Bartram's Nursery and Gardens
I want to thank you Peter, it's always a pleasure to come back to Monticello and particularly to see old friends like Peter and Peggy and I'd totally forgotten about the oatmeal. I can't wait to tell my husband. (LAUGH) And I'm also very happy to be here talking about Bartram's Garden, which is one of my favorite places. And I particularly want to thank Joel Fry here, who is the Bartram's archaeologist and historian for helping me fill out some blanks in my research.
But let me begin with the setting. This is Bartram's Garden, now. America's first nursery. Of course Philadelphia is a city of firsts, but I think it's appropriate that it was the city of the first nursery. It's, John Bartram was the right man. He's a Quaker, an excellent farmer, with an interest in botany. He would become part of a strong Quaker trans-Atlantic network. There is, by the way, no authentic portrait of John Bartram.His son said he was never limned, so this is a representation of John Bartram as a plant explorer. Authentic as to clothing.
He was also at the right place. Philadelphia has a strong, fertile soil. It's where the northern and southern limits of many plants meet. Where the Quaker Foundation encouraged freedom of thought. And it was a magnet for scientific activity.
He was also there at the right time, as Peter mentioned, what, what we call the enlightenment. Or as Peggy mentioned. The 1730s when Bartram was beginning his farming, was a time of scientific inquiry. Especially into the natural world. It was time for, a vibrant time for botany. In the 17th century, both the Chelsea Physic Garden and the Oxford Botanic Garden had been formed for holding and for the study of plants. In the early 18th, a German, Dillenius was working at Oxford. In Leiden, Gronovius was studying John Clayton's plants from British North America.
Linnaeus was publishing the Systema Naturae, to be followed in 1753 by Species Plantarum, which would become seminal, one of Peter's and my favorite garden words, to the focus on classification. The 18th century was also a time of intense interest in landscape in Britain. Remember this is the time of William Kent, and Capability Brown. It was also the beginning of what is less known, the, an English style of gardening that was, become known as the American Garden.
This is a rather dark slide, because it was in the shade. Reckton's Log Cabin in the American Grove at Woburn. You collect American plants, and pretty soon you get a little American arboretum. Botany became a connector between horticulture, landscape and science. It was a golden moment before botany and horticulture were divorced from one another in the mid 19th century. About the time, coincidentally, the center of botany moved from Philadelphia to New York. I don't know whether that was a coincidence or not.
What about the man? A birthright Quaker, a farmer. His yield of wheat was 28 to 36 bushels an acre, compared to an average of 10 at the time he was farming. His being a Quaker is important. The Friends were ahead of their time in the appreciation of nature. William Penn advocated the country life, because he said, there we see the works of God, in cities we just see the works of man.
Bartram's son William wrote that his father, quote, discovered in his early youth a love for philosophy and natural history in general. He was, however, particularly drawn to the study of botany. But at that time, botany was but little attended to in America. He had, therefore, no other aid in studying the great book of nature than his own persevering genius. He's been described as a man of slender education, but he was no country bumpkin. He was an independent thinker. More a, a Unitarian actually than a Quaker, for which he was read out of The Darby Meeting.
However, he continued to attend and it didn't seem to have bothered anybody. At some point in 1733 Bartram was introduced, by mail, to Peter Collinson. One of my favorite people, obviously. A fellow Quaker in London, a draper by trade and a passionate gardener. He might be called a plantaholic.
Collinson had only an elementary education was wholly self taught in botany. Nevertheless, he became a fellow at The Royal Society in 1728. Collinson had helped Mark Catesby publish his Natural History of The Carolinas by finding him patrons. Collinson's firm dealt with the colonies, it was a very small firm, himself and his brother. He used these connections to importune for seeds and plants. Letters are wonderful. One can imagine that some of his less enthusiastic trans-Atlantic friends wearied of this.
And one of them, presumably the Philadelphia Quaker, Joseph Brentnell suggested John Bartram as a likelier source. And the relationship between Collinson and Bartram, beginning in 1733 was to develop and flourish, until Collinson's death, 34 years later. After some initial correspondence with and receipts of seeds from Bartram, Collinson had a measure of the man, and found him a patron, the young eighth baron, Petre. Spelled as in saltpetre. This brilliant, young, Catholic lord, a member of The Royal Society, was interested in quantities of uncommon trees for his Essex estate, Thornton.
