Plum Grove heritage gardens celebrate 20 years

IOWA CITY - Green Moldovan tomatoes, St. Valery carrots and Cimarron lettuce are just a few of the heirloom vegetables growing at Plum Grove Historic Site in Iowa City.

They are strains not found on many grocery store shelves these days, but they would have been very familiar to Plum Grove's original inhabitants, Iowa Territory's first governor Robert Lucas and his wife Friendly. Lucas was governor between 1838 and 1841, before Iowa became a state in 1846.

Taking a step into the three gardens behind the historic brick home is taking a step into the past.

Master Gardener Betty Kelly, 88, of Iowa City, founded the first garden 20 years ago after painstaking research. She read Friendly's diaries and letters for clues to what was in the original garden and scoured newspapers of the day for clues to what people were eating, studying advertisements to see what vegetables were for sale. She visited the Des Moines Botanical Garden, the State Historical Society of Iowa libraries and Living History Farms in Urbandale to review records of 1800s gardening. SeedSavers in Decorah, which preserves heirloom seeds, offered assistance as well.

Not only the vegetables and flowers, but the layout of the gardens and the raised vegetable beds are designed to be historically accurate. Even the wood picket fence surrounding the garden is patterned after fences of the day.

'I think people need to know what their background is, and how these plants came to be here,” Kelly says. 'Almost all of them have history to them. These vegetables came from all different parts of the world.”

Preserving heirloom seeds is not just about connecting with history, she says, but with keeping the knowledge and skills of our ancestors alive.

The flower garden is planted with herbs and signs illustrating their uses. Pennyroyal, for example, was used in dog bedding to repel fleas. Others were used for sore throats, headaches and as sleep aids.

Many of the heirloom vegetables offer flavors or qualities lost in today's mainstream grocery produce sections. Kelly extols the taste of yellow lemon cucumbers, for example.

To illustrate those flavors, the Master Gardeners will host the 20th Taste of Plum Grove on Wednesday. The event features 19 recipes from the mid-1800s, all of which show off the garden's produce.

Extra produce and harvests at other points in the summer go to Table to Table, a non-profit that supplies local food banks.

Along with a tomato tasting in August, the Taste of Plum Grove is the primary fundraiser that keeps the garden growing. The State Historical Society of Iowa owns and preserves Plum Grove, but the garden efforts are funded entirely through donations and fundraising.

Through the years, Plum Grove gardens have received local, state and national recognition, including the first Iowa State Service Award, National Smithsonian Garden Award and an Irving Weber Award.

Gardening efforts have expanded since they first started in 1995. A flower garden joined the vegetable garden in 1998, with a wildflower garden taking root in 2000.

'The idea with the wildflower garden was, a lot of these plants are disappearing,” Kelly says. 'We're trying to capture as many as we can.”

Last year, Master Gardeners joined a DNR state forester to complete a survey of the more than 300 trees on the property. They include four trees over 100 years old and a rare elm.

Some of the trees need to be replaced, and Kelly aims to bring in native Iowa trees as donations come in. Next on her list: a pawpaw, a native tree that produces fruit seeing a resurgence of interest in the state.

A core group of volunteers from the Johnson County Master Gardeners and the Plum Grove Questors manage and maintain the garden today. Kelly is out there with them every Saturday, weeding and harvesting.

'I want to prove I'm still physically fit. A lot of people ask, ‘How do you keep getting down on your hands and knees?'” she says. 'I say, ‘You're only as old as you feel.'”

Her favorite part about what she does?

'When somebody gets excited about it and says, ‘I'm going to go home and plant some heirloom seeds,'” she says.

Master Gardeners also teach seed saving, a primary method to keep heirloom strains alive.

'One of the things I'm trying to do is show people there's nothing wrong with old recipes and old vegetables,” Kelly says. 'A lot of it is education.”