Mother Lode of Garden Links

http://www.digital-librarian.com/gardening.html

Right off the bat I can see there's a link for Gertrude Jekyll, whose love of cottage gardens fueled a revolution in garden design at turn of 20th century, in which she was a major player. Might be fun to scroll down & investigate that one. Must be tons of other information relevant to cottage gardens in there.

Karen

Oh My Goodness Me. GREAT SCORE! This should keep me busy for a while this Winter. Thanks for sharing, Karen!

You're welcome - let's cross-post this link around the other forums, too.

Hey, being born and raised down the road a piece, this is really cool to me,
"Digital Librarian: a librarian's choice of the best of the Web
Digital Librarian is maintained by Margaret Vail Anderson, a librarian in Cortland, New York"

Oh MY, you hit the motherload. : ) Thanks for telling us. I will be looking through all of that, for the next 5 years. lol : )
~Lucy

BOUQUETS and a great big thanks Karen!! ;0)

Karen, you've been spending a lot of time surfing, must be cold there!

Thanks for that list, it's great.....

Oh. my! That is quite a list -- it has EVERYTHING!

Thanks for posting,

Suzy

Hi bluespiral - I have seeds from you! Anyway, super thanks for posting this link, I bookmarked it at once!

Cheers,
Michaela

it's the "horticulture google"!

Great link, Karen! Something to read over the winter.

Nope - can't surf much lately. I was re-reading Margery Fish's book, We Made a Garden, and got the urge to find a picture of her garden, and this website just came right up. I just tried the search again, and it's not showing up now.

Anyway, Margery Fish set a standard of English cottage gardens, and the way she writes about how she made her garden reads like a very gentle form of Deliverance, if you read between the lines and catch the tension between two very different spousal unit gardeners in a time when gender hierarchy was strongly patriarchal. I think the original title of this book was something like Gardening with Walter, but can't remember exactly how she is said to have phrased it.

I do mean to get over to PrimroseSue's thread on garden books, but hope to put more time into what I write after Christmas.

All the above aside, if I were just starting out, I would wish I could have this book - in addition to great writing and wit, this is very informative and clearly written. Can be taken in small doses by both busy and below-the-weather people.

And google some pics of East Lambrook Manor - very beautiful & instructive.

Right now is a bad time to surf, but when we first aquired a computer around July 2003, I did explore free, online educational opportunities on the web and have saved a bunch of links that I'd like to put on a blog page for DG. For some reason, my attempts to get in there and format are not working, and if anyone could spare some time to help me figure what I'm doing wrong, I'd be much obliged. It'll be a few days or perhaps not until after Christmas that I could get back to it, though.

For now, since I've started this, here are a couple more:

http://digital.lib.msu.edu/collections/

an old thread I wrote - the link for The Athenaeum is often broken, overloaded or hacked, so a good alternative is http://www.artcyclopedia.com/ . Here's the thread: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/566811/

I think old gardening books are wonderful sources for making a cottage garden.

Thanks for sharing Karen. This is great!

Michaela, thanks to Suzy's CG swap #4(?), I think the whole CG forum will be represented in my garden next year. Seems like I haven't been on this forum for very long - not much moss around here.

I don't know about everyone else, but one thing I like about DG is the way it stimulates questions and ideas. Whose little pinkies could not stray over to www.google.com after a DG encounter? Over on the Morning Glory forum, TexasPuddyPrint got to talking about some garden visitors, and in the course of googling for an image of one of them, the following came about. I would read the whole thread for its serendipitous path -

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/p.php?pid=4299827

(includes a cottage garden blog and great links)

Glad you all like the links - I think our paws are going to be all the itchier for dirt come spring lol

Woo woo! That first list will keep me busy for a long time! Thanks for sharing it and the others, too!

wonderful Wikipedia link for color lists - cross-posted from Rich_Dufresne on Salvias and Agastaches forum -

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/784743/

And I wonder why I never seem to get all my "to-do's" done each day - LOL! I had planned to study for prof. certification in the state's nursery association (it's very close to what they teach the master gardeners here) but with all the stuff I'm learning from you guys, and your links, I've not read their stuff at all yet!

