Plants and People

This publication is a collection of papers presented in June of 1995. The essays address early ornamental and medicinal horticulture, landscape gardening, and garden and orchard cultivation in New England and contiguous areas of the American Northeast before 1850. Ecological issues that surfaced in New England’s Creatures also emerge in these essays. One is the overwhelming familiarity of flora and fauna in everyday life at every social and occupational level. Another is the consequences of introducing Old World flora and fauna into North America. Lastly, there was a progressive distancing of New Englanders from active engagement and expertise with both animals and plants as the population increased in number and concentrated in urbanized enclaves. Essays cover English agricultural practices and plant material in North America, early plant stock and seed suppliers, North American plants as medicines, landscapes and gardens in New England and New York and plants and American authors.

The following is a list of the title and author of each paper:  “Peculiar Manuerance”: Puritans, Indians, and the Rhetoric of Agriculture, 1629-1654 by Jonathan Beecher Field, “Our English Clover-grass sowen thrives very well”: The Importation of English Grasses and Forages into Seventeenth-Century New England by Daniel A Romani, Jr., Horticultural Importers and Nurserymen in Boston 1719-1770 by Peter Benes, The Prince Family Nursery: Entrepreneurship Abroad and in New England prior to 1850 by D.J. and Alan Fusonie, Angelica Roots to Defend the Heart, Coltsfoot for the Measles: Indigenous and Naturalized Remedies in a 1696 Vade Mecum by Micaela Sullivan-Fowler and Norman Gevitz, “A Most Surprising Worm-Killer”: A History of the Use and Cultivation of Wormseed (Chenopodium ambroisides, var. anthelminticum) in Early America by Sandra M. Narva, The Tomato Pill War and the Adoption of the Tomato in New England by Andrew F. Smith, Reform and the Promotion of Ornamental Gardening by Christie H. White, Of Garrison Gardens and Pleasure Grounds: Plants and People at Fort Ticonderoga, New York by Lucinda A. Brockway, The Governor Benning Wentworth House and Farm, Little Harbor, Portsmouth, New Hampshire by Anne M. Masury, The Poet as Planter: William Cullen Bryant, Landscaper and Horticulturalist by Cathy E. Sabol, An Overview of American Nursery and Seed Catalogues, 1771-1832 by John T. Fitzpatrick, A Bibliography of American Nursery and Seed Catalogues, 1771-1832 by John T. Fitzpatrick and Judith Ho, Bibliography for Studying Plant-Related Medicines in North America before 1850 by J. Worth Estes, American Horticulture Observed: A Bibliography of Travel Journals (ca. 1650-1850 by Jennifer Anderson-Lawrence, New England Garden History and Horticultural Bibliography Keywords in American Landscape Design by Therese O’Malley, Anne Helmreich, and Elizabeth Kryder-Reid.