Gardening Like It’s 1776: My 250-Year-Old Roots

From the herbs to the flowers to the vegetables, my New Hampshire garden has more in common with a 1776 kitchen garden than I ever realized!

I was flipping through my Old Farmer’s Almanac this morning, required reading for any true New Englander, and yes, I’m completely serious!

(I’ve been reading the little poems at the end of each month’s weather column since I could read! )

When I stumbled into an article about colonial kitchen gardens. What they grew, how they laid them out, the philosophy behind every plant choice.

Some things don’t change.

And I kept stopping to think: wait, I do that.

Not because I’m particularly a big history buff. I grew up in New England, so the colonial era is sort of baked into the scenery: the stone walls, the old graveyards, the town commons that have looked exactly the same since 1740. History here isn’t a field trip; it’s just Tuesday. I literally have an old graveyard in the meadow next to my yard, the original family who settled this land. They’re my neighbors, in a manner of speaking.

But I’d never really thought about the gardens.

Here we are in 2026, the 250th anniversary of American independence, and it turns out my little cottage garden in southern New Hampshire has more in common with a 1776 kitchen garden than I ever would have guessed. Same plants. Same space-saving tricks. Same basic instinct to grow something, bring it inside, and make it useful.

Colonial kitchen gardeners and modern cottage gardeners? Not as different as you’d think.

The History Right Where I Live

The more I started to think about gardening in colonial times, I really started to think about my own town. We have so many homes in our town that date back to pre-revolutionary war times! As it turns out, the men who lived in the pre-Revolutionary homes here in Stratham, NH, were the ones who marched off to the Battle of Bunker Hill in 1775.

While they were away, the women left behind were tending the very same soil I walk on today, probably worrying about the same late New Hampshire frosts that I do!

The most “full circle” moment for me, though, was realizing where my plants actually come from. Most of my vegetable plants come from Wake Robin Farm, run by Abigail Wiggins. She is the 14th generation of her family to farm that land.

Think about that for a second: when the original “neighbors” in my neighborhood were planting their survival gardens in 1776, they were likely trading seeds and advice with the Wiggins family. Today, 250 years later, I’m still putting Wiggins-grown plants into my New Hampshire dirt.

It’s not just a hobby anymore; it feels like I’m a temporary steward of a tradition that’s been running since long before our town even had a name.

What Was a Colonial Kitchen Garden?

If you’re picturing something formal and fussy, think smaller. The colonial kitchen garden wasn’t designed to impress anyone. It lived right outside the back door for a reason. You needed to be able to run out in your apron and grab a handful of parsley before the stew burned. Practicality came first, always.

That said, they managed to make them beautiful anyway. Raised beds, simple paths, everything laid out with intention, not because they were following a Pinterest board, but because space and labor were precious. You didn’t plant something that didn’t earn its place.

The philosophy was simple: grow what you use, use what you grow, waste nothing. Flowers, herbs, and vegetables all shared the same beds because separating them into tidy categories was a luxury nobody had time for.

A plant that kept pests away from your carrots and looked pretty doing it? That was a good plant. A flower you could dry and use as medicine over the winter? Even better.

Sound familiar?

That grow-it, use-it, bring-it-inside instinct is exactly what drew me to cottage gardening in the first place. I didn’t know I was following a 250-year-old tradition. Turns out I just thought it made sense… same as they did!

The Space-Smart Philosophy: They Were Doing It First

Here’s what I find genuinely delightful about colonial kitchen gardens: every “trendy” gardening technique you’ve read about in the last five years? They were doing it in 1776. They just didn’t have a name for it.

Companion planting. Succession planting. Vertical growing. Interplanting. These aren’t modern innovations; they’re just old common sense that we forgot for a while and then rediscovered and put on Instagram.

Colonial gardeners trellised their peas and beans vertically on simple structures made from whatever was around: branches, willow, twine. Growing up instead of out when ground space was limited wasn’t a gardening philosophy; it was just logic.

I love to add willow trellises in my garden for exactly the same reason, and I felt very clever about it. Turns out I was about 250 years late to that particular party.