Is it me, or does it seem like the interest in Cottage Gardening is really picking up in the general population recently?

Well, low-maintenance gardens can look pretty boring after a while . . . so you know the trend had to change.

ahhh, "low-maintenance gardening"... I've found that to sometimes be synonymous with such things as: "Which chemical is best to kill everything I don't want?" and "What do you mean covering the entire yard with flagstone isn't good for my mature maple trees?" I personally think a well-planned CG is very low maintenance, but then I probably have a biased view :)

And thanks again - everyone - for the links!!

Well, that's the irony of it - cottage gardens are never boring - and really are not all the fussy to take care of :-)

I don't have any idea whether cottage gardening is waxing or waning in the general population, but I think that CG can lend itself very well to low-maintenance as long as the gardener doesn't expect the same kind of low maintance that he/she would get from an automobile parking lot.

Now, let's ask ourselves which perennial plants most closely approximate the weed-controlling efficiency of the asphalt on a parking lot?

You can get that same feeling of a low, placid expanse of asphalt from the 6" black blades of Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Nigrescens' - and the color is a close match :) lol Underplant one of those very thinly dissected-leaf Japanese Maples colored in black-toned crimson with it, and you now have variation #1 on the theme of Low Maintenance Groundcover/Bush Combination.

Prunus mume blooms nearby on any warm day from January into at least March - It is such a treat for the nose and what a winter show to underplant it with hellebores.

Or the dragoneye pine with a carpet (coming up to, but not touching - this one weeps onto the ground) of one of those small hostas with a narrow, picotee edge of dark green on a pale creamy leaf to echo the pine's "dragon eye"? There's a vinca minor (periwinkle) out now with same color effect.

The large shrub rose of yellow-flowered Graham Thomas underplanted with a hardy blue geranium like Nimbus or Roxanne or one of those new bronze-leaved blue geraniums...(I don't spray my roses - GT hosts a dark purple morning glory called Ipomoea purpurea Rebecca while it sulks through its summer defoliation, and then joins the show again in September-October.)

Perhaps Salvia nemerosa 'Rose Queen' swirling up to the trunk of that Rose of Sharon 'Braveheart' whose leaves have been nipped off to about 3 1/2' at which height the shrub is allowed to bush out again into a lollipop?

That brings me to why I came over here - sage links! These come from DG's Salvia and Agastache Forum -

Sages that tolerate some shade - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/699451/

Sages that tolerate heat & humidity - http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/699449/

There may be more lists for sages over in that forum, but shade, heat & humidity are my personal summer banes. If anyone comes across any more lists like this for any plant, it would be great if you could share it here, too.

ps - If you add a bulb, an annual and a vine to the woody plant and perennial, then you will have a formula to the basic unit of a cottage garden, which has thousands of variations.


This message was edited Jan 18, 2008 11:08 PM

I'm very new to cottege gardening and find it's kind of out of style around my neck of the woods. Shrubby natives mixed with tropicals are big around here. Kind of an odd combo to me but I begining to appreciate it a little. However the detail and creativity in cottage gardening is absolutely addictive for me. I can't wait each spring to try out new color combo's. Right now I'm really excited about Ophiopogon black grass with a beautiful blue green whipcord hebe and blue fescue grass. Just add a few tall annuals and you've got cottage meets parking lot : ) heehee just kidding.

"but I think that CG can lend itself very well to low-maintenance as long as the gardener doesn't expect the same kind of low maintance that he/she would get from an automobile parking lot."

funniest line I have read all day! Thanks for the laugh, bluespiral :-)

wonderearth, that's a very intriguing combination - the whipcord hebe sounds like something from outer space. I seem to be stuck in old-timey flower gardens, and DG provides a fun-lurch back into the 21st century every time I click on.

