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"Rosalie in Her Riversdale Garden"
By Jill F. Reilly
Rosalie Stier Calvert shared her father's passion for gardening, horticulture,
and landscape architecture. During her married life, Rosalie received advice
from her father, Henri Joseph Stier, on how to develop a mature garden that
would blend flora from her ancestral home with that native to her adopted
home. While an ocean separated father and daughter during these years, their
mutual interest in gardening fortified their intellectual and emotional
bonds. This essay will explore Rosalie's involvement in the landscape design
of Riversdale and her devotion to the garden.
Members of Rosalie's social circle and class competed in efforts to cultivate
the widest variety of plants on their estate grounds. Horticulture became
increasingly popular in both Europe and the United States during the early
nineteenth century, and the acquisition of numerous species sparked intellectual
and aesthetic interest. The social dimensions of gardening during this
period spread its popularity. Formal and informal circles of amateur gardeners
formed to exchange seeds, bulbs, and gardening information. Henri Stier
belonged to an informal group, because he delighted in acquiring new varieties
of plants and new friends with whom he could discuss horticulture and
landscape design.
Friends and acquaintances admired Henri's gardening talents, especially
his success in cultivating Dutch tulips. Annual tulip shows and bulb sales
held in the Stier garden helped to bolster Henri's reputation as a horticulturist.
Visitors arrived when the tulips were in full bloom and placed numbered
stakes in the soil next to flowers they wished to purchase. At the appropriate
times, the bulbs were gathered and sold to those who had marked them.
Tours, shows, and sales were social events that drew large crowds (Sarudy,
p. 68).
After spending a number of years in rented homes in Philadelphia and
Annapolis, the Stiers decided to establish a country estate. They envisioned
beautiful landscaping and carefully tended gardens. The Stier family invested
in land near the nation's new capital and began construction of the house
and landscaping of the grounds. Riversdale was not complete when the French
state threatened to repossess their ancestral properties in present-day
Belgium. The family, excluding Rosalie who had married George Henry Calvert,
returned to Europe.
Rosalie and George assumed ownership of the Riversdale plantation. Riversdale
attracted interest from neighbors and visitors, because of its European
design and style. As Rosalie developed the landscape's design and cultivated
her plants, the garden gained renown as well.
Designing a garden was an intellectual, mathematic, and artistic project. In their gardens, Americans of the early republic balanced the useful (vegetables and fruit trees) with the beautiful (flowers). Privileged Americans favored European classical gardens with symmetrical patterns, fountains, and sculptures over the natural grounds style fashionable with the British.
Rosalie desired a garden containing both classical and natural elements
in harmony. She had been inspired by her visit to George Washington's
gardens at Mt. Vernon and by her memories of the Stier family gardens,
especially the Chateau du Mick in present-day Belgium. The planned, ornamental
elements of the Riversdale garden included the falling terraces, long
brick wall, and the orangerie. The natural grounds influence appeared
in the open grounds and the artificial lake filled with fish (Buonocore,
passim). The vegetable and herb garden was planted near the entrance
to the kitchen.
The artist and architect William Russell Birch of Philadelphia drew plans for landscaping Riversdale in 1806. Rosalie discussed these plans with her father, but he never actually saw copies of the drawings. It was unusual, even for a woman of Rosalie's wealth and status, to have so much control of the design of her grounds, as this was typically a masculine pursuit (Sarudy, p. 60). One letter from her father included suggestions for planning the grounds and plantings:
I am glad to learn that you are using the architect Birch. You must not concern yourself about the cost of the plans. Copy them and send them to me. I'll give you my observations. Believe me that water in the landscape, like mirrors in a suite of rooms, forms the principal ornament. . . . You need to plant the surroundings and you don't have a nursery. You also have little choice of trees at your place, so don't fail to pay close attention to this advice: collect all kinds of seeds this autumn, both from your area and elsewhere, omitting none---spruce, holly, beech, elm, thorn, tulip-poplar, yew, birch, oak, willow. Try to get some larch---they create a majestic effect. In the fall I will send you all of these seeds. (Callcott, 142-3)
Henri's correspondence to his daughter provide evidence of and clues
about the plants grown at the Riversdale Mansion. In addition to the tree
varieties suggested in Henri's letter above, the Calverts may have planted
pecan, maple, and walnut trees. Practical, useful plantings would have
included apple, cherry, peach, orange, and lemon trees, as well as vegetables,
kitchen herbs, and medicinal herbs. Among the flowers were probably roses,
poppies, violets, geraniums, heliotrope, hyacinth, jasmine, tulips, and
hydrangea (Buonocore, Appendix 1).
