This week marks the beginning of a new era at Long Branch with the creation of our heirloom demonstration garden.

Designed and constructed by Long Branch staff, the garden recreates a kitchen garden of the mid-19th century. The idea was to create a place where we could begin to tell a new story about Long Branch, focused on the history of gardens and the role they played here at Long Branch and elsewhere in the Shenandoah Valley.

The garden features a range of heirloom variety plants, many of which are mentioned in letters written by Adelaide Nelson, the matriarch of the Nelson family in the 1850s. In addition to vegetables, we currently also have Echinacea, which was specifically mentioned in a letter about what was growing here in the 1850s.

We’ve also made certain to plant certain vegetables that were known to have been planted by the enslaved workforce here at Long Branch — many of which today we think as defining southern cuisine.

The full list of what we’ve planted this year includes:

– Tomatoes
– Squash
– Watermelon
– Collard greens
– Pickling Cucumbers (We hope to pickle the cukes using Mrs. Nelson’s recipe this fall)
– Lettuce
– Cabbage
– Echinacea

It’s a small list to begin — but it’s a start — and a move towards reconnecting the landscape to our house. This fall we hope to re-introduce several varieties of field crops (namely wheat) to the landscape as a part of the larger effort of telling our whole story.

So, be sure to stop in and see how our garden grows and what’s new at Long Branch Plantation!

-Nicholas Redding, Executive Director.