(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

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- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in Quincy at the John Wood Mansion, home of the Quincy and Adams County Historical Society, where they know that historical places don't only include old buildings; they also include aspects about the way people lived, their flower gardens, their herb gardens, sometimes a restored prairie garden to show what the pioneers had to go through to get here.

Well, here at the John Wood Mansion, they highlight all three of these gardens, and offer the public a chance to go through them.

Jan Leimbach, we call this the Parlor Garden, because it's right off it, it could be a part of the house.

I mean, it's just right off the side of the house, the John Wood Mansion.

And you've been helping take care of this garden for three years.

- Yes.

- So, you know it pretty darn well.

- Yeah.

- When I first saw it, I was struck by the fact that it looked like it was almost twin sides, but not quite.

What was the thinking there?

- Back in the day, the 1800s, it was very common to have what's called a mirror garden, where the two sides of the garden would be mirrors.

That has been somewhat lost today due to flowers dying, due to a tree that grew, and cast too much shade in part of the garden.

- Okay, some of the plants couldn't thrive?

- Right, right, so we are going to work towards making it a parlor garden again.

This garden is under restoration as some plants have gotten overly aggressive, and we've had had some weeds issues, very invasive weed issues that we've had to eradicate.

- Well, we also had COVID come along, which threw sort of a- - Yes.

- An ax into everybody's plans.

- Exactly.

- But you can still see what the intention was.

It is gorgeous, and here we are, it's August, and things really look fresh, you know?

So it's been a good year, hasn't it?

- [Jan] Yes, it has.

- Let's walk down to the end, and see what you start with down here.

The first thing my eye catches is this is beautiful, dramatic, it looks almost looks like a hibiscus plant.

- And it is a hibiscus.

It's a much hardier hibiscus than its tropical cousin.

It is a native of North America.

It likes to live around waterways, and so it was a natural addition to gardens of early America.

Its seeds were sent back to England in about 1724, and it became very popular in Europe as well.

- [Mark] I can see why, I can see why.

- It has big, showy blooms that come on in about mid July, and last until October.

- And you know, these are, this is really gets pretty.

Now, a lot of these things are not in bloom right now, but a lot of them are too.

- [Jan] Correct.

- [Mark] This little pinkish red number is gorgeous.

- [Jan] That is verbenia, and it was actually a Illinois State Fair flower of 1867.

- [Mark] No kidding?

- [Jan] Yes.

- The state flower for the fair of 1867?

- [Jan] Yes.

- [Mark] Okay.

We've seen these, these are quite common.

I don't know, is that a black-eyed Susan?

- [Jan] A black-eyed Susan, yes.

- And I don't know what the little trumpet-like flowers are there, but they're gorgeous.

- This is foxglove, and foxglove has, it's highly poisonous, but it is of the digitalis genus.

It is the plant that we get the heart medicine digitalis from.

- Oh.

- It's been used as a medicine, even though it's poisonous since the 1250, but now it, they can isolate out the property that makes it medicinal and not poisonous, and so that's digitalis.

- [Mark] Now, gas plant, you were telling me this is a rare plant, and they don't get very big.

This is kind of an old plant, too.

- This is a very old plant.

This, the gas plant was popular in the European gardens in the 1600s, and in the 1800s, it became very popular here in America.

It's named the gas plant, because it has a volatile oil to it that, on a hot summer day, it can actually give a lemon scent to the garden.

The other point is that, and this got pruned off, but it gets a beautiful, pinky-purple spike of flowers in the spring.

When its seed pods dry, it has a volatile oil in it in more concentration, and on a hot summer night, if there's no wind, a very hot summer night, if you put a flame beside that seed pod, it supposedly will flare.

It's been also reported that it has spontaneously combusted on very hot summer nights.

- Okay, let's not see that happen.

- Yes, let's not.

- Now, of course, geranium, that wasn't, that's not one of your perennials, but it's here to dress things up.

- But it is a period annual.

