Elvenia Slosson

And Helen Link

From the Find-a-Grave website

I first encountered Elvenia Slosson in a 1952 newspaper advertisement for the book she compiled, Pioneer American Gardening (1951).

She was new to me but anyone who attended the University of California to study ornamental horticulture might know exactly who she was. When she died in 1958 she “left a gift in trust to the University of California to be used "for the advancement and promotion of the science and practice of horticulture, particularly including ornamental horticulture.” As far as I can tell, they might still be using revenue from that trust for research.

Also on the university website, they have a fairly complete biography of Elvenia, which made it easy to research her.

What can I add to all of that info?

There’s not much I can add to the university’s information, but I did find a brief obituary indicating she died while attending a national conference of the National Council of State Garden Clubs, of which she was the president. The conference was held in Greenville, South Carolina.

I can also add that Pioneer American Gardening is an interesting book of articles written by mostly women members of various garden clubs across the country. The chapters are grouped into sections that are based on the regions of garden clubs that fell under the National Council of State Garden Clubs, which is known as National Garden Clubs today.

I found a past member from my own garden club!

When I got my copy of Pioneer American Gardening, I flipped over to the central region, which is the region that the garden club I belong to is in, and found an article written by the most famous past member of my club, Helen Link.

The short story about Helen is that she was married to Dr. Goethe Link, who established the Goethe and Helen Link Foundation for Scientific Research. One of his projects was to build an observatory on property they owned near Mooresville, Indiana, which they called Tanager Hill. The observatory was used for astronomical research by scientists from Indiana University until urban sprawl brought too much light pollution to the site.

In the meantime, Helen planted numerous varieties of daffodils on the property—a flower she became interested in when Goethe gave her some daffodils as a gift. Helen passed away aged 90 in 2002. Today, people still visit the property in the spring to see all of Helen’s daffodils in bloom.

Helen wrote a chapter in Pioneer American Gardening titled “Early Indiana Horticulture.” As far as I know, this is the only thing she wrote that was published in a book, though it is possible she may have written for other state and national garden club publications

What else is in the book?

Pioneer American Gardening contains over 60 chapters, mostly written by women who I assume were members of various state garden clubs. For most of them, their chapter may have been the only garden writing they had published.

But it is possible that hidden in this book are some Lost Ladies of Garden Writing just waiting to be found. I’ll leave you with these images of the Table of Contents. Perhaps there is someone here you recognize from the past?

Pioneer American Gardening Table of Contents

If you do recognize anyone let me know. In the meantime, as time permits, I’ll be doing searches on them to see what other interesting stories pop up.