Tag Archives: Nantucket Historical Association

Kitchen Garden, CAPE COD HOME

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The Nantucket Historical Association's Oldest House may be a seventeenth-century jewel of antiquity, but the sweet kitchen garden at the 1686 Jethro Coffin saltbox is the apple of my eye.

The Nantucket Historical Association’s Oldest House may be a seventeenth-century jewel of antiquity, but the sweet kitchen garden at the 1686 Jethro Coffin saltbox is the apple of my eye.

Kathrina Pearl, a Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) staff member and avid gardener, and the NHA grounds crew have adopted the backyard at the Oldest House, planting a long list of period pot plants, culinary and medicinal herbs, a small orchard of fruit trees, and some berries. "The idea for the garden came from the interpreters at the site," says Pearl.

Kathrina Pearl, a Nantucket Historical Association (NHA) staff member and avid gardener, and the NHA grounds crew have adopted the backyard at the Oldest House, planting a long list of period pot plants, culinary and medicinal herbs, a small orchard of fruit trees, and some berries. “The idea for the garden came from the interpreters at the site,” says Pearl.

The Oldest House nestles into the landscape at the top of Sunset Hill. It was built as a wedding gift for Jethro Coffin and his new bride, Mary. According to the NHA, it is the "sole surviving structure from the island's original seventeenth-century English settlement."

The Oldest House nestles into the landscape at the top of Sunset Hill. It was built as a wedding gift for Jethro Coffin and his new bride, Mary. According to the NHA, it is the “sole surviving structure from the island’s original seventeenth-century English settlement.”

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Autumn’s Heirlooms

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Adventurous in my walking, I studied the growing wood near my home.  Not far from the cliff above Muddy Creek, I found an old cellar hole, nearby a settled pairing of scraggly lilac and apple tree.  A bit further on along the road running east and west of Crow’s Pond in North Chatham near Eastward Ho! I found a number of old timers with out-of reach apples, fruit miniaturized from lack of care.

NEG CCH Apples2

Heirloom apples are enjoying a resurgence!  Nantucket Historical Association’s Kathrina Pearl is designing an apple orchard of antique varieties–Rhode Island Greening, Roxbury Russet, Sops of Wine, and a French baking apple from the 1500s, Calville Blanc d’Hiver.  If the deer don’t get them she is looking forward to the day when they can ofter fresh squeezed cider and heirloom apple pies. Debbie and Eric Magnuson of Tiasquin Orchard in West Tisbury sell Macouns, McIntosh, and Liberty apples at Edgartown’s Morning Glory Farm.

Cape Cod Home Magazine