- The cornflower, I've not seen that, that's gorgeous.

- [Janet] Cornflower, it's also called bachelor buttons.

- [Mark] Huh, very nice.

Now, and this, now, from here on over to this, it does start, it looks like the mirror garden again, and so these real showy flowers at the edges, what are those?

- [Jan] These, this is phlox.

This is a North American native flower, and it too was sent back to England where it was very popular in the cottage gardens.

- [Mark] Yeah, and you've got these two, now here's a deep bluish one that's kind of spiky looking, and then you've got this one here.

Is that a Speedwell by any chance?

- [Jan] It is Speedwell, Veronica.

- [Mark] Very, very nice, and of course you have some roses.

I guess the roses aren't, right now, are they between bloomings?

There's one right over here that's blooming.

- [Jan] Yes, there's a few roses that are blooming.

This particular rose, I'm sorry, I don't know what it is.

It's not on any of the garden maps from the past that I have, but I'm sure it is a period heirloom rose.

- Yeah, and many of these, this garden's been here many years, so many of these plants have been here the whole time, haven't they?

- Yes, yes.

- Now, here's the one that I wasn't aware of until I saw this Tickseed right here.

- [Jan] Tickseed- - [Mark] I'm going to get out of my shadow off here.

It's being pollinated right now, too.

There's a lot of bees around here.

They love this little garden.

- [Jan] They do ,with the variety of flowers, and the constant blooming times.

We have lots of pollinators, lots of butterflies.

As the cone heads dry on the echinacea, we will see the songbirds, particularly the goldfinch eating the seeds.

- [Mark] Is that right?

Okay, so we should see some of those around here, because a lot of those have dried up now.

- [Jan] Yes.

- [Mark] So they should be ready to burst.

- [Jan] Yes, last week I did see a goldfinch.

- [Mark] Uh-huh, and we talked about the bachelor buttons, and there's a plant that has as even more of that going on.

What was that called again?

- [Jan] Cornflower.

- [Mark] Cornflower and bachelor button.

- [Jan] Some people call it bachelor buttons.

- [Mark] Uh-huh, bachelor button.

Okay, and this is the mallow again, or what I called the hibiscus.

- [Jan] The rose mallow, yes.

On the other side of these tall lilies is false indigo, and false indigo is a- - [Mark] Can you take us to it?

- [Jan] Yes.

- [Mark] Point to it?

- False indigo has, is also a North American native plant.

The Native Americans used it for blue dye, and also for curing toothaches, and the children would use the dry seed pods for rattles.

It was, the seeds were sent over to England, and it was used in their ornamental gardens.

Unfortunately, over in Europe, it has turned into a very invasive, noxious weed that is spread along the waterways, because these pods will float.

- Does this bloom at any time?

Or are the pods about it?

- It does.

It's not, it's not much of a bloom.

- Yeah.

Okay.

Well, come on up here with me, because I want to ask you one more question about a garden like this.

- [Jan] Yes?

- I would assume that this would have been, of course the Wood family was well off, you know, and this was a garden like they would have had?

- Yes.

- Not every family had a garden like this, but as the years went on, and the society got more and more prosperous, it was, they were able to take their herb and their other edible gardens out of circulation, and start to enjoy flowers again.

- Exactly.

Those who had come from the east coast, they had enjoyed flower gardens, and so as they became able to purchase their produce at produce markets, this was about the 1850s, then they were able to actually enjoy their gardening with flowers.

They traded seeds amongst themselves, and with Quincy being a hub of transportation, the steam ships, the trains, they were able to get seeds through seed catalogs.

I was surprised that seed catalogs in America started in 1790 in Philadelphia.

- That surprises me too.

- And so they were able to get seeds for things that had been native in Europe, like the gas plant.

- Well, thank you, Jan, interesting tour.

- Okay, thank you very much.

- Jack Freiburg, it's interesting, we often don't think of historical societies dealing with gardens.

We think of old homes, old properties, you know?

