“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 Higginbottom will discuss both typical and more progressive garden styles and cultural practices, plant varieties, and preservation techniques.

Christie is a garden consultant and research historian. She 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.

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.