Submitted by Steilacoom Historical Community Garden.
Earlier this week a group of our gardeners and SHCG friends journeyed to historic Fort Vancouver along the Columbia River for a personalized tour of their heritage garden, provided by Mary Rose, Executive Director of the Friends of Fort Vancouver National Historic Site, and volunteer gardener extraordinaire Nancy Funk.
We learned how settlers circa 1845 grew food, and how seeds provisioned by the Hudson’s Bay Company made their way to Steilacoom via the HBC trade route to coastal forts and settlements.
As you can see, vegetable gardens can be beautiful as well as nutritionally sustaining. Our forebears grew beautiful flowers to attract pollinators, along with the vegetables they needed to survive. Our garden strives to do the same.
Our “garden within a garden” in the DuPont Community Garden is currently harvesting food grown from heirloom seeds provided to us by Fort Vancouver and Fort Nisqually, to replicate Steilacoom kitchen gardens circa 1854.
(P.S. The Fort Vancouver garden uses an old-school burlap barrier – photo lower right – to deter bunnies from gnoshing on all the garden goodies.) steilacoomgarden@gmail.com
Ah those perfectly smart Historic Gardeners, how I miss them all. They produce wonderful vegetables every year, some more bountiful than others, but always great and healthy produce. And the smart burlap barriers. Bunnies are better hoppers than jumpers 😄