Archives of American Gardens

Annual Report for 2010 for the Garden Club of America’s Garden History and Design Committee

Smithsonian Institution Staff ● Barbara Faust, Associate Director, Smithsonian Gardens (SG), Office of Facilities Management and Reliability (OFMR) ● Cindy Brown, Manager, Horticulture Collections Management and Education branch (HCME) ● Paula Healy } Museum Specialist, Horticulture Collections Management and ● Joyce Connolly } Education branch (HCME) ● Kelly Crawford }

Mission Statement The Archives of American Gardens (AAG) both collects and preserves a visual record of representative American gardens and their features as well as the work of select landscape practitioners, and documents the activities and collections of the Horticulture Services Division of the .

AAG’s mission is to collect and make available for research use unique, high-quality images of and documentation relating to a wide variety of cultivated gardens throughout the United States that are not documented elsewhere since historic, designed, and cultural landscapes are subject to change, loss, and destruction. In this way, AAG strives to preserve and highlight a meaningful compendium of significant aspects of gardening in the United States for the benefit of researchers and the public today and in the future.

Notable Highlights

• Smithsonian Gardens (SG) hired Cindy Brown as its new Horticulture Collections Management and Education Manager! In addition to overseeing AAG’s operations, Cindy is establishing a comprehensive educational program for SG that will provide learning opportunities that highlight Smithsonian Gardens as well as AAG holdings. • Our Smithsonian unit is now called Smithsonian Gardens; this name replaces our former title, Horticulture Services Division. This name is much more easily recognizable to the public as well as to the Smithsonian community and will help us ‘brand’ our operational and programming activities. • It has been two years since AAG’s Digital Submission Policy was launched. Of the 41 submissions we received during in 2010, 17 (or approximately 40%) have included digital images. We certainly expect to see more digital images and fewer 35mm slides as time goes on.

1

GCA Collection Submission Statistics for 2010

• 41 gardens were accessioned into the GCA Collection in 2010. The list of gardens is appended at the end of this report. • Thank you for the garden submissions that you send to us throughout the year for the GCA Collection. We’re grateful to each and every GCA volunteer for the time, effort, and dedication that goes into documenting the gardens that are submitted to the AAG. Each submission adds to the overall collection and captures today’s history of a garden for future generations.

Before and after shots of Middlegate Japanese Gardens in Pass Christian, Mississippi. Middlegate was an extensive 2010 submission documenting the history of a garden that was completely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Cataloging Statistics • 28 of the 41 gardens accessioned in 2010 have been cataloged. Representative images of each garden are available online in the SIRIS database at www.siris.si.edu. • See the “Recent Acquisitions” web pages at http://www.gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/AAG/recentacquisitions201 0.htm for a list of all the submissions to the GCA Collection added in 2010. As soon as a garden is cataloged into SIRIS, its entry on the Recent Acquisitions page goes live and links directly to corresponding catalog entries and images in SIRIS. Please be sure to check it out and alert your clubs to this helpful resource!

2 GHD Committee Meetings

GHD Committee Spring Meeting in Jacksonville, FL, March 22-23

Haskell Gardens, just one of many gardens visited during the Spring Meeting. This garden is included in the GCA Collection at AAG.

• Very special thanks to Joan Haskell for the extensive local arrangements she made for the Spring Meeting. The roster of garden tours she arranged for us was fantastic as were the garden descriptions she assembled beforehand! The tour of her home’s sculpture garden and art collection given by her husband Preston was a memorable highlight as was the wonderful boat ride up the St. Johns River. The tours given by garden designers Judy Drake and Gerry Crouch of gardens they had designed as well as tours of the Jacksonville Zoo and Cummer Museum were a rare treat as well. • Discussion topics at the meeting included the AAG Digital Submission Policy, the AAG/GHD Internship, types of gardens to document for the GCA Collection, and the possible goal of having every GCA club document a garden in honor of GCA’s upcoming centennial.

