My 96-Year-old Dad has a Green Thumb in West VirginiaMy father and I are enjoying the season and have put in a raised bed garden in his yard. This is the first year, but he is enjoying all phases . . . soil prep, planting, cultivation, and…
In 1939 my grandparents, Earl and Cordelia (Delie) Warnock, married and purchased a small post-war cape cod in the D.C. suburb of Bethesda, Maryland. The home was typical of the era – a modest 2-bedroom brick home with little panache, but much…
In the 1950s and ‘60s, I was one of four children in a small, three bedroom ranch on the edge of town. My mother was the gardener with her daylilies, tulips, mint, Touch-me-not, roses, portulaca, and marigolds. I’m sure there were others. In the mid…
As long as I can remember, my mother, Shirley, has planted the same vegetable garden plot and separate flower beds in the backyard of the house she and my father, Bill, have lived in since 1969 in Mason City, Iowa. Planting, growing, and harvesting…
Collecting Milkweed Pods During World War IIWe lived in a small, prosperous town in the middle of Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, a very fertile valley, good for growing fruits and vegetables, still an area of small farms and truck gardens, with a…
Last year I said goodbye to my gardening hero. Back in the day, sometime in the early 70s, my Dad became a foot soldier in the Crockett's Victory Garden brigade, eager to try this whole new “organic gardening” thing, upend the typical grass-dominated…
The Bradley and Leila Barnes Grounds & Victorian Gardens are part of the historic Barnes Museum Homestead. Located in the heart of downtown Southington, Connecticut, the property was purchased in 1836 by Bradley Barnes’ grandparents, Amon and…
Shamans say plants have spirit medicine. They have for me, helping me find solace, solidity, and silence when it felt like everybody else was screaming. Perhaps during my teen years, before my father threatened to put me in Military School, I…
Few public gardens have had such an enduring influence on American camellia history as the world-famous Bellingrath Gardens near Mobile, Alabama. Ever since its 1930’s opening during the rise of America’s fascination with camellias, it has topped…
Nuccio’s Nurseries roots are firmly established in their Italian American family. The nursery began when Joe and Julius Nuccio began to grow camellias and azaleas in their parent’s backyard in Alhambra, California in the 1930s. The two brothers began…
Gardening, and living out-of-doors, come naturally to me thanks to my family. I myself moved so often as an adult that only now, after twenty years in Tennessee, have I been rooted long enough to see a flourishing garden emerge. It is named after a…
The Garden Path ~ Green, Growing, and Blooming Project emerged as a tangible remembered connection and, consequently, a pathway to engagement following my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, thereby, enlarging her narrowing view of her world. She had…
I am Dolores Isom Olds. I was born in 1929 and grew up in Hurricane, Utah. My parents were Eugenia Walker McAllister and Thomas Irving Isom. My Dad was a farmer and mainly grew fruit trees. He and his three brothers each had an orchard. Uncle Leslie…
My mother was born in rural West Virginia in 1917 and was a young girl when the Great Depression hit. In order to feed their family of eight children, her family grew an abundance of fruits and vegetables. My mother married at the beginning of World…
I come from many gardens. My parents used to have a long strip of red clay in the Hickory Flats, and I remember picking peas from it in the summer, covered in sweat and bees. In fall, we would shuck an acre of corn and the cows would wait on the…
Come autumn, my mother starts acting like her seventy-something year-old self – that is, grouchy, itchy, and nostalgic. The season has always been an anomaly to her tropical body and soul. What was up with the brightly colored leaves? Taunting her…
Jeanne Beatrice Braud was born in Thibodaux, which was a small French speaking settlement in southern Louisiana, in 1887. There are records showing the family in Thibodaux, Lafourche parish by 1840. Growing up in Thibodaux at that time the family…
Although my Granddaddy passed away about a year ago, I wanted to share the story of his commitment to farming the way he was raised. Granddaddy grew up on this very farm around the turn of the twentieth century growing row crops as is so common on…
I was a very little girl during the early 1940s and our country was at war. There were air raid drills and black-out curtains and black outs. People bought War Bonds to show their patriotism. I remember rationing of gasoline and sugar and other…
Gardening was an important part of my grandparents’ life on their farmstead in western Iowa where my father grew up and also where I grew up. Originally the area around the house was bare of plants but with time Grandpa Henry and Grandma Olga planted…
My father Nicola, emigrated to the United States in December 1965. He came to live with his brothers and sisters who had already established themselves in Flushing, New York. In September of 1967 he traveled back to his hometown of Mola di Bari,…
My garden is very simple, and it is an heirloom garden because it contains iris bulbs from three generations of my maternal family—my great-grandmother, grandmother and my mother. Some are bearded iris and some are what you might call "ditch iris" as…
The story of the Alost family nurseries begins not in New Orleans, where the family’s greenhouses existed for years, but across the ocean in Europe. Antoine Alost was born in Brussels, Belgium, where he was in charge of the palace gardens of King…
The catalpa tree in the front yard of our family farm is still living today. As far as we know our parents planted the tree.