Mabel Osgood Wright (1859 - 1934) lived in a time that went from taking horse-and-buggy for granted to the advent of the automobile age which we now take for granted. I love the way she writes about the gardens and flowers of her time - although as a product of her times, there are unfortunate attitudes towards class divisions by race, gender, religion, economics, etc. So, with this warning, let me leave a link to the Gutenberg Press' free, digitalized offering of her book, The Garden, You and I - http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17514 . I like to save the bottom zipped form to my book file, because the book comes up automatically as a little column that I can float over an image of gardens or flowers on the computer monitor screen (wallpaper?) while I read. I'll have to get back and leave some links for those.

Seandor, you're welcome :)

Blue spiral.
Thanks for being so positive : )

Thanks, Jasmerr for letting me know this link is not working. I can still access it in my favorites, but cutting and pasting the hyperlink in the address bar is not working for some reason. I apologize to everyone about this and will try to see what I can do about this. For now, many of the following books are online and free in digital form elsewhere, so I'll leave this post up as a reference.

It's amazing what's out there. Here's another "motherlode" of links. It has some more old classic garden books - Hah! Thanks, Jasmer. For now, here's the source link, which does not provide all the books listed below: http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

You have a choice of formats from which to read these books. I haven't investigated them all, but after clicking on a link of a book you may be interested in, you'll come to a web page giving you those choices. If you click on FlipBook, then you can magnify or listen to the book.

There seem to be more there, but right now I don't have time to explore. Perhaps the section we're most interested in begins with - In praise of Old Gardens so scroll or hop down there with your Find feature (it's in the tool bar on the menu for Edit).

The ones I know about - off hand - that are up our cottage-garden alley:

Blanchan, Neltje - quite a few of her books there - imagine a time when wild flowers grew wild all along the roads and creeks!

Earle, Mrs. C. W. - there's a few of hers to check out, here

Ellacombe, Henry Nicholson - In my Vicarage Garden and Elsewhere
also - In a Gloucester Garden

Ely, Helena Rutherford - A Woman's Hardy Garden (&another one -The Practical Flower Garden

Farrand, Beatrix - Book for Dumbarton Oaks - I don't remember if she was the first female landscape architect in America, but she was an early one. She designed the gardens of Dumbarton Oaks which can still be visited in Washington, DC.

Grace Tabor - Old Fashioned Gardening..., (there's 2 others of hers here, too) (haven't read this one, either, but her name keeps cropping up in old garden books that I've loved)

Jekyll, Gertrude - Gardens for Small Country Houses - well, many of us do our own work without armies of gardens or acres - but her ideas translate so well to just about any scale - she really knew her flowers
also - Wall and Water Gardens

Robinson, William - The English Flower Garden - a major classic in garden writing - very passionate, strongly opinionated, got a lot of folks all riled up in his time - really knew his stuff - DG may have some modern incarnations of his spirit - lol

Thaxter, Celia - An Island Garden - I once downloaded images of Childe Hassam's watercolors and paintings, whose watercolors illustrated her book, and read the book as a little 2" x 4" square floating over his art. As I mentioned above, that form of book is available from the Gutenberg website. Sources for Hassam's art are also given above. This is a great thing to do with all of these books - other artist's flower and garden paintings are mentioned above.

Wilder, Louise Beebe - mentioned above, but perhaps better format options here

E. H. Wilson - plant explorer, "discovered" the regale lily in Asia, worked for Arnold Arboretum

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By-gone gardeners and/or garden designers I've heard about but not had a chance before to read are:

Church, Thomas

John Evelyn's "Elysium Britannicum" and European Gardening, ed. O'Malley et al

Frederick Law Olmsted, Landscape Architect, 1822 - 1903 - designed Central Park in New York City - among others - he modeled part of Central Park after the Kashmir Valley in India (at the time)

Wolsley, Frances Garnet Viscountess

---------------------------

many titles are so intriguing - there's one especially about a garden still in existence today called La Mortola that featured incredible fantasies of sculpture. There are many other world-famous gardens written about in these books

Mazes and labyrinthes looks interesting

--------------------

A vast website - the home page of this one is practically an entire university unto itself. Anyone out there knowledge about literature? I am not. Would enjoy hearing recommendations and favorites up that alley.


