Plants in Early American Gardens - Bee Balm (for Oswego & Earl Gray Tea)

Bee Balm (Monarda didyma)

This vigorous native perennial was recognized as a desirable ornamental and kitchen garden plant by the early 18th century, and seed was sent by John Bartram to England in 1744. It was reported that by 1760 there was “plenty in covent garden market” in London. 

Early American settlers, especially the Shakers in upstate New York, made a tea from the leaves, hence the name Oswego tea, which is now Earl Gray. Bernard McMahon listed “Crimson Monarda” in his 1804 broadside, and bee balm was cited as a garden worthy plant by many 19th century American garden writers, including A. J. Downing, Peter Henderson, Joseph Breck, and Robert Buist. Deer tend to avoid this plant’s fragrant foliage.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden Design - Trees-Bower

In an 18th century pleasure ground or garden, a bower was a shelter or covered place in a garden, overarched with branches of trees, shrubs, or other plants. A bower made with boughs of trees or vines bent and twined together served as a shady recess from the sun.

William Shakespeare referred to a 1596 bower in 1 Henry IV, "Ditties...Sung by a faire Queene in a Summers Bowre."

In 1667, John Milton wrote, "Where the unpierc't shade Imbound the noontide Bowrs."
Richard Bradley warned in his Dictionary in 1727, "Care must be had that you do not confound the Word Bower with Arbour, because the first is always built long and arch'd, whereas the second is either round or square at Bottom, and has a sort of Dome or Ceiling at the Top."

In 1776, while traveling in western North Carolina and perhaps a little homesick, William Bartram wrote of "companies of young, innocent Cherokee virgins, some busily gathering the rich fragrant fruit, others having already filled their baskets, lay reclined under the shade of floriferous and fragrant native bowers of Magnolia, Azalea, Philadelphus, perfumed Calycanthus, sweet Yellow Jessamine and cerulian Glycine frutescens."

In the new republic of the United States of America in 1787, Manasseh Cutler described Gray's Garden near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "At every end, side, and corner, there were summer-houses, arbors covered with vines or flowers or shady bowers encircled with trees and flowering shrubs, each of which was formed in a different taste."

The Viginia Argus advertised a house for sale in the summer of 1799, in Bowling Green, Virginia:
"Valuable Property FOR SALE at the Bowling Green, near Richmond, that much frequented Tavern and public Garden...The garden is very extensive...with Summer Houses, and bowers for the accomodation of company."

When planning the landscaping for Monticello in 1804, Thomas Jefferson declared, "The kitchen garden is not the place for ornaments...bowers and treillages suit that better."

In his 1806 Gardener's Calendar, Philadelphian Bernard M'Mahon described where to place buildings in the garden, "Various light ornamental buildings and erections are introduced as ornaments to particular departments; such as temples, bowers, banqueting houses...and other edifices ...usually erected...in openings between the division of the ground, and contiguous to the terminations of grand walks."

In Salem, North Carolina, Juliana Margaret Conner descriped an 1827 visit to the Moravian community, "Afterwards walked into the garden...we saw what I conceived to be a curiosity and in itself extremely beautiful. It was a large summer house formed of eight cedar trees planted in a circle, the tops whilst young were chained together in the center forming a cone. The immense brances were all cut, so that there was not a leaf, the outside is beautifully trimmed perfectly even and very thick within, were seats placed around and doors or openings were cut, through the branches, it had been planted 40 years."

Garden to Table - Home-Made Two Cowslip Wines (or Virginia Bluebells)

 

John Greenwood (American artist, 1727-1792) Sea Captains Carousing, 1758.  Detail

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines Cordials & Liqueurs 1909 by Helen S. Wright

COWSLIP WINE
To three gallons of water put seven pounds of sugar; stir it well together, and beat the whites of ten eggs very well, and mix with the liquor, and make it boil as fast as possible. Skim it well, and let it continue boiling two hours; then strain it through a hair sieve, and set it a cooling, and when it is cold as wort should be, put a small quantity of yeast to it on a toast, or in a dish. Let it stand all night working; then bruise one-half peck of cowslips, put them into your vessel, and your liquor upon them, adding three ounces of syrup of lemons. Cut a turf of grass and lay on the bung; let it stand a fortnight, and then bottle it. Put your tap into your vessel before you put your wine in, that you may not shake it.

