The Southern Garden History Society is a group of enthusiasts and professionals that fosters and shares scholarly research about our historic gardens, cultural landscapes, and horticultural history through educational programs and publications. We celebrate the beauty and diversity of the South’s historic gardens and encourage their preservation and restoration so they may enrich the lives of others.
In Memory of Jane Campbell Symmes
On August 20, 2021, Jane Campbell Symmes, a member of SGHS since its founding in 1982, died at Cedar Lane Farm outside Madison, GA. She and … Read More
Summer 2021 Magnolia (Vol. Vol. XXXIV, no. 1)
With this Magnolia the editors begin a series of articles looking back over the four-decade history of the Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes conference. Until 2019, … Read More
Smith Farm and SGHS
Featured Image: Smith Farm, the farmhouse. Photograph courtesy of Atlanta History Center. The August-September issue of Garden & Gun includes an article entitled Harvesting History, written … Read More
200 Years Ago – John James Audubon’s Birds of America
Two hundred years ago in the summer of 1821, John James Audubon arrived in what is now St. Francisville, Louisiana, to work as a teacher for … Read More
Book Review: Beauty of the Wild: A Life Designing Landscapes Inspired by Nature
Beauty of the Wild: A Life Designing Landscapes Inspired by Nature by Darrel Morrison, FASLA Published by Library of American Landscape History, 2021 The creative … Read More
Thomas Jefferson’s Vegetable Garden at Monticello
Peggy Cornett is the Curator of Plants at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, where she has worked for more than 38 years. She holds degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University... Read More
Garden & Gun Features Historic Winston-Salem Gardens
Garden & Gun Senior Editor CJ Lotz attended the Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes Conference in Old Salem in 2017. That weekend visit made her want to write about the wealth of public gardens available... Read More
The Whole Okra: A Seed to Stem Celebration, by Chris Smith
A native of the UK, seed saver, permaculturist, and writer Chris Smith is obsessed with okra. He is the executive director of the Utopian Seed Project, a crop-trailing non-profit working to support diversity in food... Read More
Heirloom Watermelons
Grappling with the hot, sultry days of summer leads many Southerners to find respite lying beneath a ceiling fan on a screened porch, swimming in a … Read More
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