Historic buildings, things like that, but actually gardens supported almost everything that people did.

- Yes, they did.

You know, and here, well, you've really got the three different gardens representing three different phases of the settling of this area.

One, the natural prairie garden, which shows the tall grass prairie, and how tough that would have been to either break it, or to walk through it.

- Oh, my goodness.

- And then the bird garden, when they first settled in, to go ahead and have, so they could have that for their own, you know, because they often planted seasonal trees, too.

They would plant apricot trees, so they'd have apricots, and pears, and apple trees, so the different times of year they had different fruits to go right along in conjunction with the herb gardens.

- You mentioned the prairie garden, and you can see that there's a sample of what they might've, the miners might've encountered in the early to mid 1800s coming across the Illinois prairie.

And you can imagine walking, or getting a wagon and an oxen through that.

- [Jack] Mark, I would stay on the rivers like everybody actually did.

- [Mark] (laughing) That'd be sure, but you couldn't always do that.

If you, if you had your property to get to, you had to go over that.

- Absolutely, well, and you know, the ones that came from the east coast, that came from New York, you know, this area was settled both by folks who came from New York, and Connecticut east coast, like John Wood did, who came over ground to get here, versus the folks that came in like my German ancestors, who came, mostly came up through New Orleans.

So, you know, and they were both, both groups were early settlers here, but how they got here, two totally different ways.

- Absolutely, and over here now, this cabin, of course, wasn't here, but it was moved here in 1835, vintage cabin.

But in the yard of that cabin here on the side is an herb garden, and of course, almost every family who had enough, a piece of property like that was growing herbs, and edible things, and things to spice up their food a little bit, because for heaven's sake, their diet was so limited.

- Well, the reality of it all was everybody had pretty much had to be self-sufficient, and if you could do anything to increase your quality of life by growing your own stuff in your yard, whether it be fruit, or herbs, or vegetables, whatever, that was very commonplace situation.

- The people that take care of these gardens are here today, and what we're going to do is, now we've seen the flower garden, or the parlor garden, but we're going to take a little quick tour through the herb garden, and also through the prairie plantation over here.

So thanks for joining us, and thanks for making all this available.

- It's a pleasure, Mark.

- Yeah, thanks.

- Thank you.

- Janet, tell me, we were just talking about this cabin, and a family in the 1830s.

- Yes.

- And we were talking about this little side yard that they may or may not have had next to the house, but most houses of this vintage probably did have what they called an herb garden, you know, a place where, I mean, you used every bit of property you could, because you had a family to feed, and they didn't have a varied diet, so they wanted all they could grow year round, right?

- It could do all they could do, all they could have.

They couldn't go to a grocery store, so they had to provide for it, forage for it, and use what they had.

- And a lot of times, you know, they didn't really have irrigation systems, sprinkler systems like we have, so they had to plant things that could kind of be on their own, and come as, you know, as whatever weather came, these were hardy plants, weren't they, these herbs?

- That's right, they were.

- Take us, start us out here, because this very interesting looking specimen here, muline, is that right?

- [Janet] Mullein.

- [Mark] Mullein, I've never see in an herb garden before.

Tell us about it.

- If you look on the roadsides, they grow wild everywhere, and right now they are big, and tall, and some are green.

This one has spent its time, and it's just about done.

It's full of seeds, and the seeds will last for a long time.

The seeds will drop, and they will live more than one year, and there's hundreds of seeds in the individual mullein plant.

- Were these flowers?

- Yes, it did have an indescript little yellow flower.

- Not much to look at?

- No, that's right.

- It is loaded with seeds.

- That's right, it is.

- So these probably really come up very easily, don't they?

- They do.

- If you grab a whole bunch of these.

- They do.

- Did they eat this, or did they use it for something?

- No, the mullein plant have large leaves.

They are large and broad, and years ago, the Indians would take out a large leaf, and roll it, and they would smoke it.