Patria was named for Lord Petre. In 1738, Collinson and Lord Petre underwrote a trip of 1100 miles thru Delaware, Maryland and Virginia, to Williamsburg. Collinson not only underwrote, supplied instructions, such as keeping a journal, and to keep live plants in an ox bladder tied to his saddlebags as you see there. Nowadays, we used zip lock bags. But he also supplied introductions to these people, most of whom Collinson had never met himself. Thereby pulling Bartram into Collinson's extensive Atlantic network.
As an early 19th century Philadelphian summarized Bartram's travels, which filled books of course, Bartram made extensive tours through North America to collect trees, shrubs and plants, which he transferred to and cultivated in his garden on the Schuylkill. Neither personal difficulties nor dangers from Indians deterred him. He explored our highest mountains and our western lakes. At the age of 70 he embarked, actually he was 65, he embarked for South Carolina.
Traveled through that and adjoining states and Florida, ascended The River Saint John 40 miles in a boat and descended on the other side till he reached the sea. The temptation is to go into more detail about Bartram's travels, which are a story in themselves. In fact several stories. But this is actually supposed to be a story about his garden and nursery.
Peter Collinson was really what we would now call a facilitator. Between botanists, landed gentry planting trees on their estates on one side of the Atlantic and John and ultimately William Bartram on the other. It was Collinson who was Bartram's great connection to the 18th century world of natural science as well as eventually over 200 clients, not all at once, I might add. Mostly in England. These included 21 nurserymen that we know of, including Christopher Gray and James Gordon and Nathaniel Powell and especially Philip Miller, curator of The Chelsea Physic Garden.
Here with a statue of it's great patron, Sir Hans Sloane. An author of The Gardener's Dictionary, the bible of 18th century British and American gardeners. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, even Benjamin Franklin, that most urbane of urbanists, had, all had copies and used them and annotated them. And from these English nurserymen, the plants spread to the British middle class. Other clients included, in the nobility, Frederick, The Prince Of Wales, The Duke Of Bedford, (SOUNDS LIKE) Daryl LeBute, The Duke Of Richmond, and eventually, King George The III. Also included gentry and professional gardeners.
Collinson had very specific instructions. The seeds were to be packed in dry sand. The box to placed in the captain's cabin. Collinson picked ships with sympathetic captains, because if you left it out on the board, you'd obviously get a lot of salt stray. And covered with lathe to protect it from the ship's cat, which you can see on the left. So Collinson had thought this through and Bartram was to be paid five guineas a box. Usually for a hundred different varieties, or a hundred and four.
For live plants, Collinson recommended placing them in a box two feet square and 15 to 18 inches deep, in a foot of soil, there to the left. This is actually from a miniature window that, from the Philadelphia Flower Show, a number of years ago. In a foot of soil and then growing them on for two or three years before shipping them to Collinson, giving them the chance to establish their roots. And given the circumstances, it was pretty successful, when you think of problems getting things from White Flower Farm to Philadelphia, I think he did very well. Hope nobody's here from White Flower.
