Walk down the rock path towards the herb garden and look to your right. you'll see a stone marker recognizing the Charlotte Herb Guild. This group maintains the garden, preserving the history of plants that were essential to daily life in the 18th century for both cooking and medicine.
Next to the marker is our dye garden, where you'll find plants used in fabric dyeing. Indigo made blue, Marigold produced yellow and orange, and Madder gave a deep red. In the 18th century, dyeing fabric was both an art and a necessity. Many families grew their own dye plants to color the cloth they wove by hand. Each dye was natural, with different plants providing a spectrum of colors that could range from soft pastels to deep, saturated tones. The process was labor-intensive, often requiring multiple steps to extract and set the dyes, but the results were rich and long-lasting. The process of dyeing fabric often involved boiling the plants in large vats, with natural fibers like wool or linen being soaked to absorb the colors. Dyeing was a skill passed down through generations, and the specific shades and techniques used could even indicate a family's wealth or status.
The larger herb garden in front of you is designed in the English style, with small plots and neat hedges. While beautiful, this layout wouldn’t have been practical for early settlers. In those days, gardens were heavily fenced to protect them from wildlife and often spanned anywhere from a quarter of an acre to as much as eight acres, depending on a family’s needs.
In this herb garden, you’ll find plants like Soapwort, which—when mixed with water—creates a natural liquid soap. It’s still used today to clean delicate antiques. Rosemary was another versatile herb, used not just for cooking or brewing into tea but also mixed with animal fat, often bear lard, as a pest repellant. Over there, you'll see Lamb's Ear, a soft, wooly plant that was commonly used to bandage wounds or, in a pinch, even as toilet paper.
As you continue through the herb garden, notice how many of these plants are still used today. When you’re ready, head toward the log kitchen building, where we’ll dive deeper into colonial cooking and food traditions.