of evergreens or dry moss to the letters. Finally as a finishing touch, berries or everlasting flowers were added to brighten the decoration, as detailed below.

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), page 31, Forming Letters for Floral Decorations. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Another floral decoration is the button-hole flower or bouquet. The button-hole flower was simply that, a single flower with a “pretty, sweet-scented leaf” positioned behind it. Thread or string was used to attach the two together (below, bottom right), and then it was inserted into the bouquet holder which was already filled with water. To fasten the button-hole flower to clothing or hair, a pin was attached to the bouquet holder.

On the other hand, the button-hole bouquet was composed of “a few very fine flowers” (below, bottom left). Once the flowers were nicely arranged, the stems were covered with damp moss or cotton and then tinfoil. The button-hole bouquet was inserted into the bouquet holder or attached directly to clothing with a pin.

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), page 36, English Holly, Winter Berry (Ilex verticillata), Button-hole Bouquet, and Button-hole Flower. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Almost every page of Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878) includes an illustration. With its conversational style and focus on learning, it encourages readers to try their hand at something new. This might be designing their own garden, planting a small garden in a window box, placing vases or ornamentation around the garden, or creating a floral decoration for a party. For reference purposes, it includes a handy “Botanical Glossary” and guide to “Pronouncing Vocabulary of Botanical Names.”

Towards the end, there are many pages illustrating and describing specific plants. A page focusing on “Classification and Names of Flowers” assists with understanding the divisions of plants as described in this catalog. These divisions include Annuals, Perennials, Greenhouse, Bulbs and Plants, and Holland Bulbs. There is also a section devoted to Vegetables. Detailed information for specific plants includes such things as descriptions, origin, and tips for planting. Every so often, the reader might stumble across a full-page illustration, like the Annuals shown below. Perhaps an illustration such as this might have inspired a bouquet or floral decoration to brighten a room for a holiday or special occasion.

James Vick, Rochester, NY. Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878), page preceding page 55, Annuals including (1) Ten-Weeks Stock, (2) Phlox drummondii, (3) Double Portulaca, (4) Balsam, (5) Nemophila, (6) Japan Cockscomb, (7) Pansy, (8) Striped Petunia. Available online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Vick’s Flower and Vegetable Garden (1878) by James Vick is located in the Joseph F. Cullman 3rd Library of Natural History. A digitized version is available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) and a Flickr album of its full-page illustrations is available on the BHL Flickr. For more information about James Vick, take a look at this BHL Blog post.

Other seed catalogs by James Vick’s Sons are located in a horticultural collection within the Trade Literature Collection at the National Museum of American History Library. For more information on one of these catalogs, take a look at this post about Vick’s Garden and Floral Guide (1898) by James Vick’s Sons.

Reference

“Vick, James.” Biographies of American Seedsmen & Nurserymen, compiled by Marca L. Woodhams, Librarian, Horticulture Branch Library, Smithsonian Institution Libraries, December 1999. Accessed January 8, 2021. https://www.sil.si.edu/SILPublications/seeds/bios.html#Vick,%20James

Charles Lathrop Pack, President, U.S. National War Garden Commission. Source: https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/hec.08264/.

Charles Lathrop Pack (May 7, 1857 – June 14, 1937) was a forestry expert and third-generation businessman. Both his father, George Willis Pack, and grandfather, George Pack, Jr., were in the forestry business. Charles continued this successful forestry dynasty by investing in the timber business as well as banking and real estate. By the time World War I started in Europe, he was a multi-millionaire and was named one of the five wealthiest men in America.

War Memorial Committee. Source: https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/npcc.01780/.

In addition to being an outstanding businessman, Charles Pack was keen about public education and wrote several instructional books and manual. During World War I, he was eager to promote the importance of self-sustainability of food supplies in the United States and went on to become the President of the U.S. National War Garden Commission.

Pack was a principal organizer of the Victory Garden movement. Victory gardens, war gardens, or, as they were sometimes called, “food gardens for defense,” are gardens meant to be supplement and even improve upon the food supply in times of shortage and rationing due to war, providing a variety of home-grown vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Not limited to typical farming areas or countryside, Victory Gardens were planted in urban areas as well. They sprang up at private homes and in public parks and allotments in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Germany during World War I and again in World War II.

Charles Pack helped to promote the understanding that the war efforts were not just frontline battles, but that it is crucial to strengthen the home front of the country by producing healthy food to feed the nation — a concept that has endured into the present.

Pack, Charles Lathrop. Victory Gardens Feed the Hungry. c1919. Contributed in BHL from The Library of Congress.

The highlighted book, Victory gardens feed the hungry: the needs of peace demand the increased production of food in America’s victory gardens, is one of the leading monographs in the campaign for the Victory Garden program. In it, Pack also talks about the unfortunate conditions in some European countries (Ex. Belgium and France) due to the ongoing war and the need for Americans to come to their aid by providing seeds for food products and trees.