A little about the nursery itself. Alexander Garden, a Charleston physician, amateur botanist, correspondent of Collinson and Linnaeus, Fellow with The Royal Society, after whom Gardenia is named, visited Bartram in 1754. Just four years before this drawing was made presumably by Bartram's son, William. Garden wrote, "one day he dragged me out of town and entertained me so agreeably with some elevated botanical thoughts on oaks, ferns, rocks, etcetera, that I forgot I was hungry, till he landed at his house, four miles from town. There was no parting with him for two days, during which I breakfasted, dined and slept and regaled on botany and mineralogy, in which he had some excellent notions and thoughts. His garden is a perfect portraiture of himself. Here you meet with a row of rare plants, almost covered with weeds, here with a beautiful shrub, even luxuriant among the briers, and in another corner, elegant and lofty tree lost in a common thicket." I noticed William did not include any weeds in this picture. (LAUGH)
"On his way from town to his house, he carried me to several rocks and dens, where he showed me some of his rare plants, which he had bought from, brought from the mountains, etcetera. In a word, he disdains to have a garden less than Pennsylvania, and every den is an arbor, every run of water a canal and every small, level spot a parterre where he nurses up some of his idle flowers, and he cultivates his darling productions. Or, as his son William put it in 1801, he soon furnished his grounds with the curious and beautiful vegetables in the environs and by degrees with those more distant arranged according to their natural soil and situation. Either in the garden or on his plantation. Or evidently as Garden said, off in the rocks somewhere. Which consisted of between 200 and 300 acres. This is the plantation, not the garden. The whole of which he termed his garden. In other words, Bartram arranged his plants not by an aesthetic principles or by any botanic order, but where he thought they'd do best. And, we all know gardeners like that. To the extent of putting, I knew one who was called by the family, "Puncket," because that's where he put things, to the extent of putting mountain plants on the way from Philadelphia to his garden and nursery. Or, as Alexander Garden said, he disdains to have a garden less than Pennsylvania.
Now Bartram was not the only Philadelphian supplying the seeds and plants to England, but nobody could compete in shear numbers. One of Bartram's first orders to Lord Petre in 1,735 included 3,000 black walnuts, a peck and three quarters of dogwood berries, two pecks of red cedar berries, that's Juniperus virginiana, 3,200 swamp Spanish acorns.
By 1741 Collinson saw in nursery beds at Petre's Thornton Hall, white oak, hackberry, sweet gum, tubal poplar, sassafras, sugar maple, white cedar and more, and could report in the same year, the trees and shrubs, "raised from thy first seeds, are grown to great maturity." Well, this is only, we're talking about seven years. I don't know how great that would have been. "Last year, Lord Petre planted out about 10,000 American which at the same time mixed with some 20,000 European and some Asians make a very beautiful appearance."
I think there'd be a lot of nursery people now who would like to be doing that. It is not merely the shear numbers of the introductions, but their quality, which was significant. Through Peter Collinson, Bartram was introducing new plants to both science and horticulture. The number of Bartram's introductions have been estimated as well over a hundred, depending on who you ask.
The Bartram's introductions included flowers such as Monarda didyma or bee balm, shrubs such as the Rhododendron maximum, trees such as Acer pensylvanicum, moosewood, Magnolia acuminata. Bartram also reintroduced some treasures which had been in and then out of British gardens in the 17th century, such as the shooting star, Dodecatheon media which Catesby illustrated from a plant in Bartram's Garden.
Arthur Dobbs, governor of the Carolinas, discovered the Venus Flytrap. But it was Bartram, who with great difficulty, sent the identifying specimen. Of course, the Franklinia, we all know, which John and William discovered on the banks of the Altamaha River in Georgia, and which William later introduced and painted. However, Bartram introduced many plants for he was not given credit. Despite the fact that some of his voucher specimens were going to Linnaeus, Gronovious, Delanius, and later to Sulinder (SP?) , the top botanists of the period, because they were named by later botanists.
Peter Kalm, pupil of Linnaeus for whom Kalmia, or mountain laurel is named, called on Bartram three days after his arrival in Philadelphia, in 1748. Kalm paid frequent visits thereafter, requested seeds to go to Linnaeus, examined plants in Bartram's Herbarium, and had lengthy discussions with Bartram. Kalm wrote, "we owe to Bartram the knowledge of many scarce plants which he first found and which were never known before. He has shown great judgment and an attention which lets nothing escape unnoticed. Yet, with all these great qualities, he is to be blamed for his negligence, for he did not care to write down his numerous and useful observations." Kalm, who said he owed him many things, then quoted Bartram throughout his travels.
Now I feel that one reason Bartram wrote little, is that both Collinson and Philip Miller discouraged plant descriptions. Essentially, they were saying, just send us the specimens, send us the seeds, don't worry about writing it down. They could not accept, for example, the number of species of oaks we have. It's understandable comforting a country that is very poor in native trees, due to the Ice Age. Only have two oaks, for example. So, Bartram's unnoticed introductions include, for example, the Jersey holly. How could they miss that? This is his herbarium specimen. The sour gum, the beech plum, Phlox paniculata. How did that get by them?