COWSLIP OR CLARY WINE, NO. 2
The best method of making these wines is to put in the pips dry, when the fermentation of the wine has subsided. This method is preferred for two reasons: first, it may be performed at any time of the year when lemons are cheapest, and when other wine is making; second, all waste of the pips is avoided. Being light, they are sure to work over if put in the cask while the wine is in a state of fermentation. Boil fourteen pounds of good moist sugar with five gallons of water, and one ounce of hops. Shave thin the rinds of eight lemons or Seville oranges, or part of each; they must be put in the boil the last quarter of an hour, or the boiling liquor poured over them. Squeeze the juice to be added when cool, and rinse the pulp in the hot liquor, and keep it filled up, either with wine or new beer, as long as it works over; then paste brown paper, and leave it for four, six, or eight months. The quantity of flowers is one quart of flowers to each gallon of wine. Let them be gathered on a fine, dry day, and carefully picked from every bit of stalk and green. Spread them thinly on trays, sheets, or papers, and turn them often. When thoroughly dry put them in paper bags, until the wine is ready to receive them. Put them in at the bung-hole; stir them down two or three times a day, till all the cowslips have sunk; at the same time add isinglass. Then paste over again with paper. In six months the wine will be fit to bottle, but will be improved by keeping longer in the cask. The pips shrink into a very small compass in drying; the quantity allowed is of fresh-gathered flowers. Observe, also, that wine well boiled, and refined with hops and isinglass, is just as good used from the cask as if bottled, which is a great saving of time and hazard. Wine made on the above principles has been often praised by connoisseurs, and supposed to have been bottled half a day. 

Old-Time Recipes for Home Made Wines is a cookbook for those who want to make their own wines & liqueurs from available ingredients, including fruits, flowers, vegetables, & shrubs from local gardens, farms, & orchards. It includes ingredients & instructions for making & fermenting spirits, from wine & ale to sherry, brandy, cordials, & even beer. 

Colonial Era Cookbooks

1615, New Booke of Cookerie, John Murrell (London) 

1798, American Cookery, Amelia Simmons (Hartford, CT)

1803, Frugal Housewife, Susannah Carter (New York, NY)

1807, A New System of Domestic Cookery, Maria Eliza Rundell (Boston, MA)

1808, New England Cookery, Lucy Emerson (Montpelier, VT)

Helpful Secondary Sources

America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking/Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2004.

Colonial Kitchens, Their Furnishings, and Their Gardens/Frances Phipps Hawthorn; 1972

Early American Beverages/John Hull Brown   Rutland, Vt., C. E. Tuttle Co 1996 

Early American Herb Recipes/Alice Cooke Brown  ABC-CLIO  Westport, United States

Food in Colonial and Federal America/Sandra L. Oliver

Home Life in Colonial Days/Alice Morse Earle (Chapter VII: Meat and Drink) New York : Macmillan Co., ©1926.

A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America/James E. McWilliams New York : Columbia University Press, 2005.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Virginia Bluebells or Mountain Cowslips

Virginia Bluebells (Mertensia virginica)

On April 16, 1766, in one of his earliest observations in his Garden Book, Thomas Jefferson noted, “the bluish colored, funnel-formed flower in the low grounds in bloom.” Also called Virginia or mountain cowslip and Roanoke bells in the 18th century, this is one of our most desirable native perennial flowers. It was introduced to Britain by 1700 and Williamsburg’s John Custis sent roots to his patron Peter Collinson in the 1730s. It is easy to grow in most shady gardens and the emerging tufts of blue-green foliage are a harbinger of spring. Do not allow dormant roots to dry out.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Plants in Early American Gardens - Feathered Hyacinth

Feathered Hyacinth (Muscari comosum 'Plumosum')

Feathered Hyacinth, which is native to the Mediterranean region, has been in cultivation since 1612. Jefferson noted it blooming on April 25, 1767 at his boyhood home, Shadwell. Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon forwarded bulbs to Jefferson in 1812 for planting along the flower borders at Monticello. Today the Tassel Hyacinth (Muscari comosum), the species form, is naturalized throughout the gardens and south orchard at Monticello.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Plants in Early American Gardens - Rose Geranium

Rose Geranium (Pelargonium graveolens)

The P. graveolens species, native to southern Africa, was introduced to England in 1774 and has long been used to produce geranium oil. At least eight species of sweet-scented geraniums were introduced to America from southern Africa between 1770 and 1820. Rose, nutmeg, and oak-leaf geraniums were among the earliest imports. Jean Skipwith of Prestwould in Mecklenburg County, Virginia, listed “rose geranium” among her houseplants in papers that have been dated between 1785 and 1805. This geranium lends a lovely rose scent to potpourri and the edible leaves can be used in jams, jellies, cakes, puddings and more.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Garden History - Trees-Grove

A grove is a small woods or cluster of trees either occuring naturally & intentionally left in the landscape or purposefully planted in the pleasure grounds around a dwelling in the 18th century. Often a grove consisted of large trees whose branches shaded the ground below affoding shade or forming avenues or walks. Groves produced food attracting songbirds to delight visitors.

Some groves of trees were planted for remembrance honoring a passed friend or relative. Groves were often seen as solemn, whether intentionally planted as a memorial or not.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney wrote in a letter in 1742, from Charleston, South Carolina, "You may wonder how I could in this gay season think of planting a Cedar grove, which rather reflects an Autumnal gloom and solemnity than the freshness and gayty of spring. But so it is...I intend then to connect in my grove the solemnity (not the solidity) of summer or autumn with the cheerfulness and pleasures of spring, for it shall be filled with all kind of flowers, as well wild as Garden flowers, with seats of Camomoil and here and there a fruit tree--oranges, nectrons, Plumbs."