GHD Committee Meeting at GCA Headquarters, NYC, June 7-8 • This had to be the most bittersweet meeting ever! GHD Committee members and Smithsonian staff offered a heartfelt thank you to outgoing Chair Marilyn Brumder for her many years of service on the GHD Committee. It has been a pleasure working with Marilyn--her guidance and encouragement have contributed so much to the GCA Collection. We are fortunate to be in excellent hands with her successor, Barbara Kehoe. • Special thanks to Zone XII Rep, Carolyn Bennett, for all her work in arranging a number of garden tours including the High Line in lower Manhattan. • A highlight of the meeting included an evening lecture by Charles Birnbaum of The Cultural Landscape Foundation on the factors that go into making a landscape significant.

3 GHD Committee Fall Meeting in Washington, DC , September 29-October 1

GHD Committee members and Smithsonian staff on the terrace of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden. The U.S. Capitol appears in the background.

• The meeting started off with a PowerPoint presentation by AAG staff that went over the contents of the Procedures Manual and Procedures Manual Appendix. • This meeting featured AAG’s first hands-on workshop to ‘document’ a garden. Committee members were split into three teams and each was assigned a nearby garden to document. Each GHD Rep had a workbook that featured a number of exercises that broke the garden documentation process into its component parts and posed good/better/best options. • The opportunity for all the Reps to ask questions during the exercise and offer suggestions about their experiences with regard to documenting gardens resulted in an invaluable exercise. • Very special thanks to Zone VI Rep Corbin Harwood for arranging tours of so many handsome gardens in D.C. and Chevy Chase for the meeting attendees and for compiling exceedingly helpful descriptions of the gardens ahead of time.

Interns, Fellow and Volunteers

AAG/GCA Garden History and Design Interns • AAG was most fortunate to have two interns funded by the GCA’s Garden History and Design Internship in 2010! The GCA scholarship supplements a stipend that is awarded by Smithsonian Gardens; both help to attract strong candidates. 4 • Carolyn Chesarino (NC State & UNC at Chapel Hill--Public History program) and Kate Fox (Bard Graduate Center—Decorative Arts and Design History program), each joined AAG in late May for a ten-week internship. Both Carolyn and Kate worked to make portions of the GCA Collection readily accessible for research use. Among the projects they worked on, they digitized hundreds of glass lantern slides from the GCA Collection (which will supplant the lower resolution scans currently on SIRIS) and wrote a number of blogs based on the AAG collections. They

accomplished an incredible AAG/GHD Intern Kate Fox retrieving amount of work during their images from the GCA Collection in the tenure with us! cool storage vault. • Special thanks go to the GCA Scholarship Committee and GHD Reps who made a careful review of the applicants and for all of their support.

Field Study Intern • Caitlin DeMarco, a graduate student in the Library Science Program at the University of Maryland, completed a 120-hour practicum in the Archives of class credit. She inventoried the entire W. Atlee Burpee & Company Collection (over 350 boxes), rehoused portions of the collection, and updated the existing finding aid.

Enid A. Haupt Fellowship in Horticulture • SG’s 2010 Haupt Fellow, Veronica Conkling, finished a 12-month fellowship in December. She studied SG’s extensive collection of antique bouquet holders that were donated by Frances Jones Poetker in 1987. Veronica’s Master of Arts degree in the History of Decorative Arts and Design from the joint Parson’s School of Design/ Smithsonian Associates program was invaluable when it came to identifying the material components of the holders and interpreting their design significance. Bouquet holder from FJP Collection

• Information about the Haupt Fellowship can be found at www.gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/intern/fellow.htm .

5

AAG Volunteers • AAG’s premier volunteer, Nancy Sahli, celebrated her 11th anniversary with us in May. Over the years, she has cataloged thousands of images into SIRIS. • Marca Woodhams, AAG’s volunteer of five years, is the former librarian of the Smithsonian’s Horticulture Library and instituted the earliest collections management policies for the AAG which have successfully guided its operations for more than twenty years. Her knowledge of all things Smithsonian (especially the AAG and the Smithsonian gardens) is vast; she is the go-to person when AAG staff have a question about what took place in the AAG in the past. • Judith Lesser is an owner of a CSA farm in Maryland and an antique business. She assists with the cataloging of new garden submissions. • Lynn Benich is a home gardener on and a former librarian who also assists with the cataloging of new garden submissions.

AAG Contractor • Anna Barker, a former AAG intern, has been contracting with AAG on a part- time basis to assist with AAG’s Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), digitizing, cataloging and other archival tasks. Anna’s excellent work has enabled AAG to map out an effective work flow for ingesting its digital images into the Smithsonian’s Digital Asset Management System (DAMS).

