18th-Century Garden Plants

Vegetables

• Vegetables in the 18th century were usually heirloom varieties, as families saved seeds from one harvest for the next year's crops. Artichokes and their close relative, the cardoon, were common in salads. Vegetables native to North America, such as the scarlet runner bean and the pumpkin, also had their role in gardens of that time period. White cucumbers were a delicacy grown mainly in gardens of upper-class citizens. One of the more well-known gardens of the era was at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello. An avid horticulturist and researcher, Jefferson experimented with the cultivation of numerous vegetable hybrids from the late 18th century through the early 19th century. A salad-lover, Jefferson grew hundreds of vegetable varieties, including dozens of types of lettuces, radishes, peas and beans.

Herbs

• In the 18th century, home gardens included herbs that were believed to offer medicinal properties. Herbs---including sage, rosemary, chives, thyme and mint---were common in gardens of the 1700s, and these plants were often used to create healing baths or teas. Many of the same herbs are popular in today's herb gardens, although their uses are more culinary than holistic. Yarrow, santolina, lovage and lamb's ears were also popular in the 18th-century herb garden. These herbs are not as common today as they were centuries ago, but they still have culinary applications in period recipes and decorative applications when dried for use in floral arrangements.

Flowers

• Flower gardens in 18th-century America included a combination of native and imported plants. Coreopsis, columbine and black-eyed Susans, a member of the daisy family, are indigenous to the Eastern United States. Other flowers---including blue flax, blanketflowers, Rocky Mountain bee plants and thickspike gayfeathers---were discovered as wildflowers during westward expansion, and seeds were brought back to established cities in the East for additions to gardens. Classic European flowers---such as marigolds, sweet Williams, foxgloves and bachelor buttons---were also grown in American gardens, including the flower gardens at Monticello.