In June of 1743, Isaac Norris II at Fairhill near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was planning on, "...opening my woods into groves, enlarging my fishponds and beautifying my springs."

A 1761 house-for-sale ad in the Pennsylvania Gazette touted, "A small Grove of Pine Trees before the Garden, from which you are entertained with a most beautiful Prospect of the City of Philadelphia, and of the River, for 4 or 5 Miles downwards; so that no Ship can pass or repass, but by hailing her. you may easily know from whence she came, or wither she is going."

George Ogilivie wrote of the 1770s grounds at Alexander Garden's Otranto near Charleston, South Carolina,
"There midst the grove, with unassuming guise
But rural neatness, see the mansion rise!"

At the beginning of the American Revolution, General George Washington wrote a letter in August 19 1776, to Lund Washington, who remained at his home Mount Vernon in Virginia, "I mean to have groves of Trees at each end of the dwelling House ...these Trees to be Planted without any order to regularity (but pretty thick, as they can at any time be thin'd) and to consist that at the North end, of locusts altogether. and that at the South, of all the clever kind of Trees (especially flowering ones) that can be got, such as Crab apple, Poplar, Dogwood, Sasafras, Laurel, Willow...to be interspersed here and there with every greens such as Holly, Pine, and Cedar, also Ivy; to these may be added the Wild flowering Shrubs of the larger kind, such as the fringe Trees."

Washington was back at Mount Vernon, after the war had concluded and before he assumed the presidency. In March of 1785, he wrote in his diary, "Transplanted in the groves at the ends of the House...9 live Oak, 11 Yew or Hemlock, 10 Aspen, 4 Magnolia, 2 Elm, 2 Papaw, 2 Lilacs, 3 Fringe, 1 Swamp berry."

Reverend Manasseh Cutler wrote in 1787 of the trees on the mall in Philadelphia, "The trees are yet small, but most judiciously arranged. The...small groves in the squares have a most delightful effect."

Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, wrote in 1790 of the grounds at Bush Hill in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "A beautiful grove behind the house, through which there is a spacious gravel walk, guarded by a number of marble statues."

When visiting the Moravian settlement of Salem, North Carolina in May of 1791, William Loughton Smith noted, "The church yard is on a hill above the town, surrounded by shady groves."

In 1791, Rev. William Bentley wrote of the garden of Joseph Barrell, a Boston merchant, "His garden is beyond any example I have seen. A young grove is growing the background, in the middle of which is a pond, decorated with four ships at anchor, and a marble figure in the centre."

George Washington's tree plantings had grown enough by 1796, that Benjamin Henry Latrobe wrote of them on his visit to Mount Vernon, Virginia, "The house becomes visible between two groves of trees at about a mile's distance." Just after George Washington's death, Mount Vernon was described in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1800. "On either wing is a thick grove of different flowering forest trees. Parallel with them, on the land side, are two spacious gardens, into which one is led by two serpentine gravel walks, planted with weeping willows and shady shrubs."

In 1798, Timothy Dwight wrote of Boston, Massachusettes, "Boston, enjoys a superiority to all other great towns on this continent...the gardening superior to what is found in most other places; the orchards, groves, and forests, numerous and thrifty."

In a house for sale ad in the Federal Gazette in 1800, the grounds of Adrian Valeck's country seat in Baltimore, Maryland, were described, "Behind the garden in a grove and shrubbery or bosquet planted with a great variety of the finest forest trees, oderiferous & other flowering shrubs etc."

When Manasseh Cutler visited the Woodlands in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in November of 1803, he wrote, "We then walked over the pleasure grounds...lawns of green grass, frequently mowed, and at different distances numerous copse of trees, interspersed with artificial groves, which are of trees collected from all parts of the world."
Grove of Trees at Monticello.

In 1803, Alexander Hamilton's garden contained, "A few dogwood trees, not large, scattered along the margin of the grove would be very pleasant."

In 1807, Thomas Jefferson made notes for his Virginia home of Monticello, "The canvas at large must be a Grove, of the largest trees, (poplar, oak, elm, maple, ash, hickory, chestnut, Linden, Weymouth pine, sycamore) trimmed very high, so as to give the appearance of open ground, yet not so far apart but that they may cover the ground with close shade."

Artist Charles Willson Peale wrote to his son Rembrandt Peale in 1810 from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, "I am often pleased with the solemn groves skirting my meadows in majestic silence and cool appearance."

New Yorker John Nicholson emphasized the practical use of a grove in The Farmer's Assistant in 1820, "These are both ornamental and useful. To plant heights of ground, the sides and tops of which are generally not very good for tillage or pasture, adds much to the beauty of a landscape; and is at the same time highly useful, as it regards the quantities of firewood which may be produced from such spots...Sugarmaple-trees, planted round the borders of meadows, and some straggling ones in them, are very pleasant and profitable, as they do no injury to the growth of the grass. Wherever trees can be planted in pastures and along fences, without doing injury to the growths of the adjoining fields by their shade, this part of rural economy ought never to be omited."