The Comfort and Charm of a 1990s Garden

Vintage garden books and a '90s-inspired window box

Is it weird to have the Martha Stewart channel on Roku playing all the time? My sister Lauren seemed to think so when she visited. “Do you leave this on all day?” she asked, and I could tell she didn’t approve. Maybe it is? I told Lauren that I have to have the TV on all day because of the dog—Peep, our barky poodle, barks at any kind of noise in the apartment hallway, so we always need something playing inside to muffle the sound so that our neighbors won’t hate us.

But I also like to play Martha because her shows from the ‘90s are so comforting to me, especially the garden segments. You already know how I feel about her, but there’s also a lot to be said for a '90s garden, especially a ‘90s garden on the east coast. At The Strand, my favorite bookstore in NYC, I came across a book from the ‘90s about Maine gardens and I should have bought it, because looking through the photos made my heart flutter fast. It was filled with wild-looking, cottage-y gardens and shingle-style houses and women dressed like coastal grandmothers, with the blueness of the Atlantic providing the most picturesque backdrop you could imagine.

From Pots and Containers, by Warren Schultz. Photo: Samantha Larrance

I may not have bought that book, but I did recently find two other garden books from the ‘90s that are almost as good. I bought a book on window boxes for a dollar from a plant book sale, and then a few weeks later I found a pots and containers book on a front stoop. It’s fate! Both books were written by New Yorkers, and even though they’re not exclusively about east coast gardens, they do have a New England sort of flavor about them.

What do I think about when I think about a 1990s garden? If these books have anything to do with it it’s a homey old-fashioned-ness. Natural materials and colors, with a nod to history. The gardens in these books aren’t fashionable, and the color schemes are kind of all over the place. They’re charming and comfortable; they’re not intimidating at all. I’m so sick of things that are intimidating. Right now I gravitate towards comfort.

Cross stitch is a very 1990s hobby, too. (Can we please bring back cross stitch, but in an un-ironic way?)

The gardens in these books bring back my own memories of the ‘90s, and I think that nostalgia is playing a big role here. Back in the ‘90s I was a kid and a teenager, and the world seemed so wholesome still (even when it wasn’t). I think of the ‘90s and I think of craft fairs and Martha, of course, and Victoria Magazine and family trips to a Wisconsin bed and breakfast, where I’d sit in an upstairs sun porch and read old copies of Birds and Blooms. I was a late-bloomer with a love of grandma hobbies like cross stitch, which I’ve just taken up again, and it’s even more fun than I remembered. I found this vintage William Morris-inspired kit on Ebay, and, yes, it’s from the ‘90s.

From Carol Spier’s For Your Garden: Window Boxes. Photography: Christopher Bain

Anyhow, the ‘90s garden books: I especially love the one on window boxes, and it was funny because it was one of the last books available at the book sale. I don’t think anyone wanted it—it does look very old-fashioned, but that’s what I love about it. I mean, some of the window box combinations in there are pretty ugly. Some clashing colors and some weird mixes of plants. There’s a lot of symmetry in there, too, which isn’t the kind of thing I usually go for in my own plantings, but, I don’t know? It does look soothing in an orderly, cross stitch sort of way. I was thinking about that a bit last night as I was cross stitching; there’s so much chaos all around in the world today, but not in cross stitch, where the charts are already made and have only to be followed. I don’t need to decide where each little ‘x’ needs to go; I just need to look at the chart and count. Come to think of it I think that it’s the same reason why knitting and baking are so comforting to me, too. There’s already a pattern and a recipe to follow, and there’s a real sense of satisfaction in following it. Sometimes a garden can be like that, too.

A ‘90s-Inspired Window Box

Now, is a 1990s-inspired window box all that different from the window boxes of today? Not really. In her book, Carol Spier tells you to get the same exact plants that people still buy for their window boxes: geraniums, pansies, vines of some kind, lobelia . . .

My own “window” boxes are planted to look more cottage garden-like and wild, so I thought it would be fun to plant a couple more traditional ones. Especially since I still have the window box/railing frames from the IKEA planters I got last year. All I had to do was buy some coir liners for them and they were ready to go.

I started out with some lobelia and alyssum that I grew from seed; the alyssum is white but the lobelia is a mystery color, so I’m hoping that whatever color the blooms end up being will look ok with the very pink geranium I bought. It’s a gamble. I also planted some verbena and some vinca vines, which I’m not too sure about either. I like the look of the vines for now, but apparently vinca can take over a window box quickly, so I’ll just have to keep an eye on it.

I also planted another box just as symmetrically, but with opposing colors: a white geranium and pink verbena. And I hung the boxes on the very flimsy plastic fence that separates our terrace from another, so I’m crossing my fingers that the weight of the plants doesn’t take the whole thing down. Anyhow, I thought it would just be a funny experiment, but it turns out that I really like it. Very, very comforting, and a soothing recipe to follow: thriller/filler/spiller, and you’re good to go.