Thomas Mickey Company Profile
I am Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where I taught for 21 years.
I have loved gardening for thirty years. I am a Master Gardener and Landscape Designer, a graduate of the Landscape Institute at the Boston Architectual College.
My research interest is how public relations, marketing and advertising materials provide a window on the culture. Advertising sells more than a product. An ad or marketing message also sells how people should be, how they should act, and even how a garden should look. Like any media text, such images frame the world for us.
I want to know how through a text, like an ad, something came to be represented in a particular way. American gardening is no exception. The question for me here is: how did the words and images of the seed and nursery catalogs of the nineteenth century represent American gardening?
My regular garden column has appeared for several years in New England newspapers.
News from Thomas Mickey:
UK Spectator Magazine Names 'America's Romance With the English Garden' Best Garden Book of the Year
Author Thomas Mickey tells the story of America's obsession with the lawn ATHENS, Ohio, June 10, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — The book America's Romance with the English Garden tells the story of how America fell in love with the English garden, especially the lawn. The UK magazine Spectator named the book one of the "best garden books of […]
Americans Love the English Garden: That's Why We Still Want to Plant Vegetables in the Back
ATHENS, Ohio, Nov. 5, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Take a stroll down any residential block, and you might see tomatoes, squash, and other vegetables adorning front yards—a different story from even a few years ago, when it was a given that vegetables grew in backyards only. Why? The tradition stems from America's long-lasting embrace of the English […]
Homeowners Still Want that Perfect Lawn: New Book Traces America's Romance with the English Garden and its Lawn
ATHENS, Ohio, May 6, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Springtime is finally here and millions of American property owners have turned their attention to whatever it takes to show off the best lawn in the neighborhood. Photo – http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140505/84405 As people mow, fertilize, aerate, and—for some obsessives in the thick of the coming summer's dry heat—spray paint their […]
The Lawn, the Enduring Feature of the Romantic English Garden, Also Stars on TV's Downton Abbey: New Book Traces America's Romance with the English Garden
ATHENS, Ohio, Dec. 26, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — When "Downton Abbey" returns for its fourth season Sunday, January 5, millions of American property owners will see the opening shot of the lawn as a reminder of what their own lawn could look like. The lawn, that green expanse of turf that frames the castle, represents the […]
