An initiative of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the University of Cincinnati
The Stowe Garden project is an initiative to restore the two-acre historic landscape around Cincinnati’s Harriet Beecher Stowe House as a vibrant, educational greenspace for the community. The museum has undergone a major interior restoration and serves students, families, and visitors from across the country. The landscape should reflect the museum’s work. Located at a busy urban intersection, the property faces several challenges, including an outdoor classroom overlooking a gas station, an underused event space due to traffic noise, and a wooded area littered with detritus from demolished homes and years of illegal dumping. We will remove invasive species and reintroduce native ones, restoring the historic plant communities that would have grown in the area. Within this naturalistic setting, we will incorporate historic kitchen and herb gardens, as well as art installations, which you can read about below. The end goal is to bring history, art, and horticulture together in a beautiful, educational, and environmentally sensitive greenspace.
Okra illustration by Francisco Manuel Blanco. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=977689
Kitchen and Herb Gardens
Within the restored landscape we will embed kitchen and herb gardens highlighting two eras in the house’s history: the nineteenth-century Beecher residence and the twentieth-century Edgemont Inn, an African American boarding house. The gardens will feature medicinal herbs used by the Beecher sisters and crops introduced to the Americas by enslaved people and traditionally grown by African American farmers.
Catharine Beecher, garden design from A Treatise on Domestic Economy (1856), p. 334.
Invasive plant sculpture garden
Some of the plants we should include for historical reasons are now considered invasive, so we won’t plant them. Instead, we’re commissioning sculptures of these plants, along with signs that tell their story. The result will be an invasive plant sculpture garden set in a restored native habitat.
By displaying non-native, legacy species (living and sculptural) within a restored native setting, we will emphasize the vital role of environmental stewardship in preserving both natural and cultural legacies.
