Mrs. Francis King (Louisa Boyd Yeomans King)
The Little Garden Series of Books
Our next Lost Lady of Garden Writing is Mrs. Francis King, who brought to the gardening world The Little Garden series of books published in the 1920s, as both the editor of all of them and the author of some of them.
Unlike some of the lost ladies of garden writing, Mrs. Francis King—Louisa Boyd Yeomans King—was fairly easy to find on the internet.
In an article published by the New York Botanical Garden, they revealed that at one time, Louisa (which is what I’m going to call her throughout this article) was considered “the fairy godmother of gardening.”
Quoting that article:
“Mrs. Francis King (Louisa Yeomans) 1863-1948 was once the most widely read horticultural columnist and author in America. Her columns appeared in prominent newspapers and magazines and were read by millions during the period between the two world wars. The era was characterized by a flourishing garden culture that aimed to beautify America one garden at a time and where every garden means a home. The Beautify America Movement was led by wealthy civic-minded individuals, like Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, who established magnificent gardens on their own property which served to not only embellish their elegant mansions but also inspired millions of middle-class Americans to build their own beautiful gardens. Mrs. King’s own garden in Alma, Michigan was a superb example of the extraordinary residential landscapes constructed by leading exponents of the Beautify America movement.”
All of her papers are now housed in the Clarke Historical Library at Central Michigan University. Plus, her entire biography is on Wikipedia, which is often not the case for many of these forgotten writers.
(You may now rightly ask how she can be a lost lady of garden writing if it is so easy to find information about her? Because no one remembers her nearly 100 years after her Little Garden series was published.)
From her online biography, we learn that Louisa was born in New Jersey in 1863, the third of five children. She and her husband, Francis King, originally lived near his parents in Elmhurst, Illinois, and had three children. They moved to Alma, Michigan in 1902 due to his “ill health.” (There was a sanitarium there.)
Later they built a house in Alma, which they called Orchard House. After her husband’s death in 1927, Louisa sold that house and spent time in Europe before settling in South Hartford, New York.
Her first book, The Well-Considered Garden, was published in 1915. Famed English gardener and writer Gertrude Jekyll, with whom Louisa corresponded frequently, wrote the preface.
Before her work on the Little Garden series of books, Louisa was quite active during World War I in both horticulture and agriculture.
In 1914, she helped to found the Women's National Agricultural and Horticultural Association, which two years later changed its name to the Woman's National Farm & Garden Association (WNF&GA). King, who served as the first president of the WNF&GA from 1914 to 1921, saw horticulture and gardening as a means for women to establish themselves in the world; under her guidance, the WNF&GA established scholarships for women to pursue academic study of agriculture, botany, and landscape architecture. During World War I, the WNF&GA and GCA helped organize the Woman's Land Army of America: 15,000 so-called "farmerettes" worked in agriculture, replacing men called into military service. For her role in these efforts, King was awarded the National War Garden Commission’s bronze medal. (Source: Wikipedia)
(I’m going to avoid for the moment heading down several rabbit holes in that little quote…)
Later, in the 1920s, Louisa was the driving force behind The Little Garden series of books, which was notable at the time because it wasn’t written for the wealthy people who had estates and gardeners but for people with small homes and gardens.
Louisa had a goal for those little gardens. In the preface of The Little Garden, she wrote:
“The little garden will save the children. In it the children are the first to feel at home; for where is the baby who does not love a flower? And where is the four-year-old who will not plant and watch a seed? If our children grow to manhood and womanhood without the love of beauty, we are a nation lost.”
Mrs. Francis King in The Little Garden (1921)
I can imagine Louisa now looking over my shoulder, encouraging me to write up a list of all the books in The Little Garden series because I couldn’t find such a list anywhere else.
From my own library, and cross-referencing the list of books in each book, here’s what I came up with:
The Little Garden by Mrs. Francis King (1921)
Peonies in the Little Garden by Mrs. Edward Harding (1923)
Variety in the Little Garden by Mrs. Francis King (1923)
Design in the Little Garden by Fletcher Steele (1924)
The Little Garden for Little Money by Kate L. Brewster (1924)
Roses in the Little Garden by G. A. Stevens (1926)
The Little Kitchen Garden by Dorothy Giles (1926)
Iris in the Little Garden by Ella Porter McKinney (1928)
Spring in the Little Garden by Frances Edge McIlvaine (1928)
Louisa was also quite involved in founding the Garden Club of Michigan and the Garden Clubs of America. I think it is through these clubs that she met some of the future authors of some of The Little Garden books. (If you subscribe to this newsletter, you’ll also meet them in due time.)
It’s interesting how what’s old is new again. Today, you’ll find many people still advocating for getting children to go outside and play in the dirt, in the garden, to discover the beauty of nature. Louisa was ahead of her time, and we have much to thank her for!