Highlights Archives
Heirloom Gardens Showcase Botanical History
Historians preserve and interpret history in many traditional forms, from books and manuscripts to historic houses and historical exhibits. The Wisconsin Historical Society's historic sites explore the world of "living history," a form of historical interpretation that we generally associate with costumed guides who portray real-life characters drawn from the pages of Wisconsin history. But three of the historic sites also take the phrase "living history" in a different direction. They explore the world of 19th- and early 20th-century vegetation through heirloom gardening.
Heirloom varieties of flowers, fruits, vegetables and herbs, while not easy to neatly define, share some common traits. All heirloom seeds are open pollinated, meaning that they trace their ancestry back through generations of the same seed variety and, unlike hybrid seeds, will reproduce the same variety year after year. Hybrid seeds, which are the first generation offspring of two distinct varieties of the same species, are either sterile or will fail to breed true varieties that replicate the traits of their parents. And while hybrid seeds offer certain advantages to gardeners — including better disease resistance, greater productivity and more uniform fruit — they require more fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides to thrive than heirloom plants do. Also, dedicated heirloom gardeners say their plants produce more flavorful varieties and more fragrant flowers than any hybrid variety can.
Old World Wisconsin has the most extensive heirloom gardening program, with 13 heirloom gardens located among its many historic homes and farmsteads. Visitors to the site will often find historic heirloom gardeners at work tending their gardens, and they are always happy to discuss the art and science of heirloom gardening — and to tout the advantages and Wisconsin pioneer ancestry of the many seed varieties grown there. Many of Old World Wisconsin's heirloom plants are also offered for sale to visitors at the Old World Farmers and Craft Market, open daily during the summer and fall at the Visitor Center Mall, and old-fashioned recipes can be found in the gift shop inside the Ramsey Barn.
 The Dousman family enjoying a card party on the Villa Louis' lush grounds, which include an artesian well (in background) At Villa Louis, the heirloom gardening program reflects the park-like setting of the country estate's grounds near the close of the 19th century. Historic family photographs reveal that an ornamental fence and hedging separated the broad lawn from the surrounding streets and village. Major landscape features such as the artesian well and fountain, fish ponds, grotto and a small gazebo provided a series of focal points linked by a network of gravel pathways. Specimen plantings of unusual trees such as white pine, catalpa, Japanese lilac and weeping mulberry were found throughout the grounds. Some of these specimens survive from the 19th century while others have been replaced with new plantings.
The gardens at the Wade House also played an important role in the life of the stagecoach inn. Beans, peas, turnips, melons, squash, corn, tomatoes, potatoes and other produce from the gardens graced the table at Wade House for both hungry travelers and the Wade family. Today the gardens feature heirloom varieties that would have also been available in the mid-19th century. Black Valentine beans, Amber Globe turnips, Jenny Lind melons and Stowell's Evergreen sweet corn are a few of the varieties found in the gardens.
:: Posted July 18, 2007
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