BARTRAM’S GARDEN
In 2008 I was invited to document the plants of North America’s oldest botanical garden, located in Philadelphia along the shores of the Schuylkill River. John Bartram (1699–1777), the well-known early American botanist, explorer, and plant collector, founded the garden in September 1728. By the middle of the eighteenth century, Bartram's Garden contained the most varied collection of North American plants in the world. The resulting exhibition My Backyard Plant Explorations, included works featuring 36 plants from Bartram’s Garden, many of them important plants in North American botanical history. Works from this exhibit are now part of the Native Plants of Pennsylvania series.