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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I am always on the prowl for those publications.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I revel in the glimpses they offer of gardening past.<\/p>\n
I was cleaning out a bookcase on a recent day, when I rediscovered three copies of Meehans\u2019 Monthly<\/i>, a periodical that ran from 1891 through 1902.\u00a0 Its publisher described the magazine as \u201cdevoted to general gardening and wild flowers.\u201d<\/p>\n
The publisher was Thomas Meehan & Sons of Germantown, Pennsylvania and the individual billed on the cover as the magazine\u2019s \u201cconductor\u201d was British-born Thomas Meehan, who was a gardener, nursery owner and magazine maven.\u00a0 Meehans\u2019 Monthly<\/i> was the second publication produced by Meehan.\u00a0 The first, Gardener\u2019s Monthly<\/i>, ran from 1859 through 1888. Each publication, in turn, had the highest circulation numbers of any horticultural publication of its time.<\/p>\n
The son of a gardener, Meehan began his career at age 20, as a garden worker at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew.\u00a0 Immigrating to America two years later, he settled in Philadelphia and went to work for the then-owner of the fabled Bartram\u2019s Garden.\u00a0 The property was home to a historic nursery, as well as America\u2019s first botanical garden and Meehan was instrumental in saving it from developers.\u00a0 The young horticulturist also went into the nursery business, first with a partner and then on his own.\u00a0 By the time Thomas Meehan began publishing Meehans\u2019 Monthly<\/i>, three of his sons had followed him into the family business, hence the placement of the apostrophe in the name \u201cMeehans\u2019 Monthly\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meehan\u2019s interest in wild flowers led him to author a four-volume text on the subject, The <\/i>Native Flowers and Ferns of the United States, <\/i>published in 1878.<\/p>\n
In this era of renewed interest in native plants and environments, Meehan\u2019s focus on \u201cwild flowers\u201d is especially relevant.\u00a0 In each of my three copies of Meehan\u2019s Monthly<\/i>\u2014August 1893, December 1893 and April 1894\u2014the lead feature article is on a native plant.\u00a0 The April issue spotlights Utah yellow rice root or Fritillaria pudica, accompanied by the publication\u2019s trademark color lithograph of the subject.<\/p>\n
I think the artistically beautiful and botanically accurate lithographs were what first drew me to Meehan\u2019s Monthly<\/i>.\u00a0 Frankly, I am surprised that enterprising print sellers have not culled them from the volumes long since.\u00a0 Perhaps that is the benefit of residing for decades in attics and dusty antique shops.<\/p>\n
The writing throughout the magazines is accessible, but aimed at a knowledgeable and somewhat sophisticated audience.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 He writes of species\u2019 characteristics and related plants.\u00a0 As in other parts of the magazine, the text is sprinkled with quotes for literature and poetry.<\/p>\n
The second section of each Monthly<\/i> edition was devoted to shorter essays and commentary on \u201cWild Flowers and Nature.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 These were sometimes submitted by readers, like the interestingly-named Mr. Uselma C. Smith of Philadelphia, who submitted his nostalgic thoughts on a \u201cwell known\u201d buttonwood tree, growing in Ashtabula County, Ohio.<\/p>\n
The magazine\u2019s \u201cGeneral Gardening\u201d section was also composed of shorter pieces, this time on garden plants and gardening techniques.\u00a0 \u201cHistory of the Calla Lily,\u201d for example, notes that callas have \u201cbecome a great favorite with cultivators all over the world.\u201d\u00a0 Over a century later, callas are experiencing a renaissance, proving that if you wait long enough, everything comes back into style.<\/p>\n
The short, second-to-last section of Meehan\u2019s Monthly <\/i>is a sometimes-gossipy grab bag labeled \u201cBiography and Literature.\u201d\u00a0 It abounds in tidbits about prominent gardeners, gardens and garden publications.\u00a0 It also provides Meehan with a forum for airing his favorite peeves, including one against common plant names.\u00a0 \u201cAnyone who pleases can give any name he likes,\u201d huffs Meehan, \u201cno matter how many names the plant may have had before, and it is this that brings about the confusion.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019 Monthly.\u00a0 <\/i>\u00a0If you are not lucky enough to locate a random copy of Meehans\u2019 <\/i>in one of the diminishing number of dusty antique shops, try BookFinder.com.\u00a0 You can buy both inexpensive reprints and original copies and volumes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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.\u00a0 Those shops were generally filled with equal measures of junk and treasure, though sometimes it seemed that little if any merchandise changed … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,2,3,5],"tags":[1213,583,1209,238,1207,1208,1210,1211,1212],"class_list":["post-1369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer","category-winter","tag-antique-lithographs","tag-botanical-illustration","tag-garden-antiques","tag-garden-history","tag-garden-periodicals","tag-gardenalia","tag-meehans-monthly","tag-thomas-meehan","tag-u-s-garden-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1370,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1369\/revisions\/1370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}