Learn about early America’s kitchen gardens, and those who created and tended them, in a Morven Museum & Garden event presented by Holly Gruntner on March 8 at 6:30 pm.

As any gardener knows, nothing grows in a garden without skill and effort. According to Holly Gruntner, the same was true in early America as she explores the lives of those who created and tended kitchen gardens of that era.

This enlightening virtual presentation will be an overview of some of the themes of Ms. Gruntner’s PhD dissertation, Fertile Ground: Kitchen Gardens and Knowledge Production in Early America.

Holly’s work seeks to understand the intellectual lives and influence of lower-class, enslaved, and bound people living in eastern British North America – and the early United States – by focusing on their kitchen gardens and gardening activities.

Holly Gruntner received her BA from the University of Minnesota, Morris. After working for three years in Congressional Relations at the Library of Congress, she completed her History MA at William & Mary in 2017. Her MA portfolio explored how botanists in early America relied upon their spouses, children, enslaved people, and servants for crucial scientific labors.

She is currently a PhD candidate in the History Department at William & Mary, working on a dissertation about kitchen gardens and scientific knowledge in early America, 1650-1830. Her work parses the intellectual and manual garden labors of non-elite people. Her dissertation views even the smallest garden plots as scientific laboratories; units of intense and extensive intellectual work, experiment, and exchange. Discoveries and practices originating with these common gardens and gardeners also transcended households and communities and served as the basis for published and otherwise formalized scientific discourse of the day. $5 for Morven members, $10 for nonmembers. Register through Eventbrite HERE.