A Western World Perspective on the History of Garden Making

A Western World Perspective on the History of Garden Making

Items from the collection of Pat Henry

Main Floor
April - August 2006

Patricia "Pat" Henry '71 is the Senior Associate Director of Athletics for Harvard University and serves on the Gettysburg College Board of Trustees.

(Above) "Blyborough: Hollyhocks" by George S. Elgood. From Some English Gardens by George S. Elgood and Gertrude Jekyll, Longmans, Green & Company, 1910.

But, Pat also has another calling, landscape design. "I went back to school during the 1990s and earned a graduate certificate in landscape design." While a student in the Radcliffe program, she studied landscape design history and discovered a passion for antiquarian gardening books. "I'd always collected contemporary gardening books because I've always loved gardening," she explains. "But, when I approached it from the academic side, I got infatuated by what was out there, so I began collecting in early 1990s."

(Left) "Blyborough: Hollyhocks" by George S. Elgood.. From The Lure of the Garden by Hildegarde Hawthorne, The Century Company, 1911.

Pat's collection has been carefully cultivated from her journeys from coast to coast. Some came from a fund raising sale by the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, while others, like her collection of Reef Point Bulletins by Beatrix Farrand, were a treasure unearthed in the corner of a small antique store in Laguna Beach, California.

(Right) "Boboli Garden, Florence," by Maxfield Parrish. From Italian Villas and Their Gardens by Edith Wharton and illustrated by Maxfield Parrish, The Century Company, 1910.

"[When traveling], if there is a book store or antique store I poke around and see what's indigenous to the area," she says. Pat adds that now the internet has also given her access to antiquarian book dealers across the United States. Over the years, she has compiled an interesting, eclectic collection that she wanted to share in this exhibit.

(Left) "Gossip is Not Necessarily Unkind," by Anna Whelan Betts. From The Lure of the Garden by Hildegarde Hawthorne, The Century Company, 1911.

"Water Lilies," by Margaret Waterfield. From Garden Colour by Mrs. C. W. Earle, Eleanor Vere Boyle, Rose Kingsley, and Hon. Vicary Gibbs, London: J. M. Dent, 1905.