Lost Gardens of New England
Sunday, June 29, 2008 to Friday, October 31, 2008
10:00AM - 4:00PM
Heritage celebrates the bygone gardens of New England in the newly renovated History Museum. Through October 31. Free with Museum Admission.
In the newly-renovated space in the History Museum we are pleased to present a traveling exhibition from Historic New England, Lost Gardens of New England, supplemented by a special addition about the lost gardens of Cape Cod. Visitors will be transported into a secret garden featuring historic photographs and paintings of what once were some of New England’s most beautiful gardens. The exhibit also features exquisite examples of antique garden seating and statuary.
The main idea of the exhibit is an examination of the region’s rich history of garden design that illustrate the major themes of American landscape history. New England gardens of the Colonial period and the New Republic were influenced by English design. By the middle of the nineteenth century, however, a distinctive American style emerged. It embraced the native picturesque landscape while seeking, through design, to tame and refine the national character. Shortly before 1900, New Englanders turned to history for inspiration and created a wide variety of revival gardens. The images in the exhibit capture a garden at a single moment in time. In many cases, the images are the only record of a garden’s existence. Today some of the gardens are parking lots, others lay in ruins, some have the potential for renewal. The images preserve the legacy of New Englander’s landscapes and provide inspiration to all who view them.