A Democracy of Beauty for All: Highlights from the J. Horace McFarland Company Collection
Breeze Hill
McFarland's climbing Orleans roses were looking great when this photograph was taken in June of 1926. Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, J. Horace McFarland Company Collection.
McFarland planted elaborate rose gardens at his home, Breeze Hill, in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. By 1902, the City of Harrisburg itself was also forever changed by McFarland's propensity for beauty and order when he began the campaign to clean up and redesign the city as part of the growing City Beautiful Movement in the United States.
McFarland's garden at his home, Breeze Hill, in Harrisburg, PA, 1932. "Any light or no light," McFarland wrote, "I could not expect to sleep without greeting the garden!" Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, J. Horace McFarland Company Collection.
Even in the winter, McFarland found objects in his garden to photograph, such as a snow covered gate in 1921. "Twenty years of walking on city streets," he wrote, "gave me no preparation for the sheer beauty of the walk through a foot of virgin snow." Smithsonian Institution, Archives of American Gardens, J. Horace McFarland Company Collection.
