At its recent member seed exchange, Twin Valleys Garden Club learned how American plants and trees forever changed the English landscape gardens of the 1700s.
John Bartram joined the group and their guests to relate the originals of the popular Bartram’s Gardens. The stunning colors and year-round varieties of native plants of the colonies became highly prized in Britain and throughout Europe.
Bartram, America’s first botanist, described his early quest for the seeds, pods, cones and plants he gathered throughout the eastern United States. Many of these specimens made their way across the Atlantic in Bartram’s wooden boxes on east-bound sailing ships to British gardeners and collectors Bartram identified through his friend Benjamin Franklin. In 1765, King George III named Bartram the “King’s Botanist for North America,” a post Bartram held for life.
More than 90 participants attended this special open-to-the-public program, co-sponsored by Twin Valleys Garden Club and the Henrietta Hankin Library of Chester County. Club members, gardening enthusiasts and history buffs were enthralled and informed by John Bartram as portrayed by popular History interpreter and Horticultural lecturer Kirk R. Brown.
Twin Valleys Garden Club meets monthly for educational programs on gardening. Upcoming topics include Landscaping and Storm Water Management, and Preserving Homegrown Foods. A future workshop will teach attendees how to Make a Succulent Wreath. Members regularly create artistic floral arrangements and submit Horticultural specimens for informal judging.
Members, who hail from the Pickering and Great Valleys and surrounding areas, gladly share their best gardening tips as well as their seeds and plants. For more information on Twin Valleys Garden Club and its future events and programs, interested readers may email twinvalleys@aol.com.