They also interplanted tall crops and short crops together, letting them share space without competing, a tall plant providing a little afternoon shade to something that appreciated it, a sprawling plant filling in the gaps beneath something that grew straight up. Every inch of ground accounted for.

One of my favorite colonial tricks (that I didn’t even realize!) is the radish and carrot combination. Radishes grow fast; you’re harvesting them in about 30 days. Carrots are slow, taking two to three months to mature. Plant them together in the same row, and the radishes are long gone by the time the carrots need the space. Two crops, one spot. Efficient in a way that feels almost modern until you remember it absolutely isn’t.

And flowers? Flowers weren’t decorative extras in a colonial kitchen garden; they were working members of the garden. Calendula kept pests away and could be used medicinally. Nasturtiums attracted aphids away from vegetables and were also edible.

Lavender and chamomile pulled double duty as both medicine and something that smelled wonderful near the back door. Beauty was a bonus, not the point, though I’d argue they got both.

That part I relate to completely. My cutting garden isn’t purely practical, but it’s not purely decorative either. Everything I grow ends up somewhere: in a vase, pressed into a frame, dried for a wreath. Grow it, use it, make something beautiful. Same as it ever was!

What They Grew And What’s In My Garden Too

Here’s the thing about colonial kitchen gardens: they weren’t growing anything exotic. No rare seeds ordered from specialty catalogs, no Instagram-worthy varietals.

Just practical, hardworking plants that fed families, healed ailments, and almost accidentally looked beautiful doing it.

Let’s walk through what was growing behind a New England farmhouse in 1776. You might be surprised how much of it is also growing behind mine.

VEGETABLES

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The “Must-Haves” That I Cheerfully Skip

While I’ve embraced so much of the colonial gardening philosophy, there are a few 1776 staples that will never find a home in my raised beds: turnips, parsnips, & cabbage…sorry

In the 18th century, these were the ultimate insurance policy. They were hardy, thrived in our rocky New England soil, and stayed edible in a root cellar for months. If you lived in one of the historic homes in town, you likely ate them until you were sick of them!

I do like to grow Brussels sprouts, though! They are actually a really fun vegetable plant to add to your garden (although mine seem to be a trap crop for aphids!).

The Herb Garden: More Than Just Seasoning

Colonial kitchens didn’t draw a hard line between culinary herbs and medicinal ones. Most plants pulled double duty, and the kitchen garden and the ‘physic’ garden (the medicinal herbs) were often the same. If it smelled good and did something useful, it had a place.

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Flowers: Beauty Was Just the Bonus

Colonial flowers weren’t just decorative; every bloom in the kitchen garden had a job. Beauty was a bonus. Here are a few flowers that we both always have in our gardens.

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What They Didn’t Grow (That Will Surprise You)

For all the overlap between colonial gardens and modern ones, there are a couple of glaring exceptions, and if you’re a New Englander with a vegetable garden, you’re going to find this deeply ironic.

Tomatoes & Peppers. Colonial Americans knew about them but didn’t really eat them. They’re part of the nightshade family, and for a long time were widely believed to be poisonous. The idea of a New Englander not growing tomatoes feels almost illegal today.

Fast forward 250 years, and both are absolute staples of the summer garden up here. I grow both every year, and I consider a good tomato harvest a personal victory. The colonists didn’t know what they were missing -though to be fair, they were busy with other things.

Bringing It All Home

Colonial kitchen gardeners grew with intention. Every plant had a purpose, every inch of soil was used, and nothing was wasted. They weren’t gardening for aesthetics or Instagram; they were gardening because it mattered.

And yet here we are, 250 years later, still planting the same herbs, the same flowers, the same vegetables in the same New England dirt. Maybe the intention has shifted a little. I’ll admit I’m more motivated by a pretty arrangement than preventing scurvy, but the instinct is the same. Grow it. Use it. Bring it inside. Make something beautiful.

That’s the thing about a real garden. It connects you to something bigger than a single season.

I’d love to know if any of these colonial staples are growing in your garden right now. Drop a comment and tell me what’s in your beds this year!

I hope you enjoyed reading this, because I had fun writing it!

xo, Jennifer