Philip J. Pauly

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Philip J. Pauly | Is Environmental History a Subfield of Garden History? | Environmental History, 10.1 | The History Cooperative

Anniversary Forum

Is Environmental History a Subfield of Garden History?

AS SOMEONE WHO was trained and has worked primarily in history of science rather than in environmental history, I am not in a good position to critique the latter field, or even to declare that a broad direction of work is "new." What I do see, primarily within the American context, is a combination of topics, sources, and perspectives that are important in themselves, understudied, and potentially valuable for improving our understanding of the history of relations between humans and other organisms.

The subject is horticulture. That term currently refers to more or less ornamental leisure activities. But as Abigail Lustig has emphasized, in the nineteenth century it was a scientifically, technologically, and socially fundamental and broad-ranging activity.¹ Horticulture was not primarily about flowers, but rather about food plants, landscape design, and biogeographic transformation. In the North American context, horticulturists were particularly important, for better or worse, as agents of plant mobility. They imported species from other continents, and they also shuffled the distributions of North American plants. Some of these, such as sorghum and soybeans, were cultivars that transformed rural landscapes and the agricultural economy; others—notably grasses and forbs, but also such woody types as tamarisk, melaleuca, and black locust—spread on their own in different parts of the continent.²

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