I asked Ernie Schuyler, who is Curator Emeritus of The Academy of Natural Sciences and very well versed in botanical history, what, which he thought were some of the most important of Bartram's introductions. Well, the first would be the American ginseng, the Viagra™ of the 18th century. Here's a specimen from Gronovious' Herbarium, at the British Museum Of Natural History. It doesn't mention Bartram on it. But we know, that it was.
The swamp pink, Helonias bullata, the Delphinium exaltatum, which is the Delphinium on the left. The deer got mine. The moccasin flower, the Cypripedium acaule, which was so hard to get growing in England. Phlox paniculata, which I mentioned. The Philadelphia lily, one of my favorites, which is here illustrated in Miller's Beautiful Plants. The Pine-barren Gentian, this is Billy's drawing. And the Collinsonia, or horse mint, as Kalm called it.
The only time that Bartram really minded not getting credit is when Philip Miller did not say that, who had sent the Collinsonia, which had been named, obviously, for Bartram's great friend and supporter. There's a little aside here, because it's not really part of Bartram's Nursery, but he did build a greenhouse in about 1760, which for his own pleasures, he put it, "to have some pretty, flowering winter shrubs and plants for winter diversion. Not to be crowded with orange trees and those natural to the torrid zone, but such as will do, just being protected by (WORD?) .
Joel Fry's archaeology showed it was simply the front room of Bartram's seed house, shown here in an early photograph. Peter, when he heard about this, why Peter Collinson sent geraniums or Pelargonium inquinans here in the painting of Rembrandt Peal of his brother Reubens, claiming it was the first geranium, but it wasn't. Now, that's a lot of leaf for not much flower. And, but you may have noticed a wonderful bed in Jefferson's flower border yesterday. And I'd like to know how Peter does it, 'cause mine are very leggy, like this. And his are nice and fat.
John Bartram may have been a simple farmer, but that's in the same since that Sam Irvine was a simple country lawyer. Bartram was, after all, a founding member of the American Philosophical Society. And a 1739 letter suggested it may have been as much his idea as Franklin's. In 1764, he was made King's Botanist, by George III, with a stipend of 50 pounds and instructions to explore the new territory of Florida, which he did at the age of 65.
He was also elected to The Royal Swedish Society. He was a man of his time, but also ahead of his time. Bartram retired in 1771, due to failing eyesight, and turned his garden over to his son, John Jr., the practical one. He died in 1777, and it was said that his death was hastened by a concern that the fighting in The Revolutionary War in Philadelphia, would harm his beloved garden. But actually, the British respected it.
So, his son, John Jr. and William here, continued the garden. In John Bartram's will, he left the bulk of the farm property, 139 plus acres, including the house and garden and buildings, to John Jr. Now people sometimes question, well, why not William who everybody knows about? Well, William had already spent his patrimony in Florida in 1766 to purchase six slaves and supplies and to secure a grant of 500 acres, I guess it was, on the St. John's River, where he was going to grow indigo. It failed in less than a year.
Also, John Jr. was evidently the practical one. After all, Billy had failed in any business he ever tried. But Billy went into his partnership with his brother at the garden. All invoices, seed lists and correspondence are in Billy's hand and he evidently wrote the first catalogs as well. William, of course, was and is the better known brother. His travels were published in 1791 in Philadelphia, promptly republished abroad, including Dublin, London, Berlin, and Paris.
It was to influence the Romantic movement, and especially the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge. And we sometimes forget that his travels involved collecting as well. William had his own plant introductions. He's really responsible for introducing the Franklinia, because he and his father, when they first discovered it, did not bring back seeds. His introductions included the oak leaf hydrangea, and the Magnolia fraseri, sometimes called the eared magnolia.
The War Of Independence, and the associated European conflicts interfered with international trade. But even before Philadelphia merchants signed non-importation agreements in 1765 and 1770, the trade of Bartram with the English customers, in Britain, declined, understandably. Probably stopped by 1775. And as far as I can tell, the Bartrams never really picked up the English trade again. An increasing number of English catalogs, such as Telford's of York in 1775, were showing American plants. The most expensive items in the catalog, by the way, a Magnolia virginiana cost 15 shillings, as did Rhodendron maximum, whereas the Laburnum standard cost only sixpence.