AAG Projects

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS) We hope you have many occasions to access the GCA Collection images on the SIRIS search page at www.siris.si.edu. This web site features over 1.7 • million catalog records for library and archival holdings throughout the Smithsonian! Although AAG accounts for less than 2% of that total (32,000+ catalog records), its holdings garnered over 150,000 search hits in SIRIS in 2010! • Our challenge now is to revisit early GCA Collection catalog records on SIRIS that are not linked to images in order to address any relevant copyright and use issues.

Digital Submissions • With AAG’s Digital Submission Policy in place now for two years, we are seeing more and more digital submissions accessioned into the GCA Collection. • AAG staff have been adjusting to the new work flow which has changed considerably in order to review, manage and care for digital images coming into the collection. This new work flow involves new steps, new duties, and new results to ensure that the quality of the images meets the specifications set out by the Digital Submission Policy. • Thank you for following the standards outlined in the Policy and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions about eligible camera models, etc. 6

Digitizing Glass Lantern Slides AAG embarked on a project to re-scan the 3,000+ glass lantern slides from the GCA Collection. While the images had already been scanned several years ago and are currently available on SIRIS, the quality of the scans is poor and suited • only for general reference. The new scans will furnish superlative images that will supplant what’s on SIRIS and they will be maintained on the Smithsonian’s Digital Asset Management System (see below). Thanks to a concerted effort by the two AAG/GHD interns this past summer, AAG is roughly a third of the way through the digitization project. AAG has applied for a Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund grant to hire • a contractor to complete the rest. We hope to hear if we have been awarded the funds by next spring.

AAG Mystery Gardens • While the original GCA donation to the Smithsonian in 1992 was a goldmine of garden documentation, it also included hundreds of gardens that were either unidentified or lacked the necessary Owner and/or Photographer Releases that would enable them to be made available for research use. Without basic information or permissions, the informational value of this documentation, dubbed “Mystery Gardens,” is severely limited.

• Since the launch of an AAG Mystery Gardens webpage at www.gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_e d/AAG/mystery/mysterygardens.htm in September 2008, GCA and non-GCA participants have solved well over 100 of these mysteries!

• Please be sure to visit the page on the GCA website that links directly to the AAG Mystery Gardens page. Please let us know if you have clubs in your zone that may be interested in following up on identified gardens that lack Owner Releases in their area.

Research Inquiries

• AAG staff received a total of 169 requests for information in 2010; 73 of the queries involved holdings in the GCA Collection. A number of requests involved landscape historians researching different historic landscapes for restoration purposes and numerous scholars and writers researching gardens for books, articles, exhibitions and lectures. • In addition, AAG staff handled a number of inquiries from GCA members and GHD Reps, some of whom were writing articles for the GCA Bulletin or their club newsletters, putting together presentations or reports for their clubs or

7 GCA Headquarters, or asking about the holdings for specific gardens in the GCA Collection. • HCME staff also assisted several Smithsonian units needing SG images for outreach purposes. • Now that all AAG catalog entries in SIRIS have a link to AAG’s research query address ([email protected]) we are seeing more and more researchers contacting AAG through this route.

Use of GCA Collection Images

• We will be sure to alert you to any publications (that we are aware of) that refer to or use images from the GCA Collection. Thank you for letting us know of any you come across as well—it is a huge help as we don’t always know (despite our best efforts) where GCA Collection images will appear. • Please remind your clubs to let us know if they wish to use any GCA Collection images in presentations, displays, newsletters, etc. This enables us to track how the collection is being used and by whom which helps to justify our operation to Smithsonian management. • In 2010, GCA Collection gardens were cited or images reprinted in the following publications: - Newport in Flower: A History of Newport’s Horticultural Heritage reprinted by The Preservation Society of Newport County with approximately 70 glass lantern slides includes a foreword by former Zone II GHD Rep Bettie Pardee

