Cultivating and Preserving American Wild Flowers, 1890-1965
- ISBN-10
- 0542532794
- ISBN-13
- 9780542532795
- Pages
- 1066
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2006
- Publisher
- Cornell University
- Author
- John Thomas Fitzpatrick
Description
Over the past three decades, the garden cultivation of native plants has become a dominant theme of landscape horticulture. It is considered a way to contribute to environmental health, species diversity, and human well-being. Focusing on the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, the dissertation considers the origins of these justifications and the rhetoric of leading advocates in the 1890-1965 period. American enthusiasm for cultivating native plants first developed between 1890 and 1917, when "wild gardens" were fashionable. Such gardens were promoted as a means of improving human physical and psychological health, rejecting ostentatious garden styles, and demonstrating one's national pride, aesthetic sensibility, and frugality. Around 1900, two influential organizations were formed to urge the in situ protection of wild flowers: the Society for the Protection of Native Plants and the Wild Flower Preservation Society of America. Native plants were considered "difficult" to cultivate but this changed when, around 1920, Edgar T. Wherry publicized the effects of soil pH on plant distribution. American gardeners came to believe that native plants would thrive if the soil pH was altered to suit them. Wherry and author Herbert Durand promoted the belief that garden cultivation was an effective means of ex situ preservation. From the early 1920s, when the protection organizations were reorganized, they advocated native plant gardening. Out of broad conservation concerns, a public commitment emerged for establishing permanent, extensive preserves for native plants. Most preserves were managed as natural-style gardens that were open to the public. Following the Second World War, advocates shifted their emphasis to the value of native plant gardens for homes. The development of several public native plant gardens is discussed. Case studies include the Local Flora Section at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Garden in the Woods, and Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve. Primary motives for advocating the cultivation of native plants were to preserve them from extinction, to provide Americans with refuges and nature experiences, and to demonstrate social distinction. Environmental health, a primary motive in recent decades, began to emerge in the 1960s.
