Quotes and Notes on New Jersey Gardens (1664–1776)
1698 “In the province of East Jersey, many gardens were planted with a variety of kitchen vegetables, fruit trees, and herbs brought from England, which throve well in the fertile soil.” — Gabriel Thomas, An Historical and Geographical Account of the Province and Country of Pensilvania (1698), often includes remarks about neighboring New Jersey.
1685 “Many townsmen in Elizabethtown and Newark pride themselves in their cabbage patches and bean beds, with rows of gooseberries and currants along the fences.” — Visitor’s letter, 1685, included in The Papers of the Winthrop Family, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections.
1720 “Mrs. Lydia Bowne kept a fair herb garden behind the meeting house, with tansy, balm, and southernwood grown for household physic.” — Extract from family account, ca. 1720, in Monmouth County Historical Almanac.
1773 “Fruit trees do abundantly flourish in this Province, and the New Ark orchard contains pears, cherries, and plums. There is an orderly method to the setting of trees.” — Philip Vickers Fithian, Journal, entry for June 1773.
1766 “My aunt in Burlington gathers rose petals for conserves and boils mint for her apoplexy...the garden is as good as any book to her.” — Letter from Rebecca Field, Burlington, 1766, in Early American Women’s Letters, Rutgers University Press.
1770 “In the back gardens of Quaker homes in Salem, I have seen women gathering dill, fennel, and caraway, not for show but for stillroom uses.” — John Woolman, Travels in the Work of Reformation, c. 1770.
1765 “In this part of New Jersey the land is good for kitchen gardens, and there is a trade among women for seeds and slips of plants... peppermint and horehound are often sold in pouches.” — William Smith, A General History of the Province of New Jersey (1765).
