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RE: new to list

Martha and everyone else interested in heirlooms and historic gardens-

I have been to Sturbridge Village- in fact, my Brandywine seed came from
there via my cousin.  I think you have a great idea about using the logs.

I have seen intensive planting done more often with herbs in old gardens.
They use the herbs to create designs- filling in all the space, often with
stone paths in between.  My cousin is a tour guide at Gore Place in
Waltham, MA on weekends.  It was built as a country home for a wealthy
family around 1800-1810.  It is a fine example of federalist architecture
and the gardens are beautiful.  They have an herb garden there that is
actually a low hedge grown in a geometric design and the herbs are planted
in the spaces between the hedges.  Very pretty.  I've seen these designs in
books on old/English herb gardens too- but have not studied them enough to
know the names and histories of the different designs.

All this gets me to thinking about doing this kind of design with
vegetables too- sort of a combination of old English garden design with sq.
ft. intensive methods.  The possibilities are endless.  We have plenty of
space in the country home, and it appears that the garden was redone at
some point.  Our 30's picture shows that they plowed up the back yard/field
and grew basic crops in standard rows.  Then at some point they
relandscaped and put in lovely little beds here and there.  I am more
comfortable with this as opposed to the big open field, since I'm used to
sq. ft. method.  My cousin and I decided that it would be ok to have a
blend of old and new at the house, since that's keeping within the spirit
those who lived there.  I am sure we will have more structure in this
garden than in my urban garden, which is much more "rustic".

Good January kind of garden talk.  

Sarah

At 09:14 AM 1/20/98 -0500, MARTHA E. WELLS wrote:
>Sarah:
>I don't have the information handy, but if you have easy web access, you 
>might want to look up Old Sturbridge Society (Village?).Massachusettes, 
>maybe someone closer would have that information for you. I might not be 
>spelling it right, but they are a heritage society that keeps up the 
>'township' like it was in our earliest days, including planting heirloom 
>vegetable and flower seed, and cooking and preserving foods the way it was 
>done long ago. They used split logs to surround the small kitchen gardens, 
>and I'll bet you could use their example to do some 'sqft - ing' around the 
>foundation plantings and such.
>Also look up Monticello and see what Jefferson enjoyed in his gardens. What 
>fun!
>Good luck!
>On the 'warmer' temps in the South, right now it's delightful, but I'm kinda 
>worried because we have had hardly no winter weather (Central Tex). Does 
>this mean we're in for scorching summers and plagues of bugs? I was in T 
>shirt and shorts this past weekend, contemplating mowing the ryegrass in the 
>goat pens this past weekend.
>martha
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