All in a Garden Green

All in a Garden Green

Green Spring Gardens, 4603 Green Spring Road, Alexandria, Virginia
August 27 - October 27, 2019
Jurors Denise Walser-Kolar and Karen Kluglein

In 1828, English writer Frances Trollope (1779–1863) began a four-year journey around the then United States. Her travels took her up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, across the Allegheny Mountains, and along the east coast from Washington, D.C., to Niagara Falls. In her book, “Domestic Manners of the Americans” (1832), she frequently noted the plants she encountered. From the Spanish moss and palmettos of New Orleans, to the mountain laurels of Pennsylvania, to the redbuds, dogwoods, and azaleas around Washington, D.C., she found this country’s flora a constant delight. Dazzled by the number of plants new to her that she couldn’t name, her advice to her countrymen was “let no one visit America without having first studied botany.”

With the current renewed interest in native flora among ecologically minded gardeners, the Botanical Art Society of the National Capital Region presents an exhibit showcasing the kinds of plants that Frances Trollope might have encountered on her journey around the young United States.