- Shaping the American Landscape: New Profiles from the Pioneers of American Landscape Design Project by The Cultural Landscape Foundation includes numerous images from the GCA Collection along with biographic sketches by former GHD Reps Carolyn Bennett (Zone XII) and Diane Clarke (Zone IV) - Fall 2009/Winter 2010 issue of Magnolia by the Southern Garden History Society featured an article on AAG’s Mystery Gardens with a glass lantern slide image from the GCA Collection - July/August 2010 issue of the British magazine Apollo with an article on Art Deco-era gardens

Online Articles: - Pittsburgh Tribune Review, June 17: highlighting the garden documentation of Poplar Hill in Sewickley by the Village GC’s GHD Committee (AAG Garden #PA446) - Akron Beacon Journal, September 18: highlighting the garden documentation work of the Akron GC for the GCA Collection with a

8 mention of Cobblecote (AAG Garden #OH207), Storksnest (AAG Garden #OH214), Natalie Cook’s Garden (AAG Garden #OH218), and Braemar Farm (AAG Garden #OH238) - Larchmont (CA) Chronicle, December 3: book review with a mention of the Davis-Yust Garden in Los Angeles (AAG Garden #CA451) - NorthJersey.com, December 9: highlighting the garden documentation work of the Short Hills GC for Wallbridge Garden in Millburn (AAG Garden #NJ180)

Blog Mentions of AAG - www.apartmenttherapy.com www.thewildgardener.com

GH&D Committee Outreach Materials

• Each GHD Zone Rep has received CD’s with PowerPoint presentations on, among other things, an overview of garden history and design customized for each Zone, the history of the GCA Collection, how to document a garden for the AAG, and both of the Smithsonian American Garden Legacy exhibitions to date that utilized dozens of images from the GCA Collection. • We hope your GHD volunteers will have an opportunity to present one or more of these programs to their clubs in the future in order to highlight the critical importance of the GCA Collection and the many ways in which it is used by researchers.

Outreach and Public Relations

• Two AAG blogs were among 2010’s Top Ten Posts in the Smithsonian Collections Blog! These particular blogs highlighted mid-century gardens and the work of landscape architect Jens Jensen. Visit http://si- siris.blogspot.com/search/label/Gardens to see the AAG blogs posted to date. Some of the blogs have been written by the AAG/GHD Interns. They are a great way for the interns to learn about the AAG holdings and to add to their portfolio. • SG staff presented a litany of educational programming and outreach activities throughout the year in a variety of venues including SG’s annual Garden Fest, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, numerous garden tours, lectures, presentations and how-to workshops.

• Kelly put together a temporary exhibit based on historic images of rose gardens from the J. Horace McFarland Collection for display in the Smithsonian’s Folger Rose Garden. • AAG staff were invited to give a presentation in November at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on J. Horace McFarland, a printer, City Beautiful advocate, and horticulturist. The

9 presentation also included staff from the Pennsylvania State Archives and the USDA’s National Agricultural Library. All three repositories include collections relating to McFarland and his printing company, Mt. Pleasant Press.

Exhibit in Folger Rose Garden featuring historic images from AAG’s J. Horace McFarland Collection

• Smithsonian Gardens is now on YouTube! Check out the garden-related postings that have been uploaded to date at http://www.youtube.com/user/SmithsonianVideos • A new Smithsonian Gardens e-newsletter now comes out every quarter with articles on what the many units of Smithsonian Gardens are up to. To sign-up for this e-newsletter, email [email protected] .

Smithsonian Archives Fair • To celebrate American Archives Month this past October, AAG participated in a day-long Smithsonian Archives Fair (along with over a dozen other Smithsonian archives) that attracted over 800 attendees. • Joyce gave a PowerPoint presentation on J. Horace McFarland, a rosarian and nursery catalog publisher from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, whose collection is Paula Healy, AAG Contractor Anna Barker, included in AAG, while Paula and Smithsonian Archives Fair Coordinator staffed a table with information Rachael Woody about AAG’s holdings and projects.

GCA Clubs • AAG staff gave a tour of the archives to 18 members of the Sasqua GC (CT) in April. It was a wonderful opportunity for these members to learn more about the GCA Collection and the GHD’s garden documentation efforts.

Product Development • FTD premiered a new line of bouquets and orchid plants inspired by holdings in the Smithsonian Gardens: http://www.ftd.com/smithsonian-ctg/product- smithsonian/?noparent_bread=1. The line has been a great success and a portion of the proceeds comes back to Smithsonian Gardens for its operational needs.

