Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture looks back at Spokane’s passion for gardening
Love affairs make for good stories, even if the romance is still going strong. And so it is with the tale of the heart told in “Cultivating Spokane: A Celebration of Gardens and Parks.”
The modest new exhibit at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture is an affectionate look at the Lilac City’s enduring passion for growing things. The collection of vintage photographs, green-thumb artifacts and oddball treasures might not fully explain why this city has been bitten so hard by the gardening bug. But it certainly does an entertaining job of describing some of the symptoms.
“Cultivating Spokane” opens Saturday and runs through
Oct. 17.
It’s located in the museum’s orientation gallery, just inside the main entrance. There is no charge to visit that space.
Marsha Rooney, MAC’s curator of history, combed through museum archives to assemble an eclectic assortment of memory-lane milestones.
“It’s sort of random and it bounces around a little bit, but I think it’s a lot of fun,” she said.
The presentation salutes both showplace public gardens and achievements in backyard landscaping. Of course, as the photos show, residential gardens are not necessarily paltry.
There are design drawings for the Davenport Hotel’s rooftop gardens, seed catalogs, trophies, ribbons, scrapbooks and a vintage lawn mower.
Watercolors by botanist Walter Flowers and reminders of high school herbarium projects are also on display.
There’s even a brochure touting Manito Park’s benefit to the real estate values in surrounding housing developments.
“I’m always looking for surprises,” said Rooney. “I’m hoping these kinds of things appeal to people.”
Many of the photos and memorabilia are from the World War I era.
The exhibit is part of an ongoing citywide acknowledgement of gardening’s role in Spokane’s lineup of lifestyles.
MAC visitors also will have the opportunity to take self-guided outdoor tours of the museum grounds and conservatory of the historic Campbell House.