However, there was demand for North American seeds and plants in France. Particularly since the war in Britain had cut off the main sources of plant material. It seemed unless Spain got a hold of the boat, to wend it's way around the Atlantic, despite the war. Benjamin Franklin wrote to Bartram in May of 1777, send the same number of boxes here that you used to send to England. Because England will send them here, for what it wants in that way.
In March of 1779, Joseph Mathias Gerard de Rayneval. Sir Gerard, I hope I'm pronouncing this correctly, first ambassador from France to the new government in Philadelphia, purchased a small box of 22 varieties of roots and seeds and two large varieties of over, two large boxes of over 40 varieties of plant roots. Roots sometimes means plant roots, but more often meant bulbs in those days. This was followed by three other sizable shipments, including one that he took back to France with him, when he returned due to ill health in the fall of '79.
The latter plants, one to four each, of 33 varieties, were a broad selection of flowering trees and shrubs, include seven different viburnum, including the maple leaf. After the treaty of France in 1783, the Bartram's published the first botanical list of North American plants to be printed in America. And, as I, is in the title, it goes from Acer, a maple to Zanthoxylum or toothache tree.
It is also one of the earliest known nursery catalogs from The United States. It contains 218 species of plants from eastern North America. Although the list may not be exciting to 21st century Americans, I mean after all, it's just native plants, it was certainly important for the time. For as John Bartram had done in his earlier letters and on his herbarium specimens, he always showed growing conditions with the plants. And Franklin arranged for the publication of this list in Paris.
The catalog includes almost no herbaceous plants. But we do know the nursery was carrying these. In 1784, the Bartrams sent a large collection of North American trees, shrubs and herbs to a Mr. Pierpont. This included not only 162 varieties of trees and shrubs, but also 59 herbaceous plants, from gigantic sunflower to little gems such as the Dodecatheon or shooting star. Not surprisingly, Thomas Jefferson from Paris ordered American plants to be sent to, guess whom? Madame de Tessé, in January of '86.
American plants and seeds were to be, as he said, packed in that careful manner with which you are so perfectly acquainted. Seventeen different species, including four different magnolias and 39 species of seeds, including the tulip tree, which he wanted in great quantity. I just wonder if there's any significance to the fact that Jefferson called it the Juneau Of The Forest. It was also reputed to be his favorite tree, but I think he was like a lot of gardeners who whatever tree you're looking at in your garden at that moment, is your favorite. (LAUGH)
And he also included two plants not described by Linnaeus. But he also sent John Bartram Jr. a copy of Linnaeus's later work, The System Of Vegetabilium, translated into English, fortunately. The Bartram's were expanding their business. Before The Revolution, there had been very little American business that we know of. In the 1780s the Bartrams were involved in the planting of Samuel Vaughn's Statehouse Garden to be done in time for the Constitutional Convention.
The Colombian magazine, in 1790, reported at it's completion that it consists of a beautiful lawn, interspersed with little knobs or tufts of flowering shrubs and clumps of trees well disposed. Through the middle of the gardens runs a spacious gravel rock lined with double rows of thriving elms and communicating with serpentine walks which encompass the whole area. When you think of the serpentine walks it's very much in the style of the new English Garden design. You think of the serpentine walks, walk, Jefferson's roundabout, which we saw yesterday.
Vaughn wished to plant, in the Statehouse Square, specimens of every native tree and shrub that would grow in the Philadelphia area, which was quite a self-imposed task. The Bartram's cousin and nurseryman, and author of Arbustum Americanum, Humphrey Marshall, donated 700 in trees and shrubs from 40 species. Vaughn listed 70 plants of 55 species, this is the winterberry, he had purchased from the Bartrams. And then in '86 and '87, he ordered a hundred more.
However, not all the plants requested of Bartram were native. A red flowering larch from Italy, most beautiful, at a pricey five shillings. Equally expensive was an American native horse chestnut, the Aesculus octandra. Described as new, but I don't understand that because it was in the 1783 catalog and had been introduced to England in 1754. Manassas Cutler described the Statehouse Garden as a fine display of rural fancy and elegance. In the summer of 1787, a dozen men, including Manassas Cutler, who's diary for this period is very full and is a wonderful picture of Philadelphia, at the time of the Constitutional Convention.
