Historic Kitchen Gardens

Historic Daniel Boone Home & Heritage Center, Lindenwood University, Defiance, Missouri  

Accounts of the early 1800's remarked that the gardens contained a variety of vegetables that were cultivated in raised beds, intermingled with herbs, flowers, and shrubs, located next to small orchards containing a variety of the choicest fruits.  They complimented each other in various ways through companion planting.  Three Sisters Garden contain small mounds of soil planted with corn surrounded by beans which fix the nitrogen in the soil for the corn plants to utilize.  The pole beans climb the corn stalks.  Winter squash seeds or pumpkins were planted  in-between the mounds to control and shade out the weeds that might overtake the corn and beans later in the growing season.

In England and France, where kitchen gardens are called potagers (poh-tah-JAYS), a lot of planning goes into making sure these humble gardens are as attractive as they are practical. Potagers feature patterned beds and arches where herbs, edible flowers, and fruits mingle with the carefully selected vegetables in a celebration of color, flavor, fragrance and form.

Herbs and edible flowers will also brighten your kitchen garden. You could even surround the kitchen garden with a border of daylilies to give it definition. (Both the unopened buds of daylilies, valued in stir-fries, and the open flowers are edible).  Herbs were among the first kitchen-garden plants because of their ornamental value and numerous uses.  The kitchen garden may include many different gardens uses and many of the vegetables used then are still popular today.  Here are some examples of what likely was grown in the 1800's:

Culinary Garden (for cooking) - asparagus, bush and pole bean, beet, cabbage, carrot, corn, cucumber, eggplant, gourd, leek, lettuce, melon, onion, peas, radish, spinach, summer & winter squash, turnip, watermelon

Medicinal Garden (for healing) - yarrow, feverfew, chamomile, wormwood, marshmallow 

Tea Garden (for making herbal teas) - bergamot, chamomile, coriander, jasmine, lavender, lemon balm, lemon verbena, marjoram, peppermint, rose hips, rosemary, stevia, thyme, violets

Dye Garden (plants used for dyeing wool or linen) - woad (blue color), weld (bright yellow color), and coreopsis (orange color)

Herb Gardens were very important to frontier families who did not have access to doctors, adequate refrigeration, or store bought goods.  These gardens likely would include rosemary, bee balm, dill, lavender, chives, lady's mantle, yarrow, wormwood and bay laurel.

For the children, there was a sunflower house to play in and the seeds were later harvested  to eat.

Hickory County in Missouri hosts a yearly regional Black Powder Rendezvous below the Pomme de Terre Dam in the Outlet Area the first weekend in May.  In 2014, it will be on May 3rd and 4th. Again this year there will be a Historic Kitchen Garden on display put on by Fort de Chartres Heritage Garden from Illinois that is well worth checking out!




Source:  The Historic Daniel Boone Home & Heritage Center, Lindenwood University, Defience, MO at: www.danielboonehome.com

and 

The Kitchen Gardeners Internationals at:

http://kgi.org/fort-de-chartres-heritage-jardin-potager-project

Posted:  4/25/2014