Watching her father's flowers and trees bloom in her Riversdale garden
each spring comforted Rosalie and evoked memories of him. Rosalie confided
in her father that when "I walk in the garden, each tree and rose
planted by your own hand is of interest to me, and I take pleasure in
watching them grow and caring for them" (Callcott, 48).
In addition to seed exchanges with her father, Rosalie probably purchased
seeds and plants from nurseries in America and England. She received catalogs
from Bartram's commercial nursery of Philadelphia. Several seed merchants
were established in Annapolis and small towns surrounding the new capital
city. Merchants of the time include Peter Bellet, John Lieutaud, and William
and Margaret Booth (Sarudy, p.66-77).
Rosalie took great pleasure in daily strolls through her garden, noting its progress and breathing the fresh air. Gardening had gained acceptance as a healthy, virtuous activity for wealthy ladies in the early nineteenth century. In addition to physical benefits, Rosalie derived spiritual comfort from her garden. Occupying her time there eased Rosalie's loneliness and homesickness. "I want to make my garden my principal amusement," Rosalie claimed in 1804 (Callcott, 78). She found supervising in the garden to be both work and play. She encouraged this pastime to her daughter, Caroline, then four years old.
I am very busy with gardening at the moment. Half the garden is leveled off now, and they are working on the palings. Today I planted four groups of cherry trees between the house and the barn, with some rose bushes around. Next I am going to plant several clusters of willows, Italian poplars, and acacias on the north side. There is so much work to do that we don't know where to start . . . I have planted a large number of all the varieties of young fruit trees I could find, and I am going to fill the orchard with young apple trees everywhere there is room. Caroline also has a garden where she works all day long, but she often digs up the seeds she planted the day before. (Callcott, 79-80)
Besides designing and supervising her gardens, Rosalie occasionally potted
plants in her "greenhouse" cellar space and took great care
in personally planting bulbs sent by her father. Enslaved and free servants
with gardening skill, however, provided the manual labor on the grounds
of Riversdale. They conducted the daily work of planting seeds, weeding,
picking fruit, and otherwise maintaining the floral gardens, orchards,
and kitchen garden. Among the three hired servants was a German head gardener
who performed difficult, heavy tasks and managed the other laborers.
In contrast to the physically taxing labor of grounds maintenance stands Rosalie's practice of tending a container garden. She nurtured the houseplants and bulb plants she kept indoors in the winter. Potted geraniums, lemon trees, and heliotropes decorated the Riversdale rooms used for entertaining. Her father's instructions provided guidance for the proper cultivation of the bulbs he sent, as he kept abreast of the current horticultural literature.
I thank you again for . . . the flower bulbs which arrived in the best possible condition. . . . I planted them myself with the greatest care, following your instructions exactly. I looked forward with so much anticipation to seeing them bloom and boasted to everyone that I now had the most beautiful collection in America. (Callcott, 183)
Rosalie's gardens at Riversdale remained one of her passions and occupied her thoughts even as she lay ill in bed at the end of her life. Her daughter Caroline recounted, "During the cessation of pain, she was busied in giving directions to her gardener, and even separated a quantity of seeds herself and said where and how she wished them to be planted" (Mistress 368). Throughout her life, gardening provided the mistress of Riversdale with both intellectual and physical exercise, with amusement and spiritual solace.
Works Cited
Buonocore, Susan C. "Within Her Garden Wall": The Meaning
of Gardening for the Republican Woman, Rosalie Stier Calvert and the Gardens
of Riversdale (1803-1821). Columbia: South Carolina Institute of Archaeology
and Anthropology, University of South Carolina, 1996.
Callcott, Margaret Law, ed. Mistress of Riversdale: The Plantation Letters of Rosalie Stier Calvert, 1795-1821. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
Sarudy, Barbara Wells. Gardens and Gardening in the Chesapeake, 1700-1805. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
