Friend of Gardening--At Home in Lincoln's Neighborhood--June 09

A park ranger from the Lincoln Home came to the Presidential Library last fall, requesting assistance with locating information about garden plants and practices in the 1850s. Something about the young man struck a chord, but I wasn't sure until I learned his name. I discovered that Michael McPeek had grown up in Taylorville, so my suspicions were confirmed—I had perhaps met him as a boy during my years at the Taylorville Public Library or seen him around town later on. He was brimming with enthusiasm for a project that he had proposed in the Lincoln Home Neighborhood area and my co-worker Dennis Suttles (a Sangamon County Master Gardener) and I were soon on board. Michael was assigned to coordinate volunteers who would be researching, planning, planting, and tending a historic garden near Mr. Lincoln's Springfield home. He had proposed developing the garden and was persistent—and successful—in winning approval.

For Dennis and me, this was a perfect blend of our professional lives and our avocations as gardeners. We were asked to search the library collection for information about what people in Illinois were growing in 1857 and how they were growing it. Were there hybrid plants available and if so, what were they? We also needed to discover what tools they would have used and what types of garden knowledge might have been available to them. The hunt was on!

Mike put out the call for all interested volunteers to attend a meeting in early December and he jumped at the chance to attend our November Master Gardener meeting in Christian County to provide the group with information on participating in the project. From the three-hour meeting on a snowy January morning to select plants for the garden to assistance from the Taylorville High School Greenhouse in starting plants to prepping the soil and working with visitors to the neighborhood, Christian County has been heavily involved in the project. All of us are learning as we go along and developing relationships with other garden volunteers at the same time. Come visit during Lincoln's bicentennial year and see what we're up to.

If your last visit to the Lincoln Home was decades ago, you are in for a pleasant surprise. Several homes in the two block area have been restored to give the feeling of neighborhood to the only home Abraham Lincoln ever owned. Across Eighth Street and just to the north is the home of Harriet Dean, a divorcee who lived there in 1860 after her only son moved to St. Louis, teaching and tending her garden. Tending the garden there now is one of many special events commemorating 2009. Under Mike's direction, the project has taken shape in the form of a plot that is about forty feet by twenty feet, surrounded by a white picket fence bordered on the exterior by French marigolds. A grape arbor at the far end of the plot is just outside the fenced area, planted with young Catawba vines, a native North American wine grape.

While we were talking over the virtues of tomatoes and salsify during the winter and spring months, Nico Scaduto was researching and building the fence and grape arbor as part of his Eagle Scout qualifications. Seeing the finished product, it is hard to believe that it wasn't professionally installed. I helped Nico and his parents (Mom Tracy is a Sangamon County Master Gardener) with research to discover just exactly what a trellis should look like if it fits into the 19^th-century world. The fence and trellis were installed in early April despite the challenges Mother Nature threw at us.

At the same time, Taylorville High School's botany class was hard at work in the greenhouse get things ready for May planting dates. Mary Dawson's students were introduced to the likes of bull-nose peppers, early purple Vienna kohlrabi, and about four varieties of tomatoes, learning a little about heirloom vegetables, their value and their pitfalls. "The kids knew that the plants they were starting and transplanting were to go to the Lincoln Home area and they were excited." Despite a less than cooperative month for planting, Mike and the gardeners persisted and the plants and seeds went in. Sharron Taft of Christian County had trucked up composted manure (a very good fertilizer that was probably much more available in 1860 than it is today)and it was tilled in prior to planting. The garden was off and growing.

Something else that was growing was our knowledge of what was in the Presidential Library's collection about gardening. A wonderful resource was the Transactions of the Illinois State Agricultural Society, Volume III, 1857-58. This state publication (bureaucracy isn't always a bad thing) contains any number of reports covering such topics as "The Prairie Fruit Garden" and the pre-cursor of the book we know today as Forest Trees of Illinois, but the real gem was the report that became our Bible: "On Practical Gardening in Illinois," by Lincoln's Springfield contemporary Simeon Francis. We also discovered horticulturalist Andrew Jackson Downing's works, a charming publication called Gardening for Ladies: and Companion to the Flower Garden by Mrs. Loudon, and Fearing Burr's The Field and Garden Vegetables of America, c1863. Many works like this can now be found at the tips of your fingers on the database Google Books, an advanced search option of Google. Drawings of early pruners and planter boxes (a.k.a. flower balconies) as well as garden layouts provide a charming research sideline for the armchair gardener. We found equivalents to books of house plans and early women's magazines like Godey's Ladies Book were able to inform and enlighten modern gardeners about what their forbears did in their gardens.

Fast forward to mid-June and the tomatoes are about two feet high, with corn quickly overtaking them in the plot just behind the Dean House. Mike met me about a month ago after work and we took up spades to prepare the ground for the Catawba grapes. I realized immediately that Mike was no interested amateur when it came to gardening. The sod was quickly turned into suitable planting area. "I was in the Taylorville High School class of 2000," he says. "When I was growing up, we always had a big garden, and I still do a lot of gardening at home." Now married to wife Jenna, Mike is gardening as a hobby and a form of relaxation, working with landscaping as well as edibles.