And these men were mostly delegates. And they went out to see, very specifically, Bartram's Garden. Mr. Bartram, he wrote, lives in an ancient fabric built with stone and very large, which it was the seat of his father. His house is on an eminence, fronting to the scoop hill, and his garden is on the declivity of the hill between his house and the river, as you saw in the earlier drawing. We found him with another man, hoeing in his garden in short jacket and trousers, without shoes or stockings.
This I don't understand, because as a gardener, if you're going to be working in the garden, if you're dealing with a hoe or a stay, you don't want a bare foot on it. He seemed to be somewhat embarrassed at being so large a gay company so early in the morning. After being introduced by the one person Bartram knew, I, that is Cutler, immediately entered on the subject of botany with which as much familiarity as possible.
He presently got rid of his embarrassment, and soon became very sociable, which is more than I expected from the character I'd heard of the man. Little crusty, we gather. I found him to be a practical botanist, though he seemed to understand little of the theory. This would be John Jr., and not William. This is a very ancient garden and the collection is large indeed. But it's mainly from the middle and southern states. It is finely situated as it partakes of every kind of soil, has a fine stream of water and an artificial pond, where he has a good collection of aquatic plants.
There is no situation in which plants or trees are found. But they may be propagated here in one that is similar. But everything is very badly arranged for they are neither placed ornamentally or botanically, but seem to be jumbled in heaps. Well, as William explained, he did it by where they grew. But there's obviously not much changed since 1754. There are in his garden, some very large trees that are exotic, particularly an English oak, which he assured me was the only one in America.
He had the Papua tree and the Franklinia, of course, is very curious. George Washington also visited in 1787 and noted in his diary that he rid to see the botanical garden of Mr. Bartram, which though stored with many curious plants, shrubs and trees, many of which are exotics, was not laid off with much taste. Nor was it very large. His diary spends a lot more time in the same morning at Mr. Jones' farm, where he was interested in the use of plaster of Paris on the soil, lime in other words.
Washington preferred farming to horticulture. This criticism is often quoted but what isn't quoted is the fact that Washington later sought Bartram's advice about planting cedar hedges at Mount Vernon, because he'd admired Bartram's. And what also is often overlooked, that in March of '92, Washington ordered 200 trees and shrubs for Mount Vernon. And it's a very interesting list where 23 of these are not what Bartram was noted for, the natives, but were exotics like Daphne.
Family tradition held that John Bartram III, assisted his father in running the botanic garden until his untimely death in 1804. In 1807, the Bartrams issued another catalog, quite different. Over 1500 species, it included mosses and fungi. I wonder how many takers. It also included mimosa or Albizia julibrissin which Bartram had received from Andre Michaux and sent seeds on to Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson's Philadelphia friend, William Hamilton, had promised Jefferson these seeds and Jefferson begged a number of times, but Hamilton wasn't very good at sharing.
So Jefferson got them from Bartrams. Both John Bartram Jr., and the garden ran downhill after the death of John Bartram III. Both John Bartram III evidently overindulged in alcohol and evidently the same thing happened to John Bartram Jr. And the embargo at this period, didn't help either. But fortunately, John Jr.'s daughter, Ann Bartram, married Robert Carr, a Philadelphia printer and widower. Before John Jr.'s death, evidently Carr became active in the garden.
And also, he was obviously the one involved in advertising Bartram plant and seed business in the Philadelphia presses. This is from the Aurora in 1811 and this is from Poulson's in 1820. And you see by this point, they're emphasizing the greenhouse plants, the exotics. John Bartram Jr. died in November 16th of 1812 and the farm and botanic garden were divided into three tracks. The Carrs took, for their three children, The Carrs took over the original Bartram mansion house, botanic garden and nursery.
