Summary:

When Progressives took on the elevation of American culture and taste after the perceived vulgarities of the Gilded Age, women participated through the beautification of house and garden. In 1913, wives of the period’s one percenters  corralled family and friends to found and fund the national Garden Club of America. Determined to promote by example horticultural standards and professional landscape design, members commissioned photo-journalist Frances Benjamin Johnston to document  for publication and illustrated lectures gardening successes East and West.

Join Bill Deverell and Sam Watters as they discuss Johnston’s photography in the context of her era’s social and aesthetic agendas, the subject of Watters’ recent book, Gardens for a Beautiful America, 1895-1935, published in collaboration with the Library of Congress that holds the Johnston architectural archive.