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Archives of American Gardens

Annual Report for 2011 for the Garden Club of America’s Garden History and Design Committee

Smithsonian Institution Staff ● Barbara Faust, Associate Director, Smithsonian Gardens (SG), Office of Facilities

Management and Reliability (OFMR) ● Cindy Brown, Manager, Horticulture Collections Management and Education

branch (HCME) ● Paula Healy } Museum Specialist, Horticulture Collections Management and

● Joyce Connolly } Education branch (HCME) ● Kelly Crawford }

Mission Statement The Archives of American Gardens (AAG) both collects and preserves a visual record of representative American gardens and their features as well as the work of select landscape practitioners, and documents the activities and collections of the Horticulture Services Division of the Smithsonian Institution.

AAG’s mission is to collect and make available for research use unique, high-quality images of and documentation relating to a wide variety of cultivated gardens throughout the United States that are not documented elsewhere since historic, designed, and cultural landscapes are subject to change, loss, and destruction. In this way, AAG strives to preserve and highlight a meaningful compendium of significant aspects of gardening in the United States for the benefit of researchers and the public today and in the future.

Notable Highlights

A Guide to Smithsonian Gardens by garden writer Carole Ottesen (The Herbal Epicure: Growing, Harvesting, and Cooking Healing Herbs, New American Garden, etc.) was published in spring 2011! The handsome book features a chapter on SG’s collections including AAG and is a great way of educating the public about Smithsonian Gardens.

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Work has begun on a new Smithsonian American Garden Legacy exhibit that will highlight mid-century gardens. It is slated to premiere in late 2013. Former GHD Intern Kate Fox has been contracted by AAG to research the topic and write and exhibit script.

An updated Procedures Manual and AAG Digital Submission Policy was issued in January. The changes address questions and issues that have arisen in the recent past.

Smithsonian Gardens’ (SG) increasing number of educational and outreach initiatives, including the online Archives Alive! program and the Let’s Move! program in conjunction with First Lady Michelle Obama’s fight against childhood obesity, provide

learning opportunities that highlight AAG holdings.

It has been three years since AAG’s Digital Submission Policy was launched. Two-thirds of the submissions received in 2011 included digital images; one-third included 35mm slides.

New Accessions In addition to garden documentation submitted to the GCA Collection

throughout the year, AAG acquired two new collections in 2011. The Rudy J. Favretti Collection documents the prolific career of this

landscape architect and author. Professor Favretti, who helped establish the landscape restoration graduate program at the University of Connecticut, taught there from 1955 to 1988. He is particularly noted for his work in historic landscape restoration including work at Monticello and Mount Vernon.

GCA member Eleanor Weller Reade donated several boxes of garden reference files to AAG; they have been added to her existing collection at the Archives. You may recognize Mrs. Reade as a driving force behind the creation of the GCA Slide Library of Notable American Parks and Gardens which later became the GCA Collection. She is also the co-author of the book, The Golden Age of American Gardens: Proud Owners, Private Estates, 1890-1940.

GCA Collection Submission Statistics for 2011

53 gardens were accessioned into the GCA Collection in 2011. The list of gardens is appended at the end of this report.

Thank you for the garden submissions that you send to AAG throughout the year for the GCA Collection. We’re grateful to each and every GCA volunteer for the time, effort, and dedication that goes into documenting gardens for the GCA Collection. Each submission adds to the overall collection and captures today’s history of a garden for future generations.

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Berg Gardens in Walpole, NH. One of 53 gardens documented in the GCA Collection in 2011.

Cataloging Statistics 25 of the 53 gardens accessioned in 2011 have been cataloged.

Representative images of each garden are available online in the SIRIS database at www.siris.si.edu.

See the “Recent Acquisitions” web pages at http://gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/AAG/recentacquisitions2011.htm for a list of all the submissions to the GCA Collection added in 2011. As soon as a garden is cataloged into SIRIS, its entry on the Recent Acquisitions page goes live and links directly to corresponding catalog entries and images in SIRIS. Please be sure to check it out and alert your clubs to this helpful resource!

GHD Committee Meetings

GHD Committee Spring Meeting in Palo Alto, CA, March 29-31

The von Hasseln Garden was one of many gardens visited during the Spring Meeting. This garden is included in the GCA Collection at AAG.

