While the name Emily Dickinson has become synonymous with poetry, specifically morbid poetry, during her lifetime, her name was more likely to be synonymous with gardening. Starting at a young age, Emily had an extensive knowledge and appreciation for horticulture and was known to include dried flowers in many of her correspondence to friends as well as continually gifting bouquets and baskets to friends and family even after her withdrawal from society. Her love of nature could also be found in some poems that were inspired by this appreciation like "The Bee," as well as including cameos of her knowledge in many poems, for example, her mentions of nectar and bees. Around the age of 13, she began collecting flowers and specimen from her garden and including her dried collections in a herbarium, which is pictured here and is on display in Harvard's Houghton Library in digitized form.
Onion, Rebecca. “A Teenage Emily Dickinson's Careful Collection of Dried Flowers.” Slate Magazine, Slate, 4 June 2013, https://slate.com/human-interest/2013/06/emily-dickinson-her-collection….
Christopher, Tom, et al. “Emily Dickinson, Gardener.” The National Endowment for the Humanities, https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2010/julyaugust/feature/emily-dickinson-….