America’s Romance with the English Garden — 2013 ·

By Thomas J. Mickey

“Nursery catalogues sell more than seeds and plants; they also sell dreams and aspirations…. Mickey has thoughtfully woven together an American landscape design history with a critical examination of how commercial interests and mass media shape our preferences, even in our humble backyards.”

Publishers Weekly

“With colorful reproductions of original catalog artwork, this engaging book conveys a wonderful insight into how … nursery companies had a profound and lasting influence on American garden design. There may be other books explaining America’s enchantment with the English garden style, but none, I’m sure, match the scope or contents of this one.”

Betty Earl — author of Fairy Gardens and In Search of Great Plants

"Thoroughly researched and lushly illustrated, this book is more historical documentation than gardening guide, as it provides insight into the lasting impact of gardening advertising on American culture…. Though certainly a niche book for American history buffs and professional gardeners, America’s Romance with the English Garden will also appeal to readers interested in architecture, landscaping, design, botany, and English and American culture.”

ForeWord Reviews

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The 1890s saw a revolution in advertising. Cheap paper, faster printing, rural mail delivery, railroad shipping, and chromolithography combined to pave the way for the first modern, mass-produced catalogs. The most prominent of these, reaching American households by the thousands, were seed and nursery catalogs with beautiful pictures of middle-class homes surrounded by sprawling lawns, exotic plants, and the latest garden accessories—in other words, the quintessential English-style garden.

America’s Romance with the English Garden is the story of tastemakers and homemakers, of savvy businessmen and a growing American middle class eager to buy their products. It’s also the story of the beginnings of the modern garden industry, which seduced the masses with its images and fixed the English garden in the mind of the American consumer. Seed and nursery catalogs delivered aspirational images to front doorsteps from California to Maine, and the English garden became the look of America.

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Thomas J. Mickey is Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. He is a graduate of Boston University, the University of Iowa, and the Landscape Institute at the Boston Architectural College, and has been a garden columnist for the Brockton Enterprise, Quincy Patriot Ledger, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire’s Seacoast Media. His other books include Best Garden Plants for New England (with Alison Beck, 2006), Deconstructing Public Relations (2003), and Sociodrama: An Interpretive Theory for the Practice of Public Relations (1995).