Oh, what a fun theme! Do you have an 1890s cottage?

I would guess it would be a mixture of flowers that people brought with them from back east and some native plants and flowers.

Yellow rose might have been one, along with lilacs, which always seem to mark the old farmsteads :)

My first thought was lilacs too. What about columbine & coneflower, delphinium maybe? False indigo, tansy, feverfew & turtlehead are native in the eastern half of the U.S. along with common milkweed, beauty berry, bellflower, black snakeroot, blanket flower, gayfeather, cardinal flower, lupine, bee balm & black-eyed susan.

Good question! I would tend to think that is more Victorian era, but I think the midwest has always been more vernacular than high-style. I will say that the older homes in the more rural areas of northern Illinois seem to have a lot of bridalwreath spirea, but I'm not sure the exact era they were introduced. I'll also say that the farms probably had more, well, farms and not so much gardens. Hmm..what about the bright orange ditch daylilies? Oh, and peonies, too! All low maintenance, long lived and survivors for people too busy with everything else!

Old fashioned red, white, pink peonies. There are also some old pass a long bearded iris from then as well...check HIPS website. Hollyhocks perhaps is another one. The old fashioned single flowering ones.

Can you tell us more about your project with these flowers?

I was visiting a local homestead museum last year, where they were talking about flowers original to the era (mid to late 1800's) One thing I remember was that it was traditional to plant hollyhocks around the outhouse to hide it. Also they had peonies, some roses, coneflower and some annuals ( I don't remember which)

Yep, sure was the Victorian era. Right smack in the middle of it.

Hollyhocks would have been common, as well as lilacs. Peonies too. In many older houses you come across peonies and lilacs still going strong after so many years. It's amazing, really.

Old fashioned snowball and lots of daffodils!

Don't forget iris pallida dalmatica, the concord grape iris, first introduced in the l6th centry. It was surely in an 1890's garden! It is all over the US!