Historical herb gardens from late 1800's?

I would love some opinions on what herb varieties would have been grown in midwestern (great lakes area) gardens in the period around 1880 or so. I belong to the local herb guild that mainains a garden at the local county museum - a house built in 1875. The grounds also have other period buildings - a general store, log cabin, barn, etc. The garden we have is small, 3 rectangular sections surounded by a cement block path, out from the kitchen door. The plants in it now have historically been grown all the way back to colonial times. But I'm interested in the particular period around 1880 and haven't found what I guess I'm looking for online. I've looked up Victorian herb gardens and Colonial Revival, which some seem to have been doing, but haven't found much in the way of actual plant lists other than for the Surratt House Herb Garden in southern Maryland. I'm interested more in what was grown in the upper Midwest and Great Lakes states.

As you can see the garden needs some revival. We're planning on digging a section at a time and renewing the soil with compost. As we do this I would like to include some period plants. We also seem to have a problem with more shade now than the garden originally had.
Would love some input.
Jeane

Here is a picture of the Sanilac County Historical Museum. This house was built in 1875.

Sorry, no advise. Just wanted to say what a neat project. Good luck!

OKay here's what I found:

http://www.connerprairie.org/HistoryOnline/diet.html

renwings, really nice article! I've bookmarked it so I can go back and really read it later. Found a page for the Zadock Pratt Museum that has a nice list and information as well. And, talked to a friend yesterday that researched this for a museum garden many years ago. Apparently the Burton collection at the Detroit Public Library has a collection of old horticultural magazines published in Michigan back then that are loaded with info. Don't know when I can get down there though. This could become a long term research project.

My friend put parsnips in the museum garden she works on years ago - they reseed. But since then the group has found all kinds of recipes for her to try them in! I haven't see salsify in years, may have to see if I can find some to try.

Started working on the garden last night. The basil we planted weeks ago hadn't grown at all. Hope it will do better now. If we work on one section a week it should get done in September sometime. Think we need to get the garden growing better with what we have, then start adding new things next year.

What a great project -- wonderful house & grounds, too!

It sounds like you've found some good info already. I'll see if my mom has any ideas. My grandmother grew up in a central Wisconsin farming community, so any herbs that my mother recalls from her grandmother's garden might date back to about the same era. But frankly, I don't remember any of my older relatives using much other than salt and pepper as a seasoning... mustard and horseradish and garlic, yes, but nothing "green" like basil. Then again, I'm not sure if the herbs that the German immigrants (like Mom's family) did or didn't use around the turn of the century were the ones that were being grown in the area 20 years earlier. (To many people of Scandinavian or German origin, food is supposed to be white! LOL)

Critterologist, I would love to know what your Mom remembers. Like you, I only remember my grandmothers and parents ever growing anything but mint, parsley and chives, and using mostly salt & pepper. I want to dig back and find out what our great grandparents would have grown and used. Maybe find some old recipes of the time. My heritage is almost half German as well, the other half Scottish and English. A lot of white and heavy basic cooking. Although my one grandmother taught me a lot about soup making when I was growing up. I have a lot of my grandmother's old recipes, but they seem to date back mostly to the 1930s & 40s.

This project has gotten me really interested in finding out more about the gardens of the period. I know they didn't grow herbs in separate gardens for the most part. Mostly in with the vegetables or perennials. Although I understand our little garden plot has always been an herb garden. There was an interest at the time in exotic plants that you wouldn't have thought they could grow. But I question if this trend reached the Midwest. It would have been more prevalent in your area of the country. I know they grew medicinal herbs. The original owner of the house was a doctor. I also understand that starting with the Shakers seeds were readily available by mail order for a lot of the herbs. Someday I will have to find time to see what the libraries around here have.

This was primarily a rural farming community, along with lumbering and maybe fishing as we're on Lake Huron. Less than 2 hours from Detroit today it's now more tourist. Although the summer cottages and camps along the lake go back to at least the 1920s. Our big crop in this county is/and has been/ sugar beets -- Pioneer. Smells like wet dog for miles when their processing!

Thanks everyone for your input, I hope you'll let me know if you find any tidbits of info or really old recipes. I want to keep digging into this for awhile to see what I can find.

This past winter, I was asked to do the research for an herb garden of the Colonial period for the Daughters of the American Revolution house in Schoharie, NY. They installed the garden this spring and it is growing great. The Pratt museum isn't far from me. You might also google Strawberry Banke, Chadds Ford History and Old Sturbridge Village. I also used several books for research. If you want me to look them up, I can. We divided the beds into culinary, beverage, household and medicinal uses. The DAR house is printing up a booklet of the herbs used that will be for sale.

Thank you herbalbetty, would love to get a copy of the DAR book when it's ready. I had already found Old Sturbridge. The page on Colonial use of herbs on the Chadds Ford site is quite interesting. I think I'm going to spend some time this winter seeing what I can find in the museum's archives on what the doctor who lived in the house used in his practice. Found your page too, your quilts are beautiful!

We've finished adding compost to the back bed closest to the house. The plants are already looking much happier. Did part of the front bed as we've moved some plants around in an attempt to do some organizing. If we can get a few more people we may actually be able to finish the compost in the front and middle beds next week. I'd like to see us organize the beds into culinary, medicinal and household uses a little more than they were.

My husband and I moved here last summer, I used to be a member of the Southern Michigan Unit of the Herb Society of American and worked on designing the herb gardens at Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills, MI. Unfortunately the gardens were torn out this year to repare the stone wall that was starting to crumble. The group has replanted the formal garden now. Not sure how the informal upper garden faired. But, I know how wonderful a public herb garden can be. If we continue to add compost and work on the soil our little herb garden at the museum can become something really special. I would like to see use keep it historically appropriate in order to use it as a teaching tool. I'm already scheduled to give a talk to the Red Hat Ladies in late September at the garden. It's just a question of what they were really growing here in the late 1800s. I'm hoping recipies, prescriptions and photos from the period will give me some clues as well as books. Would love to know if you found any for the period. I've found a few overviews of the subject, more on Colonial Revival.

Jeane, one little booklet I have is entitled, "A Catalogue of the Medicinal Plants, Indigenous and Exotic, Growing in the State of New York With a Brief Account of the Composition and Medical Properties", "Most information excerpted from the Dispensary of the United States" Wood & Bache 1845

This was printed by the Farmer's Museum in Cooperstown, NY. I think the title is longer than the booklet! To find more medicinal plants used, do a google search for books such as Felter's, Ellingwood's, and Thomsonian medicine.

That is quite a title! I will look them all up. You might be interested in what my friend who work's on the garden at the Troy Historical Museum (MI) found, a magazine from around 1820: "'The Farmer's Companion', Horticultural Department, conducted by J. C. Holmes." Mr. Holmes included in his series of articles information on a Mr. Cole's garden in Troy, MI and what he was growing. Just have to find the issue with the article where he talks about flowers and berries. Cole was apparently the head of some Horticultural Department or Society. My friend has the article (or her notes on it) on fruits. The Burton Library in Detroit houses the collection. 1820 is a little earlier than I'm looking for, will have to see what magazines where being published at the end of the century. I have a question, if they were growing something in 1820, should we then just assume that they were still growing it in 1890? Gardens evolve and change with styles and tastes, so I'm still looking for some concrete period information.
Thank you, and everyone for your help, hope you'll keep adding tidbits of information here as you run across them.
Jeane