About This Collection
This collection documents the history of the Neighborhood Garden Association of Philadelphia founded in 1953 by noted horticulturist, activist, author and educator Louise Bush-Brown. The images depict the earliest collaborative efforts of the Association, neighbors, garden clubs, and settlement houses who worked together to green and beautify neighborhoods and vacant lots throughout the City beginning with the first garden block on Mercy Street sponsored by St. Martha’s Settlement in Southeast Philadelphia and the now lost Ken-Watt Court a collaboration with the storied United Neighbors Association in 1953 to its partnership with the Penn State Extension to establish the first demonstration garden in the Mantua section of West Philadelphia in 1965. Louise Carter, born in 1897, graduated from the Pennsylvania School of Horticulture for Women in 1916. After a variety of jobs, Carter came back to the school in 1924 as their director. In 1925, she married James Bush-Brown, the school’s landscape design instructor. Louise Bush-Brown went on to direct the school for 28 years, retiring in 1952. She was an integral part of the school’s success. She also authored and co-authored several books with her husband, most notably America’s Garden Book written in 1939. In 1953, she founded the Neighborhood Garden Association of Philadelphia, and won the National Recreation Award for the Neighborhood Garden Project in 1959. Later, in 1967, she was invited to the White House to speak at the Natural Beauty and Citizen Participation Conference about her work. She died in 1974. The formal perennial gardens at the Ambler Arboretum are named in her honor. This digital project is supported in part through a 2020 NEH Cares Grant, National Endowment for the Humanities.