Garden Writer Alice Lounsberry: A Life Devoted to Flowers and Friendship

November 6, 1868

On this day, the botanist and garden writer Alice Lounsberry was born in New York City.

From a young age, Alice developed a deep love for the natural world, exploring the gardens and parks around her hometown. By her mid-twenties, her passion and knowledge had earned her a place on the board of the New York Botanical Garden.

But it was Alice's collaboration with the renowned Australian botanical illustrator Ellis Rowan that truly brought her work to life.

Their meeting was a serendipitous one - when Ellis fell ill during a trip to New York, Alice hand-delivered a bouquet of wildflowers to her hospital room, along with a note that read,

From one flower seeker to another - and an admirer of your work.

The gesture touched Ellis deeply, and the two women, despite a twenty-year age difference, forged an instant connection.

Together, Alice and Ellis embarked on a journey through the American South, documenting the region's lush flora in words and watercolors. As Alice later wrote in the preface to their book Southern Wild Flowers & Trees:

To learn something of the history, the folklore and the uses of southern plants and to see rare ones growing in their natural surroundings, Mrs. Rowan and I traveled in many parts of the south, always exercising our best blandishments to get the people of the section to talk with us.

Through the mountainous region, we drove from cabin to cabin, and nowhere could we have met with greater kindness and hospitality.

The duo's partnership yielded three beloved books: A Guide to the Wild Flowers (1899), describing around 500 wildflowers; A Guide to the Trees (1900), detailing nearly 200 trees and shrubs; and the aforementioned Southern Wild Flowers & Trees (1901).

Sadly, their time together was marked by tragedy when Ellis received word that her only son had died in South Africa at the age of 22.

Though Alice continued to write after her collaboration with Ellis ended, her later works never quite achieved the same level of acclaim. Still, her love for gardens never wavered. In her 1910 book Gardens Near the Sea, she mused:

For a garden is not only a place in which to make things grow and to display the beautiful flowers of the earth, but a place that should accord with the various moods of its admirers.

It should be a place in which to hold light banter; a place in which to laugh, and besides, should have a hidden corner in which to weep.

Alice Lounsberry passed away on November 20, 1949, at the age of 81, leaving behind a legacy of botanical passion and a body of work that continues to inspire gardeners and nature lovers to this day.

As she once wrote,

The columbine has a fearless heart and a spirited courage; it is never afraid.

The same could certainly be said of Alice herself.