Discussion topics at the meeting included the AAG Digital Submission Policy, the AAG/GHD Internship, and types of gardens to document for the GCA Collection.

Very special thanks to Annette Serrurier for the extensive local arrangements she made for the Spring Meeting including a memorable trip to Filoli. The roster of garden tours she arranged was fantastic!

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GHD Committee Meeting at GCA Headquarters, NYC, June 6-7

Crescent Reach, visited during the Spring Meeting, is documented in the GCA Collection at AAG.

A highlight of the meeting included an evening lecture by author Andrea Wulf relating to her recent book, „Founding Gardeners.‟

Very special thanks to Zone III Rep, Kathy Stradar, for all her work in arranging a tour of Crescent Reach in Garrison, New York, prior to the GHD

Committee meeting.

GHD Committee Fall Meeting in Washington, DC, September 28-30

GHD Committee members and Smithsonian staff enjoyed dinner at the Freer Gallery of Art. The museum and courtyard were designed by acclaimed architect and landscape architect Charles Platt.

The meeting included a PowerPoint presentation by AAG staff that reviewed the

contents of the Procedures Manual and Procedures Manual Appendix. This meeting featured two AAG workshops. Freshmen Reps „documented‟ a

garden while sophomore Reps discussed how to create GHD exhibits. Each GHD

Rep received a workbook which featured a number of exercises that broke the

respective process into its component parts and posed good/better/best options. The opportunity for all the Reps to ask questions during the exercises and offer

suggestions about their experiences was most helpful for GHD Committee

members and Smithsonian staff alike.

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Very special thanks to Vice Chair Daphne Cheatham for arranging tours of a

number of gardens in the Middleburg area and for hosting a dinner at her home.

AAG Projects

Smithsonian Institution Research Information System (SIRIS)

• We hope you have many occasions to access the GCA Collection images on the SIRIS search page at www.siris.si.edu. This web site features over 1.7 million catalog records for library and archival holdings throughout the Smithsonian! Although AAG accounts for less than 2% of that total (32,000+ catalog records), its holdings garnered over 200,000 search hits in SIRIS in 2011!

Our challenge now is to revisit early GCA Collection catalog records on SIRIS that are not linked to images in order to address any relevant copyright and use issues.

Digital Submissions

AAG staff has fully incorporated a customized work flow in order to review, manage and care for digital images coming into the collection. This work flow involves new steps, duties, and results to ensure that the quality of the images meets the specifications set out by AAG’s Digital Submission Policy.

Thank you for following the standards outlined in the Policy. Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have questions about eligible camera models, etc.

AAG Virtual Volunteer Initiative

AAG launched a Virtual Volunteer initiative that asks for the public’s help in tagging AAG images on SIRIS. Tagging involves adding keywords to an image which is critical when it comes time to find it again. While AAG staff assign standardized ‘authority terms’ to each image, other more common or colloquial terms that the typical user might use to search for images might be lacking which would make searching more difficult for them. Think of the many ways that we refer to a single garden feature: path, pathway, walkway, walk, etc. Public tagging helps tease out these variants that make searching easier. Visit http://gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/AAG/crosssearchtagging.htm for more details on how to become an AAG Virtual Volunteer.

Digitizing Glass Lantern Slides

• AAG received a Smithsonian grant to re-scan over 3,100 glass lantern slides from the GCA and other collections. While the images had already been scanned several years ago and are currently available on SIRIS, the quality of the scans is poor and suited only for general reference. The new scans furnish superlative images that will supplant what’s on SIRIS and they will be maintained on the Smithsonian’s Digital Asset Management System.

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A comprehensive inventory of the glass lantern slides is being conducted as they are re-digitized and rehoused in archival sleeves and boxes. The GCA Collection includes over 3,000 of these fragile hand-tinted slides.

AAG Mystery Gardens

While the original GCA donation to the Smithsonian in 1992 was a goldmine of garden documentation, it also included hundreds of gardens that were either unidentified or lacked the necessary Owner and/or Photographer Releases that would enable them to be made available for research use. Without basic information or permissions, the informational value of this documentation, dubbed “Mystery Gardens,” is severely limited.

