What Were Gardens Like in the 1700s?

While we don’t know many specifics, we can be sure that the Amstel House and Dutch House grounds in the 1700s were very different from the beautiful, tranquil gardens they are today.
 
The backyards of pre-colonial and colonial homes, sometimes referred to as “kitchen yards,” were busy, noisy, dirty, and smelly, with little regard for their aesthetic appeal. They may have included:

• A small fenced kitchen garden near the kitchen door with vegetables, herbs, and flowers for culinary, medicinal, and other utilitarian uses
• A few flowers for fragrance if time, money, and space permitted
• Boxwoods for drying bedsheets in the sun
• A sundial for telling time, not for ornamentation
• Large trees for shade
• A large woodpile for convenient access to fuel to keep the fireplaces burning
• An open working space for chopping wood, boiling laundry, slaughtering animals, cleaning vegetables, and making food such as apple butter and cider
• Livestock—chickens and hogs—running about
• Trash piles or pits where refuse including animal bones, oyster shells, broken plates and other refuse was dumped daily
• A privy or outhouse
• Other necessary structures such as coops, a well, smokehouse, stable, or summer kitchen
• Paths of dirt, gravel, or sometimes crushed shells

 
The owner’s occupation and income level determined whether the grounds included a picturesque formal garden. The Dutch House probably did not have such a garden. The Amstel House may have had one, possibly surrounded by a fence, wall, or hedge. Future archaeological excavation may help us learn more about the many activities that once took place on these grounds.

For more information on gardens in the 1700s, see this article published by Old House Online.

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