Early American flower gardens
I
was amused to see that most of the flowers in my garden were already
being planted in New
England gardens
before 1700. These included
sunflowers, columbine, crocuses, bee balm, grape
hyacinth, evening primrose, star-of-bethlehem, and tulips. I
didn't set out to plant old-fashioned flowers, but I think that the
early colonists, cottage
gardeners, and I all
share similar notions
about flowers --- there's little time in our lives to tend to them, so
the blooms had better take care of themselves and also have a use.
Like cottage gardeners
in England, American colonists transplanted easy
to care for wildflowers into their meresteads. Of course, these
were different wildflowers than the colonists had at home, but they're
probably familiar to you --- milkweed, butterflyweed, celandine poppy,
larkspur, wood lily, cardinal flower, musk mallow, forget-me-not, and
black-eyed susan are some examples. When I was in high school, I
was also prone to transplant wildflowers into my garden and I gave over
half of these flowers a shot. It sounds like I should probably
consider the other flowers used by the early colonists since the plants
are likely to be right up my alley.
| This post is part of our Early New England Gardens lunchtime series.
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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.
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