They learned to smoke it, and by smoking it, they found that that helped with congestion, and that kind of thing, so it was healthy for them, and I know they passed that on to the early colonists as well.

- I'll be darned, that's interesting.

Now, lavender, of course, we all know that lavender smells.

Can I touch it?

- You can.

- Smells really good.

I imagine that what they were doing was- - This is the way you do it.

You take it gently through your hands, and then smell, and it's lovely.

- And of course, they were probably always looking for a way to freshen up a little place like this, very few windows.

- That's right.

- The family's not bathing very often.

- That's right.

- So anything they can do is freshen up the cabin a little bit.

- Women would wear, or use a nosegay of lavender, or if you walk past it, you can brush it, if you brush by it, you smell it, and it lends some fragrance.

- Yeah.

Okay, now here's what I hadn't seen before, and I'm going to ask you to explain it to me, because I'd never even heard of tansy.

- This is tansy.

Tansy gets to be tall, and it's very invasive, spreads a lot.

A lot of times the mothers would take a sprigs of tansy, and break it off, and sweep their wood floor.

- [Mark] So this is a whisk broom.

(laughing) - [Janet] Yes, it's like a whisk for their floor.

- [Mark] It flowers, too.

- It flowers, and the yellow flower was used as a dye for plants.

- Oh, okay.

- But another thing that, pardon me, the tansy was used for is they used tansy, the reason she used swept the floor was to keep the bugs away, and they would take sprigs of tansy, and lay it in their straw mattresses to help keep the bugs away.

- [Mark] Keep the bugs away, okay.

- [Janet] That's where we get don't let the bedbugs bite.

- Okay, fascinating.

Okay, so they didn't eat it, but they find plenty of uses for it.

- [Janet] And the little critters didn't like it.

- [Mark] Now, these violets, everybody knows all about them.

Dandelions have all kinds of edible uses, don't they?

- [Janet] Every part of the dandelion was used.

The roots were used to make coffee, chicory coffee, the leaves.

It's the first thing that came up in the spring, and the last thing to go dormant in the fall.

- [Mark] What a gift, huh?

- They looked for it, and waited for it, because they were so eager to have something green in their diet, because it had been a long winter without anything green.

- Yeah, potatoes, and tubers, and things, beans, things you could dry.

- Right.

- Not something fresh.

- They liked it.

They didn't know why they liked it, but it was healthy.

- Good for digestion, I would think.

- And it was full of potassium, so it was very important to them.

- Horseradish, now, some people love it, some people hate it, but the one thing you can say about it, everybody's got an opinion.

- Oh, yes, yes, it's very invasive, that's why it's, you'll find that this is planted in a pot, because any part of the root that stays will grow.

- Oh, okay, you don't want that.

Now, and it's the roots that you grind up?

- That's right.

- For the flavorful, to enhance the flavor.

- Yes, and it was also used medicinally too.

It's a root product, a root crop.

Most root crops are very medicinal, and it was helped with a lot of illnesses.

- Indigo was used as a dye?

- It was.

- [Mark] And there were some other plants that, used as dyes too, but probably indigo was the most successful.

- [Janet] Yes.

- Because indigo has a very deep and sure dye.

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] Really, if you dyed it, you knew it was going to stay dyed.

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] All right.

Now, the columbines, I've seen these flowers a lot, but I never thought of them in an herb garden for any reason.

- [Janet] Well, it's something that would have been natural to this environment.

It grew wild here.

- [Mark] And they're beautiful when they flowering.

They are so beautiful.

- [Janet] They are beautiful.

So it added a little beauty to the- - [Mark] And across the way here, soapwort?

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] This one is blooming.

Not everything is blooming in August.

- Right, soapwort was important, because they used it to make it a little soap.

You could take the leaves, and rub the leaves, give it wet, rub the leaves together, and it created a soap-like, it was a little bubbles, which was used to cleanse, and they cleaned their hands, yes.

- Dog gone, I didn't, I had no idea.

- Yes.

- And pretty little flower.

- Yes it is.

