Archives of American Gardens
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, National Museum of African Art
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Collection Archive
Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture, Smithsonian American Art Museum
National Air and Space Archives
National Anthropological Archives
National Museum of the American Indian Archives
Peale Family Papers, National Portrait Gallery
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Smithsonian American Art Museum Slide and Photo Archives
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Smithsonian Photographic Services
Affiliated Organization: National Gallery of Art
Bellingrath Gardens and Home, Theodore, Alabama ca. 1930. Garden Club
of America Collection.
Archives of American Gardens
P.O. Box 37012
Capital Gallery, Suite 3300
MRC 506
Washington, DC 20013-7012
202.633.5840
202.633.5697 fax
aag@si.edu
www.gardens.si.edu
Hours
Monday – Friday
10am to 4pm
By Appointment Only
Metro Stop: L'Enfant Plaza
The
Archives of American Gardens (AAG), managed by the Smithsonian's Horticulture
Services Division, offers landscape designers, historians, preservationists,
and garden enthusiasts access to a collection of approximately 60,000
photographic images and records that document historic and contemporary
gardens throughout the United States. Representative images are available
online at www.siris.si.edu.
Over 6,000 gardens and landscapes are currently documented in the archives.
While the AAG is primarily a photographic archives, a wide range
of written information for each garden may also be available, including
journal articles, bibliographic citations, planting lists,
drawings, and correspondence. The images, which date from the early 1890s
to the present, include a considerable range of garden features such as
furniture and ornamentation, as well as all manner of design styles.
Collections in the AAG include 3,000 glass lantern slides from the 1920s
and 1930s and approximately 30,000 35mm slides that were donated to the
Smithsonian by the Garden Club of America. The archives also contains
photographs, plans, and papers documenting the work of landscape architects
Thomas Sears and Perry Wheeler; author, publisher, and horticulturist
Dr. J. Horace McFarland; the Lewis and Valentine Nursery of Long Island,
New York; The Chimneys estate in Manchester, Massachusetts; and the Horticulture
Services Division's own collection of historic garden furnishings and
artifacts.
The AAG also maintains the W. Atlee Burpee & Company Collection which consists of approximately 12,700 items, including account books, ledgers, diaries, seed trial records, office correspondence, seed catalogs, and other items relating to the Burpee seed company of Doylestown, Pennsylvania and to some of its competitors. This collection ranges from 1873-1978, with the majority of items dating from 1890-1930.