The U.S. Postal Service has released stamps that celebrate the beauty of American gardens. The stamps feature 10 different photographs of botanic, country estate and municipal gardens taken between 1996 and 2014. The gardens include: Biltmore Estate Gardens (North Carolina); Brooklyn Botanic Garden (New York); Chicago Botanic Garden (Illinois); Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (Maine); Dumbarton Oaks Garden (District of Columbia); The Huntington Botanical Gardens (California); Alfred B. Maclay Gardens State Park (Florida); Norfolk Botanical Garden (Virginia); Stan Hywet Hall & Gardens (Ohio); and Winterthur Garden (Delaware). To learn more, click here.
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USPS releases vintage seed packet stamps
The U.S. Postal Service recently released new stamps with vintage seed packet artwork. These first-class forever stamps are based on photographs of seed packets from a century ago.
Created using chromolithography—a process that replaced hand-tinted lithographs and allowed for inexpensive multi-color prints—the illustrations originally graced the fronts of flower seed packets printed between 1910 and 1920.
Each of the 10 stamps depicts blossoms of one variety of flower: a trio of cosmos in delicate white, pink, and red; stalks of yellow, pink and coral foxgloves; bright yellow primrose flowers with orange centers; a vibrant orange calendula; white, pink and blue aster blooms; one pale and one dark dianthus; linum blossoms in a rich red; white drifts of alyssum; clusters of phlox in red, pink and purple; and pale pink, subtle yellow, and muted orange-red zinnia flowers.