It also needs to be staked up.

- Now, the echinacea, these in the parlor garden?

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] People know them as coneflowers.

Did they have any use besides just looking, I know the bees love them too, and the birds love them, but did the people use them for anything?

- Yes, it's a very medicinal plant.

It's an anti bacterial, anti-microbial plant that the early settlers learned helped them, and healed some of their illnesses.

- Was it the leaves?

- Yes, the leaves, they would make a tea, cut it, and make a tea, or rub the leaves together, yes.

- Cup, cup plant.

Now these, this is a pretty big, dramatic plant, when you think about how tall this one's getting, and it's getting that way under this tree, so it's not, it's hardly getting any sun at all.

- [Janet] That's right, it's amazing.

- [Mark] Do you know why it's called a cup plant?

- It's called a cup plant, because it has alternating leaves that form like a cup when rain falls.

So for the early settlers and travelers, this might have provided a spot of water when they were really, really thirsty.

- You could get a sip?

- Yes.

- You could get a sip.

Daisies and black-eyed Susans again, I don't know if there's any therapeutic properties in there, but they certainly are pretty.

- [Janet] Yes, they are.

- [Mark] The wild geranium, did it serve any other purpose besides- - [Janet] Not that I know of, I just know that it grew naturally here.

- [Mark] And nasturtium, which is this beautiful little orange flower, and did the leaves provide any- - [Janet] No, the flower is edible.

- [Mark] Oh, okay.

- [Janet] And it's a good companion plant in a garden today, I know that.

- [Mark] Rhubarb of course, now that's these big stalks over here.

- [Janet] Yes, and of course the stalk part is the edible part.

You don't want to eat this.

This is poisonous, but this was very helpful for constipation.

It would relieve constipation, and it's an early, early spring plant.

- [Mark] Yeah, so this will not, like those, these stalks wouldn't be any good now, but in the extreme heat they are.

- [Janet] They're all right.

- [Mark] They are?

- [Janet] They're probably not as fragrant and as- - [Mark] And everybody's heard of rhubarb pie, of course.

- [Janet] Oh, yes.

- [Mark] And so they would use it for other things, I guess, as well.

- Something fresh for them to eat early in the spring.

- This is a good example, because you've got all these spices here, right in one spot.

And you know, we were talking about their limited diet, you know, they may have had some salt pork, or they may had some chicken.

They probably didn't have a lot of vegetable varieties to go to, so anything they could do to spice up their food a little bit would really help.

- And they probably brought these things, these seeds with them, because that was one of the first things they had to get established once they got their cabin was something to provide food for them, and to help them survive.

- Right off the bat, so they would have wanted something that would come up in 30, 60 days, whenever they had sun.

- Well, whenever spring arrived, yes.

- Okay, so we have parsley, basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary.

Those are all staples.

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] Sage is this large, larger green one over here, right?

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] Sage, and what's that one right there?

- This is a basil, a different kind of different basil.

- [Mark] Okay, a basil, okay.

- Yes, yes.

- And then there was also mint, and mint was good for a variety of things too.

Oh, here, garlic, onion, of course, those things would really help make a meal.

- Yes, they foraged for that all the time.

- [Mark] I mentioned now that, wow, the bees and the wasps, they just love this mint, don't they?

- [Janet] Yes, they do.

- [Mark] Look at them, they're all over.

- [Janet] Yeah, the mint was helpful with digestive issues.

- Can I pick some too?

- Sure.

- Because it makes your hands smell good, too.

- Sure, cleaned their breath, and it grew, a lot of times, along the banks of the creeks, you know?

It would grow wild, and they would forage for that, because they needed it, and used it.

And you can put it in your water, probably didn't have tea.

- They may have had some tea, but that might've been a treat, too.

- That's right.

- You know, not a daily thing.

- And Joe Pye weed was an important one too.

- Oh, wait, say that again, what's that called?

- [Janet] Joe Pye weed.

- [Mark] Joe Pye weed.

