Recaptured Garden Legacies
From Southern American Gardens of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
From Southern American Gardens of the 19th and Early 20th Centuries
Across the coastal south heirloom tazettas hide away, gems from a bygone era of American gardening. Sold as "polyanthus narcissus" for indoor forcing, these Dutch beauties found homes in the open garden as early as 1813.
Though a simple flower, these tazettas boast a wider array of floret form, plant size, bloom season and fragrance than the familiar historic tazettas on the commercial market today.
The flowers shown here are the prized culmination of twenty-five years of collecting in north Florida, south Georgia and Natchez, Mississippi.
'Maestro'
Though there are upwards of one hundred heirloom tazetta varieties in the collection, most are represented by a meagre handful of bulbs. Some multiply well, others seem loathe to indulge in such extravagant behavior. It's terrifying to consider cutting up a bulb for propagation when you only have one or three bulbs total.
Fortuitously, some of the most interesting varieties also multiply well. Which isn't a surprise in a way, as any bulb selected for large scale commerce must be easily propagated. As stocks multiply, selections will be offered for sale through PHS Daffodils.
Monticello, Florida
Garden sleuthing is archaeology through flowers, with a stiff dollop of genealogy on top. One must ascertain the age of the garden and the layers of plantings by subsequent gardeners, using cultivars as dating tools. Researching property owners and obtaining oral histories whenever possible help to determine who could have been the gardener(s). Their dates of active gardening then reinforces the layers of garden design - who could have planted what where and when. Armed with this information, catalog research can then suggest possible cultivar identification.
The images above are of gardens and garden sites from which some of the tazettas here were collected. The majority of garden sites date from around 1900 to the 1920s; one notable Natchez site dates considerably earlier.
Maison de la Chat Chartreux