Back before the dawn of time and the omnipresence of e-Bay, you used to be able to find dusty little antique shops on side streets in towns and cities all over the country. Those shops were generally filled with equal measures of junk and treasure, though sometimes it seemed that little if any merchandise changed from year to year. Antique garden catalogs and magazines occasionally lurked among those treasures, saved for decades by gardeners, ultimately moving from attics to estate sales and from there to the dusty antique shops. I am always on the prowl for those publications. The number of shops has declined significantly, but occasionally I still get lucky and find a shop that harbors a few old bits of gardenalia. I revel in the glimpses they offer of gardening past.
I was cleaning out a bookcase on a recent day, when I rediscovered three copies of Meehans’ Monthly, a periodical that ran from 1891 through 1902. Its publisher described the magazine as “devoted to general gardening and wild flowers.”
The publisher was Thomas Meehan & Sons of Germantown, Pennsylvania and the individual billed on the cover as the magazine’s “conductor” was British-born Thomas Meehan, who was a gardener, nursery owner and magazine maven. Meehans’ Monthly was the second publication produced by Meehan. The first, Gardener’s Monthly, ran from 1859 through 1888. Each publication, in turn, had the highest circulation numbers of any horticultural publication of its time.
The son of a gardener, Meehan began his career at age 20, as a garden worker at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. Immigrating to America two years later, he settled in Philadelphia and went to work for the then-owner of the fabled Bartram’s Garden. The property was home to a historic nursery, as well as America’s first botanical garden and Meehan was instrumental in saving it from developers. The young horticulturist also went into the nursery business, first with a partner and then on his own. By the time Thomas Meehan began publishing Meehans’ Monthly, three of his sons had followed him into the family business, hence the placement of the apostrophe in the name “Meehans’ Monthly”.
Meehan’s interest in wild flowers led him to author a four-volume text on the subject, The Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States, published in 1878.
In this era of renewed interest in native plants and environments, Meehan’s focus on “wild flowers” is especially relevant. In each of my three copies of Meehan’s Monthly—August 1893, December 1893 and April 1894—the lead feature article is on a native plant. The April issue spotlights Utah yellow rice root or Fritillaria pudica, accompanied by the publication’s trademark color lithograph of the subject.
I think the artistically beautiful and botanically accurate lithographs were what first drew me to Meehan’s Monthly. Frankly, I am surprised that enterprising print sellers have not culled them from the volumes long since. Perhaps that is the benefit of residing for decades in attics and dusty antique shops.
The writing throughout the magazines is accessible, but aimed at a knowledgeable and somewhat sophisticated audience. Meehan serves up frequent bits of history, letting us know in the fritillaria article, for example, that a specimen of Fritillaria pudica was initially collected by Meriwether Lewis during the Lewis and Clark expedition. He writes of species’ characteristics and related plants. As in other parts of the magazine, the text is sprinkled with quotes for literature and poetry.
The second section of each Monthly edition was devoted to shorter essays and commentary on “Wild Flowers and Nature.” These were sometimes submitted by readers, like the interestingly-named Mr. Uselma C. Smith of Philadelphia, who submitted his nostalgic thoughts on a “well known” buttonwood tree, growing in Ashtabula County, Ohio.
The magazine’s “General Gardening” section was also composed of shorter pieces, this time on garden plants and gardening techniques. “History of the Calla Lily,” for example, notes that callas have “become a great favorite with cultivators all over the world.” Over a century later, callas are experiencing a renaissance, proving that if you wait long enough, everything comes back into style.
The short, second-to-last section of Meehan’s Monthly is a sometimes-gossipy grab bag labeled “Biography and Literature.” It abounds in tidbits about prominent gardeners, gardens and garden publications. It also provides Meehan with a forum for airing his favorite peeves, including one against common plant names. “Anyone who pleases can give any name he likes,” huffs Meehan, “no matter how many names the plant may have had before, and it is this that brings about the confusion.”
On a torrid, sticky summer day when it is simply too hot to even pull a weed, seek out refreshment in the pages of a historic publication like Meehans’ Monthly. If you are not lucky enough to locate a random copy of Meehans’ in one of the diminishing number of dusty antique shops, try BookFinder.com. You can buy both inexpensive reprints and original copies and volumes.