The seven-block-long Keokuk gardens of starch manufacturer J.C. Hubinger, overlooking the Mississippi River in the 1890s, included large artificial lakes and mounded Victorian-style “pincushion” beds, like the imaginative one at forefront shaped like a starfish and edged with shells. Photo courtesy of Keokuk Public Library
March/April 2025 (Volume 17, Issue 2)
By Beth Cody
For gardeners who also happen to be history buffs, vintage garden photos and seed catalogs show us what our grandparents’ gardens looked like, the flowers they loved, and the garden tools they used.
Old garden photos are deeply nostalgic due to the fragile nature of gardens—unlike historic buildings, nearly all historic gardens are now long gone, just like the gardeners who made them. Only photos of them remain, preserving fleeting moments of garden beauty, frozen in time for us to enjoy many years later and to imagine how they were enjoyed by those who visited them.
Old pictures of Iowa gardens found in library and online archives, old magazines, postcards and photos on Ebay, and historical atlases, reveal that Iowans have made numerous lovely gardens, preserved in evocative vintage images. In 2020, I published “Iowa Gardens of the Past: Lost & Historic Gardens of Iowa, 1850-1980” to document those many beautiful spots.
Grand, impressive landscapes certainly existed on the moneyed estates of Iowa’s captains of industry, like the Keokuk garden of J.C. Hubinger, which was seven blocks long with two large ornamental lakes, a flower-covered island, and imaginative Victorian-style “pincushion” flower beds. Or Joseph Bettendorf’s 17-acre estate overlooking the Mississippi River during the 1910s, with formal gardens, a massive greenhouse, ponds, fountains and a 120-foot-long rose pergola.
But it isn’t always the grandest gardens that are the most appealing—often it’s photos of proud gardeners in modest flower gardens, in small towns and on turn-of-the-century farms, that are the most touching to modern Iowans.
And a number of historical gardens were created by Iowa garden writers, plant hybridizers, and horticultural entrepreneurs who influenced gardening nationally. Other Iowa gardeners established groups to encourage gardening or to promote specific flowers. Passionate Iowa gardeners of all backgrounds have made numerous gardens of great beauty for more than 150 years that we can delight in viewing, a lovely part of our state’s history.
Following is a brief overview of how Iowans have gardened over time.
Mid-19th century
The very earliest Iowa settlers, of course, were too busy establishing themselves to plant many ornamental gardens. Although some brought with them seeds and peony roots from their eastern homes, what newcomers really wanted was fruit trees hardy enough to survive Iowa winters. The Iowa State Horticultural Society was founded in 1866 to share growers’ discoveries and knowledge concerning the trees and plants that could grow well in Iowa.
After the railroads arrived, it became much easier to obtain building materials, and by the 1870s, Iowa residents were upgrading their log cabins to wood frame houses, giving them a sense of permanency that encouraged the planting of trees and flower gardens.
An 1895 photo by Iowa City photographer Bertha Horack of her mother in her garden, filled with tropical plants: a potted fan palm, elephant ears, climbing vines and nasturtiums. Photo courtesy of State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City
Seeds and plants became easier to obtain via the railroads, too, first from eastern seed company catalogs, and then from the nurseries that were established in Iowa beginning in the 1840s. By the 1870s, many nurseries and seed companies operated in our state, making trees, plants, and seeds easy to obtain. The Iowa Seed Co. in Des Moines and Cole’s in Pella were prominent early suppliers, and numerous companies were established after the turn of the century, the most famous of which were Earl May and Henry Field, both in Shenandoah.
In the mid-19th century, most gardeners sought to create a park-like setting of trees and shrubs planted in lawns (lawnmowers, invented in England in 1830, became widely available by the 1860s). Limited varieties of flowers were planted in small beds near the house or along paths.
Late 19th century
By the 1880s, many new plants and flowers had been discovered by plant hunters in South America and Asia, and hybridized in Europe and the U.S. to have larger flowers in more colors. Iowa gardeners fell in love with the tropical plants and hothouse flowers that were widely available in catalogs and nurseries by the 1890s. And professional gardeners created mounded pincushion flower beds (like those in the Hubinger garden) for wealthy clients and the new public parks being established in cities.
TO READ THE ENTIRE STORY AND OTHER FASCINATING STORIES ABOUT IOWA HISTORY, subscribe to Iowa History Journal.