Gardens in the Woodstock Area

by Jennie Shurtleff

Recently I’ve been spending a lot of time gardening. As I have been dropping seeds and pulling weeds, I’ve also been thinking about the gardens that have been in the Woodstock area through the years.

I remember my father, who grew up on the North Bridgewater Road, telling me that as a teenager he had raised several tons of potatoes one summer. He bagged up his potatoes and brought them to the village where he delivered them. Deliveries took a fair amount of time as a number of his customers invited him in to visit or have a snack when he dropped off the potatoes.

Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of my father’s potato patch, which was located high on a remote hill. I do have, however, a photograph of the garden that my grandparents had in back of their house. This area is now all grown over and mostly covered with trees. I believe my father is the child in the foreground. Although it is difficult to tell in the photograph, it appears that they raised corn, potatoes, beans, peas, and vine crops such as squash.

Garden on North Bridgewater Road. Circa 1930s.

Down the road from where my father grew up is the small hamlet of what is now called Prosper, but was formerly known as English Mills. While my father grew lots of potatoes, several farmers in the English Mills area grew incredible corn. Woodstock’s town clerk, Charlie Degener, recently shared an article with me entitled “Tall Corn and Some Taller Corn” from the 1895 edition of the Woodstock newspaper Spirit of the Age. This article tells how a Mr. Gilman, who lived in the small white cape that is the first house on the North Bridgewater Road, had some corn that year that was nearly 10 feet tall, and still growing. The corn seed was described as “common eight-row corn” which was fertilized with “Stockbridge fertilizer” on land for which he had paid $1.50 an acre.

Some years later, Mr. Gilman’s neighbors appear to have carried on the proud tradition of growing corn in Prosper as shown in the photograph below.

Their pride in their corn is reminiscent of an anecdote recorded by Henry Swan Dana in his History of Woodstock about Abraham Powers.  Abraham Powers was brother to Woodstock’s first doctor, Stephen Powers. While Stephen was remembered for his incredible fortitude and dedication to his patients, Abraham was described by Henry Swan Dana as the “laziest man in Woodstock.” In addition to his indolence, Abraham was known to stretch the truth a bit. He apparently planted some corn on a decayed stump, and when he went to Massachusetts, he bragged to his old friends and neighbors that the corn he grew in Vermont was 10 feet high.

Garden and corn field on the North Bridgewater Road. Note that the corn appears to be at least 10 feet tall, even without planting it on a stump!

Another photograph from the Woodstock History Center’s archives is one of an unidentified potato field. The photo shows a family harvesting potatoes. A team of oxen appears to be dragging a land boat with barrels on it, into which the potatoes are presumably being gathered.

Farmers in the country were not the only ones with gardens. A photo showing a historic view of the gardens behind the Dana House, at 26 Elm Street, reveals that in the early 1900s much of their garden was flowers with, likely, an assortment of vegetables. 

Across the street from the Dana House, behind the large, commanding Colonial Revival building known as the Kidder-Lightbourne House, was an extensive garden in the early 20th century. The Kidder-Lightbourne garden, in contrast to the practical food-oriented gardens that dotted the countryside, was clearly meant to be a source of beauty, replete with a pedestal bird bath and a couple of arched arbors.

Historic view of the garden behind the Kidder Lightbourne House at 29 Elm Street

Historic view of the garden behind the Dana House at 26 Elm Street

That is not to say that more utilitarian gardens didn’t exist in the Village of Woodstock, as the photo below reveals. This photograph was taken in the early 1900s. The building in the background is the Woodstock Inn Stable which burned in April of 1963. If you look at the garden in front of the stable, you can see that there is a corn field. On closer inspection, the “hills” of corn appear to be spaced quite far apart; however, where corn is planted, it appears that there are several stalks close together. This method of planting corn is quite different than the way most people plant corn today, with the seeds evenly spaced out, approximately 4-6” apart.

Corn patch by the Woodstock Inn Stable

Perhaps the best known of the area’s gardens were those near the base of Rose Hill. Luther Briggs who owned the property was a horticulturalist, and he planted so many flowers that the area in the 19th century was covered with blossoming flowers of all different colors. An advertisement for Briggs’ “Rose-Hill Nursery” lists many of the different types of plants that he had available for sale, including Prince Albert and Madame Laffay roses, Persian lilacs, honeysuckle, pansies, lupine, pinks, digitalis, petunias, and a variety of lilies, peonies, and phloxes.

Advertisement for Luther Briggs’ “Rose-Hill Nursery”

View from Rose Hill showing flowers in the foreground

If you enjoy looking at gardens, the gardens that are in front of and behind the Woodstock History Center are in full bloom. With benches and picnic tables, the History Center’s back lawn is a wonderful place to enjoy the outdoors and all the colors of summer.