| Historic Landscapes |
The Historic Gardens
The Teaching Gardens
From Garden to Table
Garden Events & Activities |
 | Aldrich Garden, c. 1908 |
Strawbery Banke Museum offers a rare opportunity to experience garden history. The Museum preserves nearly four centuries of original gardens and was recently recognized by Garden Design Magazine as one of four sites in the world teaching about change over time in the landscape. These gardens bring new life to the ground where generations of immigrants helped to create the unfolding story of America. Through research and re-creation, the Historic Landscapes Department accurately preserves both garden design elements and period-appropriate plant selections. Our living collections are based on surviving specimens, archaeological research, seed and pollen analysis, oral histories, and other primary sources. From this evidence we have restored, recreated, or rehabilitated the gardens left to us by past inhabitants of this layered landscape. The heirloom seeds we preserve and cultivate are an important part of our mission to leave a cultural legacy for future generations. Since heirloom seeds are open-pollinated, their progeny will faithfully exhibit the traits of the original plant. This enables gardeners to preserve seeds from the most productive and flavorful produce, or the plants best adapted to the region's soil and climate. When gardeners use heirloom plants today, they revive the ideals and tastes of those who carefully stewarded them through generations. Using the uniquely expressive qualities of these plants, the Historic Landscapes Department accurately recreates and shares the beauty and usefulness of gardens of the past. Organic gardening is another cornerstone of the historic landscapes program at Strawbery Banke. Since many of our gardens predate the current use of agricultural chemicals, we use organic methods of fertilizing, composting, and pest control. We work to foster the values of preservation while caring for the environment and teaching from historic plants. The gardens at Strawbery Banke will inspire any gardener who seeks the wisdom of the past. The gardens welcome your visit. Each garden contains plant identification maps and a multitude of inspirations to bring home with you into your own life and landscape. Garden tours are offered daily May through October. Also duing this season, Historic Foodways programs demonstrate the cooking and preservation of heirloom produce daily. The gardens take center stage at Museum-wide events, such as our Garden Harvest Festival (September) and Candlelight Stroll (December). We offer focused tours for garden clubs and groups, and are available to offer lectures at offsite locations. Come see why we have been recognized as one of the 'Top Ten Favorite Public Garden Sites' in recent People, Places and Plants polls.
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The Historic Gardens |
Sherburne Gardens and Orchard
c. 1695 -1728 |
 | The Sherburne Garden is a 17th-century raised-bed kitchen garden on its original site. The garden provided a convenient source of produce, medicine and culinary herbs outside the kitchen door. The recreation of this garden and the selection of its heirloom plants are based on documentary and archaeological evidence including seed and pollen analysis. The orchard includes Roxbury Russet apples, the oldest named apple variety in North America. | | | |
The Walsh Garden
Eighteenth Century |
| The Walsh Garden represents the plant selections common to 18th-century New England, when gardening began to satisfy needs for leisure as well as for food. This garden includes ornamental elements such as the Federal style grape arbor and bench complemented with ornamental plants. Introductions including China rose, lilac, currants, peony, iris, and daylily coexist with ornamental natives such as Oswego tea and Joe Pye Weed. |  | | | |
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The Goodwin Garden & Hothouse
c. 1870 |
 | The Goodwin Garden is a fine example of a Victorian landscape, recreated from its original 1862 garden plan and from the diaries of Sarah Goodwin, wife of the New Hampshire Civil War era governor. This garden features bedding annuals and plants from around the world such as wigelia, a shrub first planted in New Hampshire by Sarah Goodwin. The hothouse, donated by the Wentworth-by-the-Sea Hotel and historic in its own right, was recently rehabilitated for use as a Victorian hothouse featuring exotic plant varieties appropriate to 1870. This new exhibit won The Preservation Award from the Victorian Society in America. | | | |
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Thomas Bailey Aldrich Garden
c. 1908 |
| This restored Colonial revival garden was created largely between 1908 and 1913 as Lillian Aldrich's memorial to her husband, author Thomas Bailey Aldrich. These stylized gardens were a romanticized interpretation of gardening during the Colonial era. The Aldrich Garden is the oldest continuously planted garden on the Museum's grounds and features the most valuable part of our "living collection," a century old circular grove of native hemlocks. |  | | | |
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Shapiro Garden
c. 1919 |
 | The Shapiro Garden is a recreated Russian, Jewish immigrant family's garden of 1919. It is representative of the many small urban gardens planted by the different ethnicities that comprised the early 20th-century Puddle Dock neighborhood. The Shapiros used their garden to propogate many types of vegetables, such as heirloom cabbage, garlic and yellow Ukrainian tomatoes, which helped to preserve the diet of their homeland. oral histories and archaeological evidence guide the selection of produce utilized in our historic foodways program. | | | |
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Victory Garden
c. 1944 |
| The Victory Garden recreates the garden of the Pecunies family, who resided on this site during WWII. Such a garden provided much needed sustenance while the country endured rationing. At the height of their success, Victory Gardens accounted for over half of all fresh produce in the country. The plant selections are drawn from oral histories, period seed catalogs, and wartime government publications. |  | | | |
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The Teaching Gardens
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The Orchard |
The Museum's largest orchard was planted in 1964 on a site that had once been the formal garden and orchard of the James Bartlett mansion. This Orchard contains rare, historic fruit varieties favored by early New Englanders that help preserve and teach this region's culinary and landscape history.
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The Herb Garden |
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The Victorian Children's Garden |
New in Fall 2007, this one-of-a-kind living history garden appeals to both children and children at heart. This space features fun and interactive learning through such elements as a Victorian tea garden, plants that tell time, a butterfly & fairy garden, a language of flowers garden, and a two-story naturalistic Victorian tree house! |  | | | |
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From Colonial-era kitchen gardens to formal Victorian gardens...
...from a 1940s Victory garden to a series of teaching gardens...
...the historic landscapes tell a fascinating story. |
| From Garden to Table |
The herbs, fruits, and vegetables produced in the gardens each year enjoy a second life in the Museum's Historic Foodway's program. Culinary history interpreters cook period dishes daily in season, using heirloom plant varieties, traditional recipes, and preservation techniques to awaken the senses to new understandings of the past. By keeping food traditions alive, the gardens help visitors experience some of the deep connections between plants and people. Partnerships with Community Gardens, Slow Food Seacoast, and the Dunaway Restaurant also help to apply the time-tested practices of the past toward a sustainable future.
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Garden Activities & Events
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| Daily Garden Tours |
May through October at 1:00pm (call for additional tour times)
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| Garden Talks |
Enjoy an informative garden talk at the Museum or at your garden club. Call the Curator of Historic Landscapes for details at (603) 433-1108 or email horticulture@strawberybanke.org.
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Fall Harvest Festival
Saturday, October 4 |
Explore our historic houses lavishly decorated with period flower arrangements. Enjoy music, talks and activities for the whole family. It's a true celebration of garden history and New England harvest traditions.
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Candlelight Stroll 2008
December 6-7, 13-14, and 20-21 |
 | Experience three centuries of New England winter celebrations! Garden volunteers preserve heirloom flowers throughout the season to decorate our historic homes for the holidays as only the past can inspire. Come enjoy decorations spanning from 18th-century New Years to high Victorian, from Colonial revival to Christmas in the 1950s.
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