The Piedmont Master Gardeners Association
460 Stagecoach Road, Charlottesville, VA 22902-6441 434/872-4580 Fax: 434/872-4578
Garden History: Selected Resources PMG Reference Desk
Archives of American Gardens (Smithsonian): The Archives of American Gardens (AAG) offers landscape designers, historians, researchers, and garden enthusiasts access to a collection of approximately 80,000 photographic images and records documenting historic and contemporary American gardens. Includes the archive of the Garden Club of America, Burpee & Company, and other collections of historic photography, stereographs, postcards, slides and lantern slides.
Botanicus (Missouri Botanical Garden): More than a half million pages from rare 17th, 18th and 19th century horticultural texts online in digitized, searchable form. Beautiful line drawings and hand-colored illustrations. More than a decade in the making.
Colonial Williamsburg: History of the Gardens. Brief overview of 17th and 18th century gardening in the colonial capital. The historic district includes nearly 100 gardens, large and small.
Garden Club of Virginia: The Club has restored more than forty historic gardens across the state since 1929. A few are in the Charlottesville area--including the Pavilion Gardens at UVA. For a complete listing, visit the Club's website or click here.
Library of American Landscape History: Founded in 1992 and headquartered in Amherst (MA). Travelling exhibitions, plus books written by historians and designed to appeal to general readers and specialists alike.
Library of Virginia---Charles F. Gillette Photograph Collection: The Library of Virginia (Richmond, VA) is home to a collection of nearly 1000 images of gardens restored or recreated by renowned landscape architect Charles Freeman Gillette (1886-1969). The Library also houses Gillette’s personal papers.
Southern Garden History Society: Founded in 1982 in Winston-Salem (NC). Publishes Magnolia, a quarterly news bulletin. Focus: Southern garden and landscape history, historical horticulture,preservation and restoration of historic gardens and landscapes in the South. Annual conference; other meetings throughout the year and the region. Collects books, documents and photos for the collections of the Cherokee Garden Library in Atlanta (GA). Published 265-page Southern Plants List in collaboration with Williamsburg Foundation. Click here to find the .pdf of the List.
Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants (part of Monticello, near Charlottesville): Founded in 1987. Collects, preserves, and distributes historic plant varieties and strives to promote greater appreciation for the origins and evolution of garden plants. The program centers on Thomas Jefferson's horticultural interests and the plants he grew at Monticello, but covers the broad history of plants cultivated in America by including varieties documented through the nineteenth century, and choice North American plants. Publishes Twinleaf Journal. Lectures, workshops, tours, annual open house (May 26, 2007) and a biennial Historic Plant Symposium (June 10-22, 2007).
University of Virginia: Pavilion Gardens History: The story behind the development and restoration of the historic gardens on the Grounds of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
