Garfield Farm Museum to host Heirloom Garden Show
Garfield Farm Museum will hold its 23rd annual Heirloom Garden Show from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 26.
During the show, visitors can tour the museum’s heirloom gardens and interact with Midwestern growers showing off their favorite heirloom flowers, herbs, fruits, and vegetables.
The garden show highlights the importance of preserving genetic diversity in the very plants that are relied on for food, medicine and enjoyment. Many of these heirloom fruits and vegetables have unique tastes, cooking traits, appearances, and disease or insect resistance that may not be found in the more common grocery store varieties.
The chance to meet backyard gardeners, many of whom are members of the Seed Savers Exchange, a nonprofit organization that has connected plant enthusiasts from around the world, is reason enough to attend the show. The exchange is a grass-roots effort that began in 1975 and is based out of Decorah, Iowa. Seed Savers receives a portion of the proceeds from the show.
Gardeners from LaPort, Chalmers and Spencer, Ind., will be comparing their harvest with growers from around Illinois but they will all be on their toes when Rolling Prairie Acres Farm of Sigourny, Iowa, shows up with an entire family of gardeners. Local honey from Campton Hills will be vying with Rockford honey. Garlic and tomato lovers will especially be pleased with the season’s best. Additional items to be exhibited include various vegetable seed, peppers, herbs in pots, homemade vinegars, various exotic species of fruits and spices, flowers, pawpaw, persimmon, hot sauce for tasting, beans, lima beans, cowpeas, cutting celery, California giant petunias, and Asian long beans.
The museum’s own historic gardens are a delight for many visitors both young and old. The heirloom flower garden houses many old time favorites such as, “Love Lies Bleeding” or “Kiss Me Over the Garden Gate” that hark back to simpler times. Hollyhocks, often remembered by those that grew up in the country, bloom in various corners of the barnyard. The heirloom vegetable garden is made up of varieties that the Garfield’s themselves may have grown including rare pre-blight potatoes. The garden offers children a chance to see where the food they eat comes from.
The kitchen garden by the tavern contains herbs and spices as well as some native flowers. Accounts of the time encouraged transplanting prairie flowers to the garden as they were already disappearing from the 1840s landscape. The Pottawatomie Garden Club of St. Charles has provided monetary support for the museum’s gardens over the years.
There are plenty of other things to see on the farm. Visitors can check out the various animals in the barnyard, admire the historic barns, and stroll through the restored prairie and savanna. There also will be tours of the 1846 brick tavern.
During the show, there will be some garden seed and plants for sale. Inglenook Pantry of Geneva will be offering refreshments including homemade pie in the Atwell Burr House. The show is $6 for adults and $3 for children under 13 years of age. For information, call (630) 584-8485 or email info@garfieldfarm.org.
The museum is on Garfield Road, off Route 38, five miles west of Geneva. This historically intact former 1840s Illinois prairie farmstead is being restored as an 1840s working farm museum by donors and volunteers from around the country. Visit garfieldfarm.org.