U.S. Postal Service Honors American Gardens
On October 22, 2019, the United States Postal Service (USPS) unveiled the American Gardens stamp collection as part of its 2020 Forever Stamp Program. The collection will feature ten different photographs of botanic, estate, and municipal gardens captured by Allen Rokach, the former director of photography for the New York Botanical Garden. Six of the featured landscapes, namely the Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Chicago Botanic Garden, Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., the Country Place-era landscape of Stan Hywet Hall in Akron, Ohio, and the Winterthur gardens in the Delaware Valley, can be found in TCLF’s What’s Out There database.
Although culturally significant historic sites and national parks have on a number of occasions been commemorated on U.S. postage stamps, such as those featured in the "National Parks Forever" and the "O Beautiful" collections, released in 2016 and 2018, respectively, it is rare for the Postal Service to celebrate landscape architecture as an art form. The profession was highlighted briefly by the USPS in 1999 with the release of a stamp honoring Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., widely regarded as the father of American landscape architecture. The postage stamp features John Singer Sargent’s 1895 portrait of Olmsted, Sr., set against a collage of images that include Central Park, designed by Olmsted and architect Calvert Vaux, as well as landscape plans for Olmsted, Vaux & Co.’s Prospect Park in Brooklyn, New York, and the Buffalo Park System in Buffalo, New York. Designed by Ethel Kessler of Bethesda, Maryland, the commemorative stamp was first released in Boston, Massachusetts, with a total of 42.5 million stamps printed.
The recent news was met by the selected sites with gratitude and enthusiasm in various press releases and announcements. Jonathan Kavalier, director of gardens and grounds at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, believes the recognition can also bolster advocacy for the stewardship of designed landscapes:
We are incredibly honored to be part of the U.S. Postal Service’s commemoration of American Gardens, especially as we approach the centennial of Beatrix Farrand’s masterful creation of the gardens at Dumbarton Oaks. Through this recognition the U.S. Postal Service is helping promote the idea, more important than ever in this age of development and renewal, that designed landscapes, while ever-changing, should be forever cherished and protected.
Deborah Edwards, who assumed the presidency of the Garden Club of America in July, remarked on the significance of this new stamp collection in a communication to TCLF:
I am delighted that the Postal Service has chosen to include a stamp collection celebrating American gardens in its 2020 Forever stamps program.This is one more acknowledgement of the importance that gardens play in our national landscape and psyche.
Other sites to be highlighted in the American Gardens collection are the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, the Huntington Botanical Gardens in San Marino, California, the Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park in Tallahassee, Florida, and the Norfolk Botanical Gardens in Virginia.