As part of their Renaissance of the Earth fellowships with the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Hannah Gould and Melanie Morgan revitalized the kitchen garden in ways that brought their scientific expertise together with humanist interests in the Renaissance.
Hannah (right) is a senior at UMass Amherst pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Plant and Soil Science and Bachelor of Arts in English, with an Environmental Humanities Specialization. Hannah is a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow at the Kinney Center and a Sustainability Fellow with Sustainable UMass.
Melanie (left) is a senior at UMass Amherst pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Horticulture and Sustainable Food and Farming with a concentration in Business and a minor in Natural Resource Conservation. Melanie has been a Renaissance of the Earth Fellow for over two years at the Kinney Center where she has managed the garden.
As students at UMass and as Renaissance of the Earth Fellows, we have drawn from our coursework in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and our experience reading rare books in the Kinney Center’s library to meaningfully shape our stewardship of the kitchen garden. Our goals have been to:
Introduce better drainage for the Kitchen Garden to improve soil health.
Widen existing walkways and embed educational material for the community.
Expand the variety of plants which provide visual, aromatic, and medicinal benefits to those that interact with the garden.
Create opportunities for scholars, students and the public to engage with the early modern past through our hands-on practices and educational material.
Cultivate organic, sustainable garden management practices that encourage beneficial pollinators.
“The Heart and Strength of Soil”
While working in the garden during the summer, we noticed that certain low points contained pooling water during rain storms. Thanks to the core teachings in STOCKSCH 105 Soils, we know that pooling water could be harmful to the plants, risking damage to the fruit and integrity of the soil structure. Similarly, in Walter Blith’s The English Improver Improved (1653), he refers to standing water as a cause of barrenness of land for early modern agriculturalists, specifically Blith claims that it gnaws at “the heart and strength” of the soil (E2v). When we noticed this pattern in the garden, we set out to improve the drainage by building up the beds and wood chips to level out the ground. We planned for new wood chip pathways and reshaped the existing beds to avoid low-lying areas by adding more soil.
“Always Weeding!”
Cardboard and flags on new beds. Spring 2024.
As any gardener can tell you and as William Lawson laments to his readers in A New Orchard and Garden (1648): “weeds are always growing” (B1v)! Before we could begin adding new soil and wood chips, we collected cardboard from across campus to help kill some of the weeds and invasives overtaking the garden. Our classes in STOCKSCH 186 Intro to Permaculture & STOCKSCH 119 Designing a Backyard Homestead, as well as our past employment experiences, have shown that cardboard is an efficient, sustainable tool in gardens to suppress weeds without synthetic chemicals. Since cardboard is biodegradable in nature, the paths and beds will need to be replenished overtime to help manage the weeds. We weighted the cardboard down and marked the garden’s layout with flags to begin restructuring the beds.
“A Garden’s Use”
The garden is split into two different sections to replicate an early modern kitchen garden. The left side of the garden focuses on medicinal, perennial plants that may be used for various home articles, including: tinctures, poultices, botanical dyes, etc. The right side, inspired by the design examples in William Lawson’s Country House-wives Garden (1648), focuses on annuals and herbs that are rotated each year. The annuals consist of a variety of vegetables to be harvested for community members, as well as complimentary herbs for cooking, teas, and dyes available to local herbalists.
“Less Work, More Production”
A major aspect of this project has been perpetuity and guaranteeing that the garden is sustainable and may be enjoyed for many years to come. To practice sustainability, one element of this design features plants that are primarily perennials. This allows future stewards of the garden to worry less about routine maintenance, as many of the plants will flourish on their own with little assistance. In addition, we have thoughtfully limited the amount of open soil for weeds and unruly invasives to dominate. William Lawson says in New Orchard and Garden, that gardening should not be a tedious and endless labor for any gardener, specifically when dealing with herbs (G8r). Our hope with this project is to reduce labor as much as possible, while still providing something beautiful and productive for the humans and animals which occupy the land.
“Many Hands Make Light Work”
Volunteers using wheelbarrows to shape beds. Spring 2024. Check out their class project on the kitchen garden here.
With the help of volunteers from Lena Fletcher’s NRC185: Sustainable Leadership courses in Spring 2024 & Spring 2025, we worked together to haul soil and wood chips into the garden and shape the pathways and beds. The volunteers recognized the impact a community can have on the garden while cultivating motivation to continue this work in the future. The time-consuming task of moving soil and wood chips was made easy by many-hands and the help of these volunteers. They also learned about one of our more pesky plants, stinging nettle, that, despite its being nutrient dense and a powerful medicinal herb, it also can irritate the skin and cause a rash. However, our volunteers also learned to identify jewelweed, which can help soothe the stinging that nettles cause