William Bartram died in 1823, having played a very important role in the garden until late in his life. And the care of the garden rested in the hands of Ann and Robert Carr and John Bartram Carr, who was a surviving from from Robert Carr's first marriage. We assume that the Bartram was put in the middle name after, after John Carr married Ann Bartram. However, John Bartram Carr died in 1839 at the age of 34 and there was no further heir to the Bartram family garden.
The garden continued to specialize in native North American plants, and the international trade in seeds and plants endured. The Carrs also enlarged the family garden as a commercial nursery for sales to the local Philadelphia market. At its peak, Bartram's Garden expanded to over 10 acres, featuring 10 greenhouses, a collection of 1400 native plant species with an equally strong number of exotics. When Samuel Breck visited in 1817 he reported that Carr had 6,000 plants in pots for sale. And in addition, he's now building a large greenhouse.
Indeed, the most remarkable feature in this nursery, and that which renders it superior to most of its class, is the advantage possessing large specimens of all the rare American trees and shrubs which are not only highly ornamental but likewise very valuable from the great quantities of seeds they afford for the exportation to London. So London is still in there. Paris, Petersburg, Calcutta, and several other parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. So, they didn't have to go exploring for these seeds now, they could collect them in the garden.
This garden is the regular resort of the learned and scientific gentleman. In 1829 Bartram's introduced the Poinsettia, from Mexico. Named for Ambassador Joel Poinsett. And this was shown at the first Philadelphia Flower Show in 1829. It was a great coup. Robert Carr continued yearly collecting trips for seeds. The Carrs developed relationships with botanists and plant explorers such as Thomas Nuttall, and were able to carry thus a worldwide list of plants. In further catalogs, were listed issued in 1814, 1819, 1828, 1831, and 1836.
And through these, we can see the garden and the nursery evolving to meet changing editions. Meaning changing tastes. They continued to carry American natives, but added greenhouses, added an increasing percentage of exotics. The 1836 catalog contained more than 2,000 species. Nineteen pages of greenhouse plants. Over 280 roses. Forty-eight different chrysanthemums. One hundred and fifty dahlias, very popular at that point. And new introductions, such as the carriage aponico (SP?) . This is interesting because this is an 1836 catalog and the caria was known to and, and the writings to have been introduced in 1834.
So, it was a very fast move. The Carrs continued to introduce important new plants to cultivation. In 1817, and I found this on the twin leaf, Robert Carr sent seeds of the western variety of snowberry to Comrade Loddiges (SP) in, in London, which was the great nursery house at that period. With information that it was found by Lewis and Clark beyond the Rocky Mountains, August 1805. The seed was probably raised by Bernard McMann, about whom you'll hear later, from seeds collected by Lewis.
McMann sent plants of this, what he called the snowberry bush, to Jefferson in, in 1812. But the War Of 1812 prevented plants going to England at that time. And so Bartram sent them on to England afterwards. However, times were changing. New competition was arising. Locally you have Landreth , Hibbard and Buelist (SP?) were at the top of the list and nationally an, an increasing number. McMann did not survive, but Landrith, Prince, Buelist and many, many others continued.
Landrith had his own coup, when it somehow obtained a yellow currant brought back by Lewis and Clark and supposedly grown in quarantine by McMann. But McMann, Bartram and Prince all carried it in the '20s. European and local customers, by this point were more interested in plants from western North America. You have Lewis and Clark, and then after that day, Douglas, and then Nuttall, and they all kept going west, not to mention getting to dribble in from Asia.
And added to this was The Depression of 1837. The Carrs never regained their moment and fell into debt. Ultimately, Andrew Eastwick bought Bartram's Garden in 1850. He had, with a partner Joseph Harrison, developed a new kind of railway engine and made a fortune selling rolling stock to Russia. As a poor boy it's a wonderful romantic story, he had taken Sunday boat rides up the Schuylkill, where you can see the, Bartram's, and dreamed of one day opening Bartram's Garden, owning it, that someday he would have the money to do that.
And when he could, he did. He didn't disturb the Bartram House or John Jr.'s barn, and he built his own mansion, Bartram Hall. Designed by Sloane, on an adjoining field. You can't see it now, because it was burnt. But the fact that Bartram's Garden still exists is another story and a good one. And it's a tribute to an intrepid plantsman.
©Elizabeth P. McLean
August 2004