Private Gardens of Charleston

by Cameron, Louisa Pringle

• ISBN13: 9780941711869
• ISBN10: 0941711862
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-05-31
• Publisher: Wyrick & Co

Summary

Beyond the magnificent old walls and gates of Charleston's historic homes lie lush private gardens of extraordinary beauty and distinction. This book presents twenty-five of the city's most superb private gardens in color photographs and essays, from the meticulous restoration of a classic, early-nineteenth-century landscape to the lush attraction of a typical Charleston garden, to a rare collection of exotic tropical plants.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	p. xi
Introduction	p. xiii
The Garden of the James Huston House	p. 2
The Courtyard of the Humphrey-Sommers House	p. 8
The Garden of the Old Brewton Inn	p. 10
An Atrium Garden	p. 12
The Author's Garden	p. 14
A Contemporary Courtyard	p. 20
The Garden of the Thomas Rose House	p. 22
A Small Colorful Garden	p. 28
The Garden of the Simon Chancognie House	p. 30
An Historic Garden Restoration	p. 34
A Classical Garden	p. 36
A Landscape Architect's Garden	p. 40
A Palm Collector's Garden	p. 42
The Garden of the Colonel William Rhett House	p. 46
The Garden of the Colonel Isaac Motte House	p. 50
The Garden of the Jenkins-Mikell House	p. 54
The Garden of the William Gibbes House	p. 56
The Garden of the Robert Trail Chisolm House	p. 60
An Eighteenth-Century Garden	p. 64
The Garden of the Benjamin Phillips House	p. 66
The Garden of the Colonel Robert Brewton House	p. 72
The Garden of the James Veree House	p. 76
The Garden of the Timothy Ford House	p. 80
A Garden in Ansonborough	p. 84
Garden Glimpses	p. 88
Suggested Reading	p. 93
Botanical Nomenclature	p. 95
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

In the spring of 1989, my husband and I opened our garden to the public for the first time, during the Historic Charleston Foundation's Annual Festival of Houses and Gardens. An enthusiastic visitor from Texas asked what books she could take home on Charleston's private gardens. I answered that the only one I was familiar with was Charleston Gardens, by Loutrel Briggs (1893-1977), but that it had been published in the early 1950s and was out of print. She shrugged, gave me a piercing look, and asked, "Why don't you write a new one?" And so the seed was sown and from it grew The Private Gardens of Charleston. This book does not attempt to educate the reader about the history of Charleston gardens, for many of them are quite well-documented, especially the famous trio near the city: Middleton, Magnolia, and Cypress Gardens. Plats of some seventeenth-and eighteenth-century city gardens can be found on early tax maps. Mrs. Emma Richardson published charming pamphlets for the Charleston Museum on early plats and on the garden at the Heyward-Washington House on Church Street, describing typical flowers of the period. On the same subject, Miss Elise Pinckney wrote a fascinating account of Thomas and Elizabeth Lamboll, two early Charleston gardeners, also published for the Museum. Thomas Lamboll's correspondence with the famous eighteenth-century botanist, John Bartram, gives an idea of the tradition of enthusiasm for research, collecting, and growing plant material that started with the earliest explorations of the Lowcountry.