American seeds to reforest France and Great Britain. Source: https://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cph.3c33281/.

A statement at the bottom of the cover page of Victory gardens feed the hungry sums up his philosophy: “The Seeds of Victory Insure the Fruits of Peace.”

If you are in Washington, please visit the Library of Congress and see the “Victory Garden” at the side of the James Madison Building on First Street between C Street and Independence Ave.

Referenced Works

Victory gardens feed the hungry: the needs of peace demand the increased production of food in America’s victory gardens. By Pack, Charles Lathrop, 1857-1937 National war garden commission. Washington: National War Garden Commission, 1919. Holding Institution: Library of Congress. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.41724

The school book of forestry, By Pack, Charles Lathrop, Washington, D.C., The American Tree Association [1922]. Holding Institution: Library of Congress. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5962/bhl.title.49097.

“A group of flowers in a jar and a bird’s nest,” by Princess Elizabeth after Margaret Meen. Now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Public domain, retrieved from Wikimedia Commons.

As you may have seen in BHL’s blog yesterday, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, has been partnering with the Oak Spring Garden Foundation to digitize works by women botanical artists held in Kew’s archives. One of these talented but largely unknown artists is Margaret Meen – whose botanicals graced the walls of royal palaces and scientific academies. In fact, though little remembered or written about today, Meen’s botanicals and her prowess as an instructor of fledgling artists left a lasting impression on British botanical illustration.

Margaret Meen was born sometime around 1751 in the English county of Suffolk, but lived most of her life in London in order to better sustain herself as a working artist and teacher.  Though it is not known where or how Meen developed her skill as an artist, her brother Henry was Prebend of Twyford and also taught at St. Paul’s, indicating that Margaret most likely came from a family of some wealth and standing and thus would have had access to an education in the arts.  Certainly Henry’s status in London allowed Margaret to come into contact with the upper echelon of British aristocracy, and Meen’s talent as an artist was soon recognized by the royals.

One of her most celebrated patrons, in fact, was Queen Charlotte—wife of George III—who wrote in her diary in 1789 that she “drew with Miss Mean [sic] from 10 till one,” and who most likely purchased a painting of flowers that now hangs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

Additionally, the queen’s daughter, Princess Elizabeth, was quite the budding artist herself, and her notable painting “Flower piece with bird’s nest” (1792) is modeled after Meen’s work purchased by the queen.  The princess even maintained a friendly correspondence with Meen as late as 1822.

Chrysanthemums and a fly. Reproduced with permission from the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, digitized with support from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

Aside from being the occasional tutor to artistically-inclined members of the royal family, Meen was a member of and exhibited her work at the Royal Academy from 1775 to 1785 and also with the Associated Artist in 1810. She was also employed to document the many new plants being grown in the Royal Gardens at Kew in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, using William Aiton’s Hortus Kewensis to name the species she illustrated. At this time, the Gardens at Kew were unrivaled in Britain for their botanical collection.

Her work, though largely unheralded, has been highly praised on the occasions that it is critiqued with special notice of Meen’s prodigious output and effective illustrative techniques.  Also, usually mentioned with Meen’s name is her founding of the periodical Exotic Plants from the Royal Gardens at Kew (1790), which she dedicated to Queen Charlotte but which only lasted for two issues.

Watercolor of various flowers and bees. Reproduced with permission from the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, digitized with support from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

Finally, Meen spent a large part of her later years as a drawing tutor for families with the means to provide their children with one and as an instructor for larger groups of students at a school in Notting Hill, London.  Among Meen’s pupils was the future Lady Northampton and Emma Smith, the future wife of Jane Austen’s nephew and biographer. Meen kept up her teaching until late in her life and as she never married or had children of her own, was especially determined to impart her artist lessons on to young minds in whom she saw latent talent.

Margaret Meen’s career as a botanical artist took her from the halls of Buckingham Palace to chambers of the Royal Academy and the schoolrooms of London. Over her long life she not only contributed to the furtherance of scientific knowledge through her botanical prints but also to the development of young artists from the most privileged to those who simply attended her classes in Notting Hill. Her artwork was appreciated by everyone from the Queen of England to its most revered scientists and its precocious young scholars. Though little remembered today, Margaret Meen’s art and legacy thus stands as an important part of late 18th and early 19th century British botanical history and deserves to be better celebrated today.

Watercolor of pansy and unknown flower. Reproduced with permission from the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, digitized with support from the Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

This post was updated on 22 February 2021 to correct birth and death dates for Meen and a typo in quoted materials from Queen Charlotte’s diary.

