Tip of the Week: Make a Floral Bouquet as Did Emily Dickinson
Posted in Gardening Tips on April 26th, 2010 by Sonia Uyterhoeven – Be the first to commentBotanical Crafts Series: Create a Victorian-Era Tussie-Mussie
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Sonia Uyterhoeven is Gardener for Public Education. Join her each weekend for home gardening demonstrations on a variety of topics in the Home Gardening Center. |
Beginning Friday, this spring we will be paying tribute to the great 19th-century American poet Emily Dickinson in the exhibition Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers. Her poetry personified and celebrated the fauna and flora of her life in pastoral Amherst, Massachusetts.
Emily Dickinson was an avid gardener and an amateur botanist. She strolled through the countryside collecting wildflowers, taking them home, and carefully drying and pressing them into the pages of her poetry and correspondence, as well as creating a herbarium of over 400 specimens. When an important visitor was expected, she presented them with floral tokens and a few lines of verse as a welcoming gift.
Dickinson’s study of botany and an appreciation of the crafts associated with it was part of a well-established Victorian tradition for women of the educated classes. Over the next few weeks we will sojourn back into history and explore some Victorian pastimes that are still popular in the craft world today. read more »