Exploring the exciting colonial garden

In obser­vance of Inde­pen­dence Day, I thought it would be inter­est­ing to explore what gar­dens were like in colo­nial Amer­ica. Leav­ing behind Euro­pean mar­ket­places for expanses of wild ter­rain and learn­ing to grow food in a new cli­mate cer­tainly came with chal­lenges. It also came with great rewards — far more land than in Eng­land, excit­ing new plants and veg­eta­bles and a sense of ‘no rules.’ Inter­est­ingly, there is not one defin­i­tive ‘Colo­nial Style’ gar­den design as there is in archi­tec­ture. The design, or some­times lack thereof, was far more dic­tated by a colonist’s needs and per­sonal pref­er­ences than adher­ing to a set of rules and guide­lines as there is in Eng­lish and French gar­den design. The rus­tic beauty of a colo­nial gar­den is in its func­tion­al­ity. While orchards, herb and veg­etable gar­dens were the main focus of the colo­nial gar­dener, sev­eral orna­men­tals were still enjoyed in colo­nial America.

Old fash­ioned vari­eties of lilac were cov­eted by wealthy colonists, which were even con­sid­ered a sta­tus sym­bol because they were still so rare, but admired, in Amer­ica. Because prop­a­gat­ing lilacs requires a fair amount of skill, they would not become com­mon until much later. More com­mon orna­men­tals were wild roses, lilies and some­times aza­lea (more so in South­ern colonies). The most com­mon orna­men­tal shrub was box­wood. Box­wood was com­monly used as fenc­ing within the garden.

Inter­est­ingly colonists rarely divided their gar­dens as we do today. Instead of hav­ing an herb gar­den, a veg­etable gar­den and an orchard often these three were sim­ply min­gled together in one large area. A major advan­tage of this con­cept is that the scent of many herbs is very unat­trac­tive to pests like deer and rab­bits. So hav­ing herbs cohab­i­tate with fruit trees and veg­eta­bles was one of the few means of dis­cour­ag­ing pests from invad­ing the gar­den. Some crops, how­ever, were always grown fur­ther out from the house and divided from the rest of the gar­den. Par­tic­u­larly corn and pump­kins. Because both crops require a lot of space they could not be incor­po­rated with the rest of the gar­den. One of the few stan­dards among colo­nial gar­dens is, for the most part, that they were divided in two by a cen­tral path either of brick or stone. Mim­ic­k­ing the cen­tral hall design of most colo­nial homes, the path was right in line with the front and back doors. Gar­dens more sprawl­ing with defined fea­tures like sep­a­rate orchards and orna­men­tal gar­dens were only main­tained by the very wealthy. A prime exam­ple of a wealthy colonist’s gar­den would be Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.

To more eas­ily con­trol the qual­ity of their soil, colonists reg­u­larly employed raised beds. Cer­tainly more rus­tic look­ing than the raised beds of today, but still the same great hall­marks of excel­lent drainage, ease to work in and to con­tain the plants within. Colo­nial raised beds were often fash­ioned out of entire logs or large beams.

The infor­mal­ity and unpre­ten­tious nature of the colo­nial gar­den is cer­tainly worth remem­ber­ing today. Rus­tic and beau­ti­ful, these gar­dens mag­nif­i­cently illus­trate that prac­ti­cal can be beau­ti­ful and embody my favorite aspect of gar­den­ing — there are no rules. Luck­ily today we do not com­pletely rely on our gar­dens as the colonists did, so we have even more free­dom to exper­i­ment and enjoy unique plantings.

On behalf of the Mas­ter Gar­dener Asso­ci­a­tion, I would like to wish you a very happy Fourth of July!

Stephen Jones is an OSU Exten­sion Mas­ter Gar­dener Volunteer

Posted by Master Gardener on Jun 30 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.