A few months ago, we checked out PBS's Colonial House on Netflix.  The reality TV show plunks a few families down in New England where they replicate what life was like in Plymouth Colony in 1628.  Although the series was interesting, I was sorely disappointed by the lack of time spent focusing on the gardens --- that's the whole point of a reality TV show about the past, right?  Early New England Gardens: 1620 - 1840, a little booklet put out by Old Sturbridge Village, filled in the gaps.

The early American colonist generally had two separate gardens.  First, a house plot (also known as a merestead) was equivalent to our kitchen garden.  It was placed right by the house and was full of vegetables, herbs, and flowers used every day.  Further off, the settlement fields were planted with large-scale crops --- the staples backyard gardeners don't often grow much of anymore, like field corn, parsnips, turnips, beans (for drying), pumpkins, and cabbage.  Personally, I've found that putting a garden any further than two steps out the front door means that it gets neglected (and eaten by deer), but I guess these colonists felt the need to concentrate their houses close together for mutual protection.

There were two general patterns evident in meresteads in early New England --- the cottage garden style and the formal garden style.  The former predominated in the Plymouth colony and among the poorer colonists while the latter was more common in Massachusetts Bay colony and among richer folks.

I've described cottage gardens in a previous lunchtime series --- you may remember that cottage gardens are a very informal hodgepodge of plants and animals, with herbs, flowers, vegetables, fruits, and even pigs and bees mashed together in a small space.  The people who settled in Plymouth Colony believed that gardens should be austere and utilitarian, and that flowers with no use were frivolous and extravagant.  The booklet notes, "There was actually an early Connecticut statute declaring it unlawful to walk in the garden on the Sabbath."

In contrast, the more prosperous Massachusetts Bay colonists based their gardens on the English manor garden.  There was usually a long central path, ending at an arbor, summer house, or dovecote.  Beds along the side were usually linear (though still informally planted with mixtures of plants).

As New England colonies became more prosperous in the eighteenth century, the more formal type of garden became widespread.  Soon, flowers were separated out of the vegetable gardens and the layout began to resemble the American landscape seen today.  Most houses had a large front garden composed purely of flowers and/or lawn running down a path to their front gate, with the vegetables tucked away out of sight.

As a final note, all of the photos in this week's lunchtime series come from Old Sturbridge Village's website.  I got a bit lost browsing their images and comparing colonial life to my life.  If you're bored, you might wander over and look for a while too.

This post is part of our Early New England Gardens lunchtime series.  Read all of the entries: Early New England Gardens Vegetables grown in early American gardens Colonists' gardening tricks Fruit in colonial gardens Early American flower gardens

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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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