When asked how he came to be working in a position as a park ranger, he credits the year the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Museum opened. "I was a junior at UIS and was looking for an internship—one of those elusive ones that paid. That summer they were hiring as many college students as they could to work with the record crowds that heralded the Museum's opening. I think I flourished in the rush because I had to learn so quickly how to focus on what part of Lincoln's story I wanted to share with the visitors. You know that you're going to be doing a tour with a new audience every twenty minutes and it really forces you to give it your best." Mike earned his B.A. in 2006 in History and Legal Studies and has continued on as a park ranger with a set contract, and can remain with the park through 2011.

He credits retired North School 4^th-grade teacher Katie Fraley with sparking his interest in Mr. Lincoln. "I had a Lincoln scrapbook project that was actually three 3-inch binders." He smiles ruefully. "Wish I still had it." It would probably come in handy. As well as the Dean garden plot, he is in charge of programming specializing on Mary Todd Lincoln, the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, and the 1860 Presidential Election, as well as being on call for tours of the home and serving as a liaison between staff and supervisors. On the way to take a look at the garden, we met two attendees from the program he had just presented on the Debates, and their appreciation for his knowledge was evident in smiles and handshakes and words of thanks.

Mike acknowledges inspiration taken from the Trobaugh-Good Home at the Homestead Prairie Farm in Decatur (http://www.maconcountyconservation.org/historic.php#homestead) and from New Salem. He is currently hard at work on a portable wayside panel that will accompany the Dean House garden and draw visitors to the back yard of the home across the street from Mr. Lincoln's front steps. Kohlrabi, beans, corn, peppers, cucumbers, and tomatoes grow in neatly labeled rows. A small patch of culinary herbs is located near the front of the bed, with the grapes at the rear. When I went over to plant the grapes, red and pink peonies were still in bloom along the fence behind the house. More recently, the native Illinois prairie plants near the visitor center draw the interest of passers-by. Visitors will be greeted by gardeners at work on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. and on Sundays from 12:00 to 4:00 p.m. A gardener may be at work on some Fridays, but there is not a permanent schedule for that date.

When visiting the site, pay attention to what your guide tells you about special features and exhibits nearby. Many of the buildings, including the interior of the Dean House, have permanent exhibits which can help fill in a bit of detail about Lincoln's nearby neighbors and visitors.

Benefitting from the bounty of the garden will be the present day neighbor, Grace Lutheran Church, and its food pantry. Produce will be donated to the pantry, with credit received by Sangamon-Menard Master Gardener's Plant-A-Row for the Hungry Program. And special visitors will be welcomed into the garden when it is featured on the Sangamon-Menard Master Gardeners' Garden Walk on Saturday, June 27, from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. (217-782-4617 for details).

Reading The Taste Is in My Mouth a Little, by historian Dr. Wayne Temple, I came across a passage about Lincoln's love of vegetables, as well as meat. He says that once Lincoln laid out a garden behind his home at Eighth and Jackson, but was too often absent from home to be a successful gardener. Lincoln had no interest in the farm work of his youth, but he continued to enjoy its bounty, perhaps from neighbors' gardens or an 1850s version of a farmer's market, pronouncing cucumbers and sweet potatoes as "good things." Soldiers serving in Washington during the Civil War noted a number of White House vegetable gardens. Is it possible that something from Mrs. Dean's garden found its way to the Lincoln table? We'll never know, but it's fun to speculate. Learning about day-to-day life in 1860 draws us closer to a clear picture of our nation's past.

Sharing in the hospitality and the hard work of this garden are the Christian County Master Gardeners, Sangamon-Menard County Master Gardeners, the Springfield Civic Garden Club, Boy Scout Troop #32 of St. Agnes Parish, Springfield, and Taylorville High School. Lincoln Home Park Ranger Mike McPeek extends a hearty "Thank You" to everyone in the group for their part in making his dream come true!

(captions for photos, all by Gwen Podeschi)

1. "Vegetables all in a row" (photo of garden surrounded by picket fence)

2. "Standing on Mr. Lincoln's front steps, the Harriet Dean House is just across Eighth Street and to the north" (front of Dean home)

3. "Lincoln Home visitors watch as Christian County Master Gardeners Mary Grace Given and Jean Shuler look over tomato plants."

4. "Mary Grace Given and Jean Shuler busy among the veggies."

5. "A sunny Wednesday afternoon finds Christian County Master Gardeners Jean Shuler, Sharron Taft, Midge Kendle, and Mary Grace Given, and Park Ranger Mike McPeek, overlooking the herbs near the back of Harriet Dean's Laundry Shed."

6. "Master Gardener, Sharron Taft, and Lincoln Home Volunteer, Dale Beechler," stand near the Catawba grapevines.

7. "Master Gardener Jean Shuler and Lincoln Home Volunteer Dale Beechler discuss the merits of a brand new, top of the line garden spade—just like the ones great-grandpa used!"

8. "Wisconsin visitor, Willy, gets a boost from Master Gardener Mary Grace Given while Sharron Taft points out the fern-like foliage on carrots."

9. "Blooming beans, still a garden favorite, can be found in the Lincoln Home Garden."

10. "Heirloom tomatoes hang in clusters on the vine, having begun life in Taylorville High School's greenhouse."