- [Janet] I think this isn't very interesting story.

Joe Pye was an Indian shaman who taught the Indians and the early settlers to use this, because it helped get rid of typhus.

He healed so many people because of what he did with this weed, and I don't know what he did, but- - [Mark] But he's, but his name lived on forever because of it, huh?

- [Janet] Yes.

- [Mark] He must've been very impressive to a number of people.

- [Janet] Yes, and his name was Joe Pye.

- And you know, it's a very interesting looking plant.

Look how tall it gets, and I'll bet you while we're, I think we're going to see one over in the other, in the prairie garden, which is much taller.

It gets real tall.

- [Janet] Yes, it gets more sun, yes.

- Very pretty, very pretty.

Okay, then there's the mint, and I think the mint is sort of the end of our road, isn't it?

Or is there anything else over here?

Oh, bee balm.

- [Janet] Bee balm, oh, yes, the bee balm, Monarda.

- [Mark] You can tell it's hardy, because it's grown in gravel, isn't it?

- [Janet] Yes, it is hardy, yes.

And bee balm was, I don't really know too much about bee balm, except that it was grown here.

- [Mark] Except the bees love it.

- [Janet] Yes, when it's flowering, the bees are in love.

They are.

- [Mark] Well, thank you.

- [Janet] Thank you, Mark.

- Jack Ball, we mentioned earlier that you can imagine, now, you've got a nice prairie landscape going on here.

What it would have been like trying to get your wagon and your family across this?

Can you imagine?

Look how tall and thick it all is.

- It is.

- You planted every one of these seeds didn't you?

That created this.

- Well, yeah, I started them, and then they self-seeded.

(chuckling) - Well, nature's wonderful, isn't it?

- Yes.

- It can really do it.

One of the things people talk about a lot about milkweed now, because everybody's got the monarch on their mind, and the monarchs love to plant their seeds on these milkweeds, don't they?

- [Jack] Yeah, their eggs.

- [Mark] I'm sorry, their eggs.

Tell us about how that happens.

- [Jack] Well, I don't know if you wanted me to show the egg mass on the back.

- [Mark] There probably is one of them with some eggs on it, if we can- - [Jack] Yes, right there.

- [Mark] Oh, okay, monarch eggs.

Okay, and those will become caterpillars, right?

- [Jack] Hopefully.

- August is their time to move.

- Okay.

- What is this here?

- This is the prairie sunflower, and it has a green center.

- [Mark] It has the green center, okay.

That's how you know that that's what that is?

- Right, uh-huh.

- Is this different?

- That's sneeze weed.

- Oh, sneeze weed.

Okay, it looks kinda the same.

Does it make you sneeze?

- No, it does not.

- [Mark] It's gotta make somebody sneeze.

- It falls over real easy.

- [Mark] And it drops seeds like crazy, so you're probably thinning that out all the time, aren't you?

- I am.

- Yeah, you're a good man; you work hard.

These ornamental grasses are pretty, and I guess there were a lot of those.

- This is switchgrass.

I have some big bluestem right there.

- [Mark] Is it behind those sneeze weed, or behind that- - Yeah, it's right, this is- - [Mark] Oh, that's big bluestem?

- Yeah, this is the big bluestem here.

There's a better blossom.

- Okay, and we move down, and of course we saw the cup plant earlier.

That's the one that catches the water, right?

- [Jack] Right, yeah.

- [Announcer] Look how big that gets, my goodness.

- Yeah, when it rains, the water will fill these voids between the two leaves here, and then birds can drink out of them, and insects.

- Very impressive.

Jack Ball, thank you for your work here, and also for sharing it with us.

Appreciate it.

- You're welcome.

- All right.

These three gardens are on private property, but you are welcome to visit the Quincy and Adams County Historical Society, and wander through here.

In fact, if you'd like to arrange a tour, they encourage you to call the office here, and they'll have somebody like Jack take you through.

With another Illinois Story in Quincy, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

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