Harriet's Garden

Harriet's Garden. . , The Fulton home you see now was named Oakhurst ("Home in the Oaks"). The mansion was built later in George and Harriet Fulton's lives in 1877 to display their financial success and social status. Oakhurst was influenced by the fashionable homes in larger U.S. cities, but its landscape was distinctly Coastal Bend, Texas. The home had a lush and well-designed landscape complete with exotic plants, flower gardens, and a vegetable garden. The lawn was not manicured green grass. It was longer, rougher mixture of grasses, wildflowers, and vegetation native to the coastal prairie. , Harriet enjoyed the house's landscape and tending to her gardens. She referred to current literature on gardening and exchanged seeds and cuttings with friends and family., I feel sometimes as if I would like to live... among the wildflowers, or in a green house, where I could watch and promote the growth and improvement of every plant, the forming and expanding of every bud, from the most tiny forget me not to the grandest and most noble of flowers." , Harriet Smith Fulton, 1863, Captions , (Photo #1) Seed and Plant Guides, 1890s, Library of Congress , (Photo #2) A year before the Fulton's moved into their new home, they were planning and installing their landscape and conservatory. They ordered plants and equipment from Fairground Nursery in New Orlean LA. , (Photo #3) The Fulton's granddaughters in Harriet's garden located behind the mansion.