Awards
- Commended for Benjamin Franklin Award (Home/Garden) 2012
- Commended for Independent Publisher Book Awards (Home/Garden) 2012
- Commended for Midwest Book Award (MIPA) (Regional-Text) 2011
- Winner of Midwest Book Award (MIPA) (Cover-Paperback) 2011
Overview
As Wisconsin's population moved from farmsteads into villages, towns, and cities, the state saw a growing interest in gardening as a leisure activity and source of civic pride. In Vintage Wisconsin Gardens, Lee Somerville introduces readers to the region's ornamental gardens of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, showcasing the ""vernacular"" gardens created by landscaping enthusiasts for their own use and pleasure. The Wisconsin State Horticultural Society, established during the mid-nineteenth century, was the primary source of advice for home gardeners. Through carefully selected excerpts from WSHS articles, Somerville shares the excitement of these gardeners as they traded cultivation and design knowledge and explored the possibilities of their avocation. Women were frequent presenters at the WSHS annual meetings, and their voices resonate. Their writings, and those of their male colleagues, are a remarkable legacy we can draw on today--learning how Wisconsinites past created and enjoyed their gardens helps us appreciate our own. Filled with period and contemporary images, recommended plant lists, and garden layouts, Vintage Wisconsin Gardens will interest those curious about the history of the state's cultural landscape and inspire readers to restore or reconstruct period gardens.
Full Product Details
Author: Lee Somerville ,
Professor Arnold R Alanen
Publisher: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Imprint: Wisconsin Historical Society Press
Dimensions:
Width: 20.40cm
, Height: 1.10cm
, Length: 22.90cm
Weight: 0.572kg
ISBN: 9780870204753
ISBN 10: 0870204750
Pages: 200
Publication Date: 04 October 2011
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
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Reviews
<p>2012 Bronze in the Home & Garden Category from Independent Publisher Book Awards<br>2011 Finalist in the Home: Gardening Category from USA National Best Book Awards<br>
<p> Vintage Wisconsin Gardens is the perfect primer for any gardener or homeowner wishing to re-create a late-nineteenth- or early-twentieth-century garden. It is filled with delightful details, anecdotes, historical photos, and a really useful list of plants. How I wish it existed when I was trying to create a garden for my 125-year-old home. It would have made my job a lot easier! Vintage Wisconsin Gardens is also just fun reading for gardeners, historians, and anyone interested in Wisconsin's horticultural past. (Shelley Ryan, host of The Wisconsin Gardener on Wisconsin Public Television, and heirloom gardening enthusiast) An engaging look at how home gardens and landscapes changed as Wisconsin became more settled and developed from the 1800s to early 1900s. Gardeners will enjoy reading about how our 'modern' ideas of the use of home grounds came to be--and may be intrigued by the mention of certain plants that are 'new' again today. Anyone who is involved with historic gard
Author Information
Lee Somerville is a landscape historian and master gardener. Originally from Liverpool, England, her home for the past thirty-five years has been northeastern Wisconsin. Between 1985 and 2001, Somerville was a volunteer at Heritage Hill State Historical Park in Green Bay, where she helped develop garden and landscape plans and organized volunteers to maintain those gardens. She recently received her master's degree in landscape architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