References

Blunt, Wilfrid and William T. Stearn. The Art of Botanical Illustration. New York: Antique Collectors Club Press, 1993. Originally published in 1950.

Mabey, Richard. The Flowering of Kew. London, UK: Ebury Press, 1988.

McDonald, Kelly M. “Margaret Meen: A Life in Four Letters.” Academia.edu.

Royal Academy. “Anderson’s Notes on the 1775 Exhibits of James Lambert, William Laranson, P.J. Loutherbourg, William Martin, J. Mauris, Jeremiah Meyer, Margaret Meen and Mary Moser.”

Royal Collection Trust. “Description of ‘Flower piece with bird’s nest.’”

Illustration of a large, yellow flower with green stem and leaves. American Daffodil Society. The Daffodil Journal. Volume 1. 1961. Digitized in BHL by American Daffodil Society.

For Mary Lou Gripshover, daffodils started as an easy entry into horticulture, but led her to the unexpected, too.

“Half a century ago, when I was a young housewife, I belonged to a garden club which in turn participated in an area-wide flower show,” she explains. “Everyone had to enter. At that point I wasn’t much good at flower arrangements, and entering daffodils in the Horticulture Section was easy. Just cut a bloom and put it in the vase provided. And the stems didn’t bend, like tulips did. So then of course I had to get more daffodils so I could enter all the classes for the various divisions… and it just grew from there. Who knew 50 years ago that I’d make friends the world over, just because of a little yellow flower?”

A delicate painting of a single daffodil flower with a green stem and leaf. Curtis, William. The Botanical magazine, or, Flower-garden displayed. 1790. Digitized in BHL by Missouri Botanical Garden, Peter H. Raven Library.

Gripshover serves as a librarian / digitizer for the American Daffodil Society (ADS), a group with international membership that has connected daffodil enthusiasts since its founding in 1954. In the spirit of National Gardening Month, we’re highlighting the ADS’ publication, The Daffodil Journal, which comes to BHL as part of the Expanding Access to Biodiversity Literature project. Early volumes of this quarterly journal from 1964-1968 are currently available on BHL, with more volumes on the way.

A page from a seed catalog with descriptions of varieties of Daffodil for sale, and two black and white illustrations; one a close-up of a flower variety called Empress, the other a mix of many flowers. Griffith and Turner Co. Bulbs and seeds.  1900. Digitized in BHL by U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

According to the ADS website, ‘daffodil’ is the common name for all members of the genus Narcissus. There are somewhere between 40 and 200 different species/subspecies/varieties (depending on who you ask), and more than 25,000 registered cultivars (named hybrids).

The first mission of the ADS was to create a publication, starting with a small bulletin and yearbook. After its first decade, the society released its quarterly publication, The Daffodil Journal, to share information on “all aspects of daffodil culture, breeding, and exhibition.” Now the ADS has its own digitization project, DaffLibrary, where more than 3,000 resources on daffodils are available as downloadable PDFs or as links to other websites. The Daffodil Journal through the year 2012 is available on DaffLibrary, so you can view more recent issues of the publication there until more are added to BHL.

Colorful painting from the cover of a bulb magazine, including white and yellow daffodils and other yellow, white and pink flowers. Thorburn, J.M. & Co. Annual descriptive catalogue of flower seeds. 1903. Digitized in BHL by New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

“The ADS has had a ‘paper library’ almost from the beginning,” Gripshover says. But because the society has no permanent headquarters, the physical collection had to move several times, and didn’t get much use. “Occasionally a list of available titles would be published in the Journal, and maybe there’d be a little action then, but interest didn’t last. Eventually, it was decided that we should at least get back issues of the Journal scanned, so in 2004 we had 40 years’ worth of the Journal professionally scanned. Several years later, someone suggested that we should think about scanning some of the other materials we had. I foolishly said that I could do some scanning… and it’s turned into a permanent job! But it’s one I enjoy.”

A painting of yellow flowers with a darker yellow background. Ferry, D.M. & Co. Bulbs and seeds. 1913. Digitized in BHL by U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Library.

DaffLibrary is now the most-viewed of the ADS’ websites, and gets much more use than the physical collection did: in just the first 3 months of 2018, it connected close to 15,700 visitors to nearly 55,000 pages. Popular resources included book, historic, and scientific references; plant show handouts/material; casual-reading books and articles; biography information; and information about growing daffodils using different methods.

Many thanks to the American Daffodil Society for contributing The Daffodil Journal to BHL, and to Mary Lou Gripshover for sharing her story with us and dedicating years of work to support open access information!

A bold stencil-style image of yellow daffodils with green leaves and stems. Boddington, Arthur T.  Boddington’s quality bulbs, seeds and plants. 1911. Digitized on BHL by New York Botanical Garden, LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

References

American Daffodil Society

‘About’ DaffLibrary