“Pot Herbs, Sallads and Roots”: Kitchen Gardens in Early America is a program defining the role played by kitchen gardens in the lives of New Englanders 1790 to 1850. Using documentation from Samuel Deane’s book, The New England Farmer (Worcester, MA: Isaiah Thomas, 1790), with additional 19th-century publications and landscape illustrations, and the re-created gardens at Old Sturbridge Village as examples, Christie will discuss both typical and more progressive garden styles and cultural practices, plant varieties, and preservation techniques.
About our presenter: Christie Higginbottom, Garden Consultant and Research Historian: Christie has worked as a costumed interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village since 1981. From 1984 to 2004 she coordinated the historic horticulture program researching, planning and planting the re-created kitchen and flower gardens at the museum’s historic households. She also supervised the Village’s Herb Garden collection, a garden exhibiting over 300 varieties of historic herbs. From 2004 to 2006 she researched and developed a series of self-guided walking trails interpreting people and the environment in the early 1800s. She contributed research and design for the 2007–2009 exhibit, “Taking Root: Gardening in Pots in the Early 1800s.” Now retired from full-time work at OSV, she continues to work in costume part-time – most often in the Herb Garden.
Christie writes and consults on historic gardens and their interpretation, antique plants, and herb use; and she lectures at museums and historic sites, garden clubs, historical societies, and libraries. She has taught home gardening classes at the Adult Education program at Bay Path Regional Vocational High School, New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill, and the Northeast Organic Farmers Association.
Christie and her husband, Bruce Craven, have published Finding William Lewis [1819-1897]; The Every Day Life of This Singular Man. Their book relates the life of this New England leatherworker, book peddler and farmer as revealed in his 143 journals and over 200 account books.
This program is co-sponsored by the Friends of the Avon Library and Garden Club of Avon, Avon Land Trust and Avon Clean Energy as part of their “How They Grew” Avon 250 Initiative.
Please register, so we can set the community room up with appropriate seating.
Snow date: 3/31/25, same time