10 • Campania International, Inc., which carries an extensive line of garden ornaments, developed a Smithsonian Collection with over a dozen urns and plant containers based on historic originals in SG’s Garden Furnishings Collection. See http://campaniainternational.com/index.php?page=smithsonian-collection for the line. Like the arrangement with FTD, a percentage of the proceeds is funneled back to SG and used to support its programs.

What’s Coming Up in 2011

• An updated Procedures Manual and AAG Digital Submission Policy will be issued sometime in early 2011. The changes reflect questions and issues that have arisen during the past year. • The new Enid A. Haupt Fellow in Horticulture, Nicholas Serrano, begins his yearlong fellowship with SG. His fellowship research will involve developing qualitative methods for evaluating planting designs based on their aesthetics. • A book on the Smithsonian gardens surrounding the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C. by garden writer Carole Ottesen (The Herbal Epicure: Growing, Harvesting, and Cooking Healing Herbs, New American Garden, etc.) is slated to be published in spring 2011. The book will include a chapter on SG’s collections including AAG. • Among the many educational programs that Cindy is planning in 2011 is a Smithsonian Associates tour (http://smithsonianassociates.org/) of several gardens along Virginia’s Eastern Shore during Historic Garden Week in Virginia.

11

List of Gardens added to the Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens in 2010 Accession Garden Name City GCA Club # AL033 Jones Valley Urban Farm Birmingham Red Mountain GC AR083 Bellingrath Longmeadow Garden Pine Bluff Little Rock GC AR084 Brown Garden Little Rock Little Rock GC AZ004 Vetana Park Paradise Valley Columbine GC CT351 Passionate Gardener Cotswold Stamford Stamford GC Garden, The CT352 Spiral of Life Gardens Middletown Middletown GC CT353 Rosenberry Garden, The Darien GC of Darien CT354 Holden Garden at Fox Hall, The Farmington GC of Hartford CT355 Henry's Hill Cornwall Hollow GC of Hartford [W. Cornwall] FL170 Gerbing Gardens Fernandina Beach Late Bloomers GC HI032 Johnson Nuuanu Garden Honolulu GC of Honolulu HI033 Nottage Garden Kaneohe GC of Honolulu HI034 Butler Garden Honolulu GC of Honolulu IL120 Greensward of Market Square, The Lake Forest Lake Forest GC IL126 Crowe Garden, Robert and Elizabeth Winnetka Garden Guild of Winnetka IL127 Metzler Garden, The Winnetka Garden Guild of Winnetka MD243 Reed Creek Farm Centreville St. George’s GC MD244 Calk, Garden of William and Nancy Baltimore Catonsville GC ME131 Cliff Garden Seal Harbor GC of Mt. Desert ME132 Sindhu's Garden Northeast Harbor GC of Mt. Desert NC079 Mountain Garden, A Roaring Gap Twin City GC NE009 Dowd Gardens, Frances Omaha Loveland GC NH073 Willard House Orford Connecticut Valley GC NJ131 Horseshoes Stable Garden Morristown GC of Madison NJ180 Wallbridge Garden Millburn Short Hills GC NJ518 Pflieger's Garden Summit Summit GC NJ519 New Jersey Woodland Property Princeton Stone Brook GC NJ520 Campion Gardens Madison GC of Madison NY248 Crescent Reach Garrison GC of Orange & Dutchess Counties NY443 Meadow Club of Southampton, The Southampton Southampton GC NY881 Feathers Mill Neck North Country GC OH004 Ca Sole Cincinnati GC of Cincinnati OH237 Mission Oaks Gardens Zanesville Little GC of Columbus OH238 Ruth & Don's Garden at Braemar Farm Broadview Heights Akron GC PA446 Poplar Hill Sewickley Village GC PA655 Bakobils Farm Rector GC of Allegheny County RI166 Parterre Newport Newport GC TN075 Wellford Garden Memphis Little GC TX093 Monte Vista Garden San Antonio Alamo Heights – Terrell Hills GC TX094 Jordan's Garden, Louise Dallas Founders GC of Dallas TX095 Mulford Family Garden, The Dallas Founders GC of Dallas

12

13