This message was edited Feb 10, 2008 11:06 AM

ps - if you're starved for flowers with a bit of fantasy, here's another free, online, digitalized book about how the flowers became human. In the following link, scroll down to The Flowers Personified and click on that one. Great for children and the child in us all -

http://www.earthlypursuits.com/Books/OldBooklibrary.htm

Bluespiral - these are GREAT! Thank you!

:)

Thank you, Jasmerr for letting me know. I can't get the link to work right now, but I'm leaving the post pretty much the same for reference and will continue to see what I can do about this.

Thanks!

I apologize about taking so long to get the links up for these old classics. They make wonderful time machines into the past for gardeners, but keep in mind that as products of their time, some contain elements of racism and other bigoted attitudes that are fortunately not so acceptable today.

Blanchan, Neltje, The American Flower Garden 1909 - http://www.kellscraft.com/AmericanGardens/americangardencontent.html

Bowles, E.A., My Garden in Spring 1914 - http://www.archive.org/stream/mygardeninspring00bowliala#page/n7/mode/2up

Burnett, Frances Hodgson, The Secret Garden 1911 - http://www.gutenberg.org/files/17396/17396-h/17396-h.htm#Page_353

Earle, Alice Morse, Old Time Gardens 1901 - http://www.oldandsold.com/articles24/gardens-1.shtml - I can't see where this website gives the author's name, but Alice Morse Earle did write this book. Each chapter can be accessed by clicking on each chapter title in the left hand column. It's been a while since I read this, but I seem to recall that this version might be slightly off.

Grandville, JJ illustrator, The Flowers Personified, translated from the French, 1847 - http://www.earthlypursuits.com/Books/OldBooklibrary.htm

Jekyll, Gertrude
--- Roses for English Gardens - http://www.rosarian.com/
--- Gardens for Small Country Houses - http://www.archive.org/stream/gardensforsmallc00jekyrich#page/n9/mode/2up

Maeterlinck, Maurice, The Double Garden 1911 - http://www.kellscraft.com/maeterlinckcontent.html (5 garden related chapters, including Chrysanthemums)

Redoute, Pierre-Joseph, Les Roses 1817 - 1824 - http://www.rarebookroom.org/Control/rdtrse/index.html

Skinner, Charles M., Little Gardens 1904 - http://www.kellscraft.com/littlegardenscontent.html

Tabor, Grace, Old-Fashioned Gardening, A History and a Reconstruction 1913 - http://www.archive.org/stream/oldfashionedgard00taborich#page/n5/mode/2up

Thaxter, Celia, An Island Garden 1894 - http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/thaxter/garden/garden.html (illustrated by the American impressionist, Childe Hassam; for more of Hassam's work, go to http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/hassam_childe.html )

Vilmorin-Andrieux et cie, Vegetable Gardening 1920 - http://www.archive.org/details/vegetablegardeni00vilmrich

Wilder, Louise Beebe, My Garden 1920 - http://www.kellscraft.com/mygarden/mygardencontents.html

Wright, Mabel Osgood (1859-1934) The Garden, You, and I - http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17514

Pooter is acting like a crash is imminent -

Wow, Karen, thank you for all your research and for posting these links. I've bookmarked the first site you gave us and now I'll keep this thread as one of my favorites!

Angie

Angie, you're very welcome. I'm trying not to let too much time pass before I locate and share these links, because when it comes to the internet, you never know how long a link may last. Whatever copyright laws may be, it seems those can change any time, too.

Karen