There are six of us. Pa and Ma referred to us children as “first and second crop hay” as they had two girls and a boy (like…
In the 1860s, an 83-acre property on what was then Smith Road, now South 51st Street, in Franklin, Wisconsin was bought by our great grandfather, Johann (John) Barg and his wife Maria (nee Tietgen). The Barg homestead's main barn was erected in…
Brooklyn, New York, 1948. My immigrant father, Francesco Pietanza, a merchant steward and cook from Mola di Bari, Italy arrived at Ellis Island on the S.S. Coronado in search of his younger brother. Despite the racketeering longshore waterfront and…
In the 1960s I learned everything I needed to know about gardening and cooking from one of the original organic gardeners and foodies: my grandmother. After World War II she noticed that it was hard to get good produce anymore; the peddlers who used…
Gardens are the one universal and infinite language of man and nature. The pure joy that walking through a garden brings is hard to put into words. Each garden has its own music and palette. As a child in the garden of my grandparents, both native…
My parents were married in my grandparents’ backyard in Darnestown, Maryland on June 2, 1973. I grew up looking at the photos in their wedding album and obsessing over the 70’s fashion on view in their Super 8 wedding film. It was a true hippie,…
I live in South Bend Indiana, and most likely always will. Here is the story of a garden in my community. Here in South Bend we have a wonderful Japanese-style garden that has a good backstory. The Japanese garden was built near a park, near a public…
I grew up gardening with my mother. She is an avid gardener with an encyclopedic knowledge of plants. One of my favorite childhood games to play with her was to point at plants and ask "what's that?" More often than not, she would recite the common…
On May 16, 2014 I interviewed Simon. He has a garden and is growing tomatoes. “Gardening is a very great way to relieve stress and enjoy my own time,” Simon said as he watered his garden. He told me about his childhood and how his father was the one…
Ramon G. is from Toluca, Mexico. Ramon has been gardening ever since he could remember because that’s what he was taught to do since he was young, to work in the fields. Maria: When did your interest in gardening start? Ramon: As a kid I didn’t like…
I grew up listening to stories of my grandmother's prize-winning roses. She loved to garden and I have photos of her in various gardens she visited around the world. The two photos I have submitted are her house garden in Fort Payne, Alabama. One is…
I've been thinking about my mother, as Mother's Day has just passed. And I've been thinking about the Smithsonian Gardens' new project Community of Gardens. And now the two are intersecting, as things often do in unexpected ways. My mother loved…
Hard to believe that my mother has been gone thirty-four years now, she was born in 1911 and seemed as though she could grow anything. She would be 103 years old this October. I was born her youngest child when she was forty-five years of age. She…
When I was a young girl, Mom had two gardens (circa 1955-1966) in a rural area near Wilmington, Illinois, one at home behind the house, and one on my grandparents' farm 1.5 miles away. I cannot believe not a single photo exists. We spent nearly the…
I am a gardener and veteran garden guide at Monticello. I was inspired by my grandfather Harry, who was a first generation Italian American. My grandfather always maintained a wonderful garden. I have fond memories as a young boy climbing high up in…
