One of my favorite things about being a landscape designer is that I am always learning something new…new plants to use in my designs, new gardening techniques, new tools or even the history about certain garden styles. When I was taking courses to be a professional landscape designer I learned about the history of landscape and garden design from the gardens of Islam to the English gardens of Gertrude Jekyll. And now that I am designing gardens for clients, I still do research on different styles of gardens so my designs are inspired by actual period gardens when appropriate.
Victorians Loved Flowers
I am currently working on a design for a recently restored Victorian home located in Westchester County, NY. The home has been restored using old photos of the house in it’s heyday so I would like the gardens to be similar to the original ones too. While the garden will not be a strict Victorian garden, I am taking my inspiration from classic Victorian gardens.
To that end, I have been reading alot about Victorian gardens in books such as The Victorian Garden by Tom Carter and The Victorian Garden by Allison Kyle Leopold, and have found out several interesting facts:
- Vines were an integral part of a Victorian garden, they were considered ‘draperies’ for the house.
- The Victorian garden was used to dress up the house, not to hide it. To that end, evergreen plants were not often used in foundation plantings. Victorians favored flowering deciduous shrubs and perennials near the foundation.
- Victorians loved their lawns and every Victorian home had an expansive lawn for family games.
- Victorians favored showy, bright exotic flowers and they assigned meaning to many of them. The meaning was based on the plant’s qualities such as fragrance, color and growth habit.
Here’s a brief list of some of my favorite flowers and their Victorian meaning (for a full list, check out From a Victorian Garden by Michael Weishan and Cristine Roig):
- Bluebell – kindness
- Crocus – youth
- Dahlia – elegance and dignity
- Hollyhock – ambition
- Lavender – distrust
- Lily of the Valley -modesty
- Marigold – grief
- Peony – anger
- Scarlet Geranium – stupidity
- Tulip – declaration of love
- Violet – modest worth
Isn’t it interesting how some of our best loved flowers had a negative connotation in the Victorian garden? If you have a favorite ’meaning’ for a flower growing in your garden, I’d love to hear about it.
Ok, I get the connections for bluebell, crocus, dahlia, hollyhock, tulip, and violet, but I don’t at all get lavender as distrust … any idea why Victorians likened this showy, useful, and breathtaking herb with distrust?
The link between marigold and grief may help explain why I dislike marigolds – had enough grief.
I laughed out loud when I read that scarlet geranium signifies stupidity. Not that I think those who consistently fall back on potted scarlet geraniums are stupid, I know many actually like the plant. But they are so overused … as are marigolds … that I tend to avoid both like the plague. Not the most open-minded way to be, but unless a client specifically requests marigolds or scarlet geraniums, I nix thier use. But, hey … that’s just me.