John and William Bartram’s home and garden in Philadelphia was on our list of historic places to visit, a list that included the new Museum of the American Revolution, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Longwood Gardens and the Rodin Museum.

     More than two years into the Covid lockdown, our lives have changed. Gardening has taken over at our house-a safe escape from those who refused to get shots or wear a mask despite a death toll of more than a million Americans. We have seldom left home except to buy groceries and attend outdoor meetings of our garden club. Dining out has been confined to romantic dinners in the parking lot of Chick-fil-A.  Oh, yeah. There was that daring trip to St. Simons where we spent a night before picking up our new Labrador retriever, “Emily.”

     With our second booster vaccination in us and an easing of travel restrictions, we decided to visit the gardening capital of at least the eastern United States: Philadelphia! Foremost, we wanted to visit Bartram’s Garden. John Bartram was a collector and seller of plants who settled on the bank of the Schuylkill River in the eighteenth century. I am pretty sure John Bartram never heard of the now familiar phrase “Columbian Exchange,” but as a nurseryman and seller of American plants to European buyers, he was riding the crest of that exchange, sending botanical specimens and knowledge from the “New World” across the Atlantic to Europe. Botany fueled the love affair with science in the western world during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Landscape architecture was the indulgent art of the titled and wealthy, but in in a world largely rural and agricultural, ornamental plants were finally coming within the financial reach of an emerging middle class in America and Britain.

      The exchange had become a tidal wave by the time of the American Revolution. Native American culture would influence Europe for centuries. English settlement would supplant most of the American Indian cultures along the Atlantic coast of North America. English gardens and architecture would inspire imitation by generations of “Americans.” New foods -peppers, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, and “Irish” potatoes would transform the world’s cuisine, while European technology, steel and arms would subdue and despoil Native Americans of their lands -and, at the same time Native American social and political practices would inspire notions of personal freedom and democratic societies. 

     Curiosity about the botany and zoology of the “new” world required exploration, investigation, and the transporting of all that was exotic and beautiful back to Europe. And that is what Bartram did. Bartram’s plant trade was strong before (and after) the English colonies became independent. John’s son William was dispatched by his father on a specimen-collecting expedition into the the southern colonies, most extensively in Carolina, Georgia, and British East Florida- an adventure that began as the colonies were fomenting a revolution and inciting a fratricidal war that seemed to effect William’s mission, judging from the account he left readers, but little.

     The travels of William produced more than plant samples, cuttings, and seeds. Once he reached the Georgia coast, William traveled deep into the interior. From Savannah, he traveled up the Savannah River to the Georgia colony’s second city, Augusta, which today advertises its riverfront “Bartram’s Trail” to visitors. He ventured then to the northeast corner of what is now the state of Georgia. Above the Tugaloo River (a tributary of the Savannah) he encountered the lower Cherokee in their villages.  Back in Augusta, William followed the lower deerskin trading path along the fall line that separates the coastal from piedmont sections of Georgia, deep into the lands of the Muscogee Confederacy (known as “Creeks” at the time). He passed near the present day site of Warrenton and crossed the Ogeechee River and Rocky Comfort Creek, at a place close to the land my ancestor’s settled upon before 1791 (land that at various times was part of Wilkes, Richmond, Burke and Warren Counties as political boundaries were redrawn over the years. In my imagination he met my ancestor and his seven sons who had recently migrated Fishing Creek in North Carolina.from North Carolina (if only the dates would support this!).

When his fall line journey reached the upper Altamaha, he discovered a small tree native only to this specific area. It was an orphan species locked into its local by shifting environmental factors. He would name it Franklinia altamaha. He also identified the shrub that offers the largest blooms in southern gardens -the native Oakleaf Hydrangea, the foundation of many beautiful varieties.

Named for Benjamin Franklin, Philadelphia’s most illustrious citizen, this is the Franklinia growing in Bartram’s Garden today. Blocking your view is a couple of admirers from Georgia where the first specimen was found and collected by William Bartram. Above is a dried cutting, believed to be from the original Franklinia specimen.

     Back in Savannah, William traveled south along the coast, visited rice planters, and paddled a canoe up the alligator-infested St. John’s River (British territory at the time) -all while keeping careful notes and sketching specimens and people. Predictably, he encountered hospitable Creeks as well as white deerskin traders living among their native trading partners.

Through it all, young Bartram seems to have been blessed with unquestioning faith that the Lord would protect him, no matter the circumstances. On one occasion he was confronted by a “wild” Creek warrior in a thicket of Georgia pines. The warrior, who seemed intend upon killing William, relented when Bartram showed no hostility and brandished no weapons. The Creek (Muscogee) Indian seems to have made a mid-course correction and ended up explaining to Bartram that he was expressing his anger because he had been recently cheated by a white trader.

On another occasion, while paddling the St. John’s he encountered waters so thick with alligators that it appeared one might cross the waterway, stepping from the back of one alligator to that of another. This was likely a predatory gathering in which migrating or hatching fish might predictably (to the alligators) provide feast. William -traveling alone- kept a fire burning all night to keep the ‘gators away.

     The account of William’s travels would be written in a romantic style that contrasted with his cultivated scientific observations. His vocabulary is expansive and at times tiresome to the modern reader. But generations of readers would be fascinated by his faith in God’s protection, his insatiable curiosity, and his scientific focus.  His observations are careful and detailed,  not only of the animals and plants he comes upon, but of the environmental context in which he finds them.  Bartram’s Travels has been reissued many times and is much quoted by travel, historical, anthropological and scientific writers.   Bartram’s Travels is among the seminal works that have helped fuel a publishing bonanza of sorts among environmentalists and travel writers. It has clearly inspired and informed many fiction writers as well.

     It was our reading of William Bartram’s book that inspired us to visit Philadelphia. A modern edition is included in Dorinda G. Dallmeyer’s William Bartram; Bartram’s Living Legacy (Macon: Mercer University Press, 2010), which also includes articles and essays by scholars and naturalists whose own careers have been shaped to some degree by Bartram’s Travels. 

     Bartram, the younger, returned to Philadelphia by water, laden with much to write about and much to share with his father, whose business suffered but was not entirely stalled by the revolution.  William had shipped many specimens, samples, seeds, and cuttings back to Philadelphia aboard coast-wise trading vessels. In contrast,  we traveled to his home by jet airliner, trolley, and Uber, half expecting to be greeted by William Bartram’s ghostly self.

     Bartram’s Garden was modest and informal, and much of the land around it was in what seemed a state of nature. It has been a public park for more than a century and is today a National Historic Site. A walkway along the river will soon feature a swinging bridge. Open to the public, it encompasses riverside trails for hiking and biking, fishing along the Schuylkill River and recreational areas. It is quite unlike the other garden we visited on our trip, Longwood, with its hundreds of acres of formal gardens and an enormous conservatory.  It is Bartram’s charm that we remember: a trailing rose arbor, a dovecote, a spectacular and enormous Yellowwood Tree, and our delight when we discovered beautiful poppies in bloom, their color amplified in the soft shade cast by Bartrams’ home in the lowering afternoon sunlight.

Bartrams’s Garden has walking and biking paths, workshops, fishing spots on the river, ample parking and the historic homestead and garden plots of its founder, John Bartram, and his family that included his son the naturalist, writer and traveler, William Bartram. Donations are welcome but there is no admission fee.

     The garden was closing for the day when a chance meeting with a newly married New York couple prompted  the generous offer of a ride back to the center of Philadelphia where we were staying. We regretted that we had only a couple of hours to explore Bartram’s Gardens -we had simply tried to pack too much into our four-day stay in this great city. Still, brief is better than not at all.