Since the launch of an AAG Mystery Gardens webpage at www.gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/AAG/mystery/mysterygardens.htm in September 2008, GCA and non-GCA participants have solved well over 100 of these mysteries!

Please be sure to visit the page on the GCA website that links directly to the AAG Mystery Gardens page. Please let us know if you have clubs in your zone that may be interested in following up on identified gardens that lack Owner Releases in their area.

Interns, Fellow and Volunteers

AAG/GCA Garden History and Design Interns AAG was most fortunate to have two interns funded by the GCA’s Garden

History and Design Internship in 2011! The GCA scholarship supplements a stipend that is awarded by Smithsonian Gardens; both help to attract strong candidates.

Kayla Burns (University of South Carolina, Master’s in Library and Information Science) and Savannah Gignac (University of Texas at Austin, Master’s in Information Studies), each joined AAG in May for a ten-week internship.

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Both Kayla and Savannah worked to make portions of the GCA Collection readily accessible for research use. Among the projects they worked on, they cataloged scores of images from the GCA Collection for SIRIS and wrote a number of blogs based on the AAG collections. They accomplished an incredible amount of work during their tenure with us!

Special thanks go to the GCA Scholarship Committee and GHD Reps who made a careful review of the applicants and for all of their support.

AAG/GHD Interns Kayla Burns (top) and Savannah Gignac.

HCME Interns The Horticulture Collections Management and Education branch (which AAG

falls under) hosted 10 additional interns during 2011. They worked on a variety of projects that aided AAG—either directly or indirectly--including collections processing, research for a garden history timeline, educational programming, website update, and graphics design.

Field Study Intern Jennifer Strain, a graduate student in the Library Science Program at the

University of Maryland, completed a 120-hour practicum in the Archives for class credit. She generated a finding aid for the Eleanor Weller Collection and rehoused portions of the collection.

Enid A. Haupt Fellowship in Horticulture SG’s 2011 Haupt Fellow, Nick Serrano (Ball State University, Master’s in

Landscape Architecture), finished a 12-month fellowship in December. His research delved into a study of the aesthetics of plantings in the constructed

landscape. Information about the Haupt Fellowship can be found at

www.gardens.si.edu/horticulture/res_ed/intern/fellow.htm .

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AAG Volunteers AAG’s premier volunteer, Nancy Sahli, celebrated her 12th anniversary with us

in May. Over the years, she has cataloged thousands of images from the GCA Collection into SIRIS.

Marca Woodhams, AAG’s volunteer of six years, is the former librarian of the Smithsonian’s Horticulture Library and instituted the earliest collections management policies for the AAG which have successfully guided its operations for more than twenty years. In 2011, Marca organized and inventoried SG’s Image Library and processed a portion of the Favretti Collection.

Judith Lesser is the owner of an antique business. She assists with cataloging new garden submissions.

Lynn Benich is a home gardener on Capitol Hill and a former librarian who also assists with cataloging new garden submissions.

AAG Contractor Anna Barker, a former AAG intern, has been contracted on a part-time basis

to assist with AAG’s Digital Asset Management System (DAMS), digitizing, cataloging and other archival tasks.

Anna is spending part of her time digitizing the historic glass lantern slides in the GCA Collection. You may have met her during the Fall Meeting when she gave a brief demonstration of the scanning process.

Research Inquiries

AAG staff received a total of 258 requests for information in 2011; 105 (or 40%) of the queries involved holdings in the GCA Collection. A number of requests involved landscape historians researching different historic landscapes for restoration purposes and numerous scholars and writers researching gardens for books, articles, exhibitions and lectures.

In addition, AAG staff handled a number of inquiries from GCA members and GHD Reps, some of whom were writing articles for the GCA Bulletin or their club newsletters, putting together presentations or reports for their clubs or GCA Headquarters, or asking about the holdings for specific gardens in the GCA Collection.

HCME staff also assisted several Smithsonian units needing SG images for outreach purposes.

Now that all AAG catalog entries in SIRIS have a link to AAG’s research query address (aag@si.edu) we are seeing more and more researchers contacting AAG through this route.

Use of GCA Collection Images

We will be sure to alert you to any publications (that we are aware of) that refer to or use images from the GCA Collection. Thank you for letting us know of any you come across as well—it is a huge help as we don’t always know (despite our best efforts) where GCA Collection images will appear.

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Please remind your clubs to let us know if they wish to use any GCA Collection images in presentations, displays, newsletters, etc. This enables us to track how the collection is being used and by whom which helps to justify our operation to Smithsonian management.

In 2011, GCA Collection gardens were cited or images reprinted in a number of publications, etc. including the following:

o Chestnut Hill (PA) Historical Society used images for an exhibit on landscape architect Frederick Peck

o National Park Service’s Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation used historic glass lantern slide images in a cultural landscape report

o Palm Beach Daily News used glass lantern slide images to illustrate an article on a garden lecture given by GCA member/former Zone V GHD Rep Jenny Rose Carey

Online Articles: article by honorary GCA member, Tovah Martin, in the Litchfield Country Times

(May 25) detailing the work of the Litchfield GC‟s Garden History and Design

Committee

article on Brigham Hill Farm in Grafton, MA (MA352) in The Boston Globe’s

May 1 online edition, Boston.com

article in The Southwest Community Connection mentions that Duckridge Farm in

Portland, Oregon (OR041), the site of a fundraiser, is included in AAG

mention in Lake Forester, a Chicago Sun-Times publication, on June 8 of the

Garden History and Design exhibit at the GCA‟s “Show of Summer” flower show

June 10 article in ClarionLedger.com on the documentation of Swan Lake

(MS042) by its owner for the GCA Collection

mention in Barrington Patch (IL) on June 13 of a garden submitted to the GCA

Collection that was available for touring during the Barrington Country Garden

and Antique Faire

Chattanoogan.com reported on Oct. 12 that the GC of Lookout Mountain

presented the town with a framed thank you certificate from the Smithsonian for

Jane‟s Garden in Lookout Mountain, TN (TN077). (Former Zone VIII GHD Rep

Susan Bradley helped document this garden.)

GH&D Committee Outreach Materials

Each GHD Zone Rep has received CD’s with PowerPoint presentations on, among other things, an overview of garden history and design customized for each Zone, the history of the GCA Collection, how to document a garden for the AAG, and both of the Smithsonian American Garden Legacy exhibitions to date that utilized dozens of images from the GCA Collection.

We hope your GHD volunteers will have an opportunity to present one or more of these programs to their clubs in the future in order to highlight the critical importance of the GCA Collection and the many ways in which it is used by researchers.

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Outreach and Public Relations

The following blogs were posted by AAG to the Smithsonian Collections Blog. We hope the titles intrigue you enough to visit http://si-siris.blogspot.com/search/label/Gardens to see all the AAG blogs posted to date!

o Starting from Seed, Mail Order Garden Catalogs (Jan.) o America’s First Gardening Presidents (Feb.) o Seed Stories (March) o New Canaan Modern (Apr.) o Flowers from a World of Science Fiction and into the Space Age (May) o Gardens of Industry and Post-Industry (June) o I Call it Pop, You Call it Soda (July) o Middlegate Japanese Gardens: A Garden Gone, but not Forgotten

(Aug.) o Grupo Motivos: Creating Latino Heritage in Philadelphia’s Landscape

and in the Archives of American Gardens (Sept.) o Garden Time Travel (Oct.) o Landscape Architecture Roots in Garden Design (Oct.) o The Art and Craft of Green Gables: A California Estate (Nov.) o A Topiary Zoo (Dec.)

The following AAG GHD Minutes were distributed to the GHD Committee: o What gardens should I document? (Jan.) o What public spaces should I AVOID documenting? (Jan.) o My Garden is in the Archives of American Gardens… What exactly

does that mean? (Feb.) o Why re-document a garden? (March) o Plants are Important, But . . . (April) o I can use any digital camera to document gardens for the Archives of

American Gardens, right? WRONG! (May) o The Many-Layered Garden (June) o A Brief History of Topiary (July) o Exedra (Aug.) o The Good, the Bad, and the Gardening Tools: Getting the Entire Picture

(Sept.) o Pleaching (Oct.) o Don’t Touch That Dial! Keeping AAG Authentic (Nov.)

SG staff presented a litany of educational programming and outreach activities throughout the year in a variety of venues including SG’s annual Garden Fest, numerous garden tours, lectures, presentations and how-to workshops.

Smithsonian Gardens is on YouTube! Check out the garden-related postings that have been uploaded to date at http://www.youtube.com/user/SmithsonianVideos

The Smithsonian Gardens Newsletter comes out every quarter with articles on what the many units of Smithsonian Gardens are up to. To sign-up for this e-newsletter, email gardens@si.edu .

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GCA Clubs

Cindy gave an overview of the history of the GCA Collection and documenting gardens for the AAG to the Winchester-Clarke GC (VA) in February.

Cindy gave a presentation and mini-photography workshop to the Short Hills GC (NJ) in November. The meeting was attended by other Zone IV members as well.

The Perennial GC (DC) toured the Smithsonian’s Butterfly Habitat Garden in September. On hand was Dr. Christian Samper, the director of the

Smithsonian‟s National Museum of Natural History, who expressed his gratitude

for the GCA scholarships program. He was a recipient of a GCA scholarship

when he was a graduate student getting his start in the field of biology. Cindy

conveyed SG‟s gratitude for the GCA‟s financial support of the Butterfly Garden

as well as its ongoing support of AAG.

Lisa Ott, a Vice-Chairman of the GCA’s Scholarship Committee who handles the GHD Internship, visited in February to see AAG in action and get a better sense of the work that the GHD Interns accomplish while they are here.

Two members of the Summit GC (NJ) came for a tour of the archives in March.

Smithsonian Gardens’ Fifth Annual Garden Fest

AAG staff developed an exhibit for the day-long Garden Fest celebration in May at the Smithsonian that highlighted several garden features found in American gardens today which originated from outside the U.S. The exhibit, which featured several images from the GCA Collection, illustrated how American gardens have been inspired by and adapted so many outside design influences.

This Garden Fest display that Kelly worked on featured a garden vignette leading to a glass lantern slide image enlarged to life size.

Smithsonian Archives Fair

To celebrate American Archives Month this past October, AAG participated in a day-long Smithsonian Archives Fair with over a dozen other Smithsonian archival units.

AAG Budget

AAG’s baseline funding comes out of SG’s Horticulture Collections Management and Education branch’s annual budget.

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The following is a rough breakdown of spending by AAG of its baseline funding in 2011*:

Intern stipends $10,080. Attending/hosting GHD Committee meetings $ 9,375. Part-time archival contractor $ 5,600. Supplies, services, and training (approx.) $ 3,000. *This breakdown does not include staff salaries and benefits

The following is a breakdown of additional outside funding that AAG secured in 2011.

Smithsonian Collections Care and Preservation Fund grant to re-digitize, inventory and rehouse 3,100+ glass lantern slides

$26,600.

Donations and honorariums (approx.) $ 8,000. Funding from the GCA Scholarship Committee to host two GHD Interns

$ 6,200.

Funding from the Katzenberger Foundation to host an intern

$ 5,000.

Funding from the University of Michigan‟s Museum

Studies Program to host an intern $ 5,000.

What’s Coming Up in 2012

2012 marks the 25th

anniversary of the GCA‟s deposit of its Slide Library of

Notable American Parks and Gardens with the Archives of American Gardens!

While the Garden Club of America Collection was formally donated to the

Smithsonian five years later, we still celebrate 1987 as the „birthday‟ of this

wonderful collection.

AAG‟s finding aids—used to document what each AAG collection includes and

make research access easier--will benefit from a Smithsonian Collection

Information System grant. The finding aids will be uniformly updated to ensure

that they meet Encoded Archival Description standards.

The new Enid A. Haupt Fellow in Horticulture, Amy McFarland (Texas A&M University, Ph.D., Horticulture; Texas State University, Master’s, Agriculture), begins an 8-month fellowship with SG in January. Her research topic is Public Gardens in Urban Spaces: Inspiring a Sense of Place for Urban Populations.

Among the many educational initiatives that Cindy is planning in 2012 are: o collaborating with the National Museum of Natural History in the YES!

program (Youth Engagement through Science) which matches local high

school students with SG horticulturists o collaborating with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (located in

Panama) in the search for an intern who will help SG create bilingual

outreach programs for the 2013 Orchid Exhibit o discussing SG‟s work with the Let’s Move! program at the American

Association of Museums‟ national conference; collaborating with public

gardens in Washington, DC area to expand the program

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o working with the Virginia State Arboretum and Casey Trees to develop

web-based educational programs highlighting the Smithsonian Tree

Collection o working with Smithsonian Affiliates to present an AAG program at the

Long Island Museum o conducting a Smithsonian Associates tour during Historic Garden Week in

Virginia that also introduces attendees to AAG

List of Gardens added to the Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens In 2011

AAG Garden

# Garden Name City

GCA Club

CA358 Kully Garden San Marino Pasadena GC

CA467 von Hasseln Garden Pebble Beach Carmel by the Sea GC

CA468 Bennett Garden Los Angeles Hancock Park GC

CT032 Patterson Garden, The Litchfield Litchfield GC

CT147 Phelps Triangle New Haven GC of New Haven

CT195 Cobble Pond Farm Sharon Millbrook GC

CT359 Chestnut Hill Litchfield Litchfield GC

CT381 Levinson, The Gardens of John & Ellen Southport Sasqua GC

FL173 Fairy Garden on Lemon Hill Gulf Stream Grass River GC

GA187 Bradley Garden, Steven & Susan Lookout Mountain GC of Lookout Mountain

GA191 Frierson Garden Athens Junior Ladies GC

HI035 Carol's Garden Honolulu GC of Honolulu

HI036 Spalding Garden Honolulu GC of Honolulu

HI037 Pualani Kula, Maui GC of Honolulu

IL024 Turkeyfoot Garden Winnetka Winnetka GC

ME044 Kenarden Lodge Bar Harbor GC of Mt. Desert

ME133 Wasgat Cove Northeast Harbor GC of Mt. Desert

MD247 Glennhurst Relay Catonsville GC

MA012 Kingsview Cohasset Cohasset GC

MA360 Old Fields Richmond Lenox GC

MA368 Armknecht Garden Westport Little Compton GC

MA369 Neville Garden Milton Milton GC

MA384 Cedar Ledges Cohasset Cohasset GC

MA385 The Job Turner House Cohasset Cohasset GC

MA386 Innisfree Nantucket Nantucket GC

MS042 Swan Lake Jackson GC of Jackson

NH074 Berg Gardens Walpole Manadnock GC

NJ152 Pam’s Garden Englewood GC of Englewood

NJ524 Lagos Garden Chatham GC of Madison

NJ527 Bent-McDowell Garden Chatham GC of Madison

NJ528 Sweeney Gardens Madison GC of Madison

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List of Gardens added to the Garden Club of America Collection at the Archives of American Gardens In 2011

NJ529 Cedar Ridge Farm Bedminster GC of Somerset Hills

NY447 Groton Place Old Westbury North Country GC of L.I.

NY471 Highlands, The Menands Fort Orange GC

OH239 Shulman Garden, Eleanore Dayton GC of Dayton

OR049 Teasdale Garden Portland Portland GC

OR050 Josselyn Garden Portland Portland GC

PA665 Andorra Garden of M/M George Q. Nichols, The

Lafayette Hill GC of Philadelphia

PA669 The Spahr House Garden Sewickley GC of Allegheny County

PA686 Wilpen Hall Sewickley GC of Allegheny County

SC061 Mulberry Plantation Moncks Corner Little GC of Rye

SC082 Medway Plantation Goose Creek Little GC of Rye

SC104 South Mulberry Plantation Moncks Corner Little GC of Rye

TN076 Robinson Jr. Garden, The M/M Walter M. Nashville Nashville GC

TN077 Jane's Garden Lookout Mountain GC of Lookout Mountain

TX074 Sewell Garden Dallas Founders GC of Dallas

TX077 L. F. Corrigan Garden Dallas Founders GC of Dallas

TX087 McCullough Garden Dallas Founders GC of Dallas

TX096 Shuttee Garden Dallas Founders GC of Dallas

TX097 Sealy Garden Dallas Founders GC of Dallas

TX098 Diamond GJ Ranch Blanco Alamo Heights – Terrell Hills GC

VA409 Carriage House Garden in Old Town Alexandria GC of Alexandria

VA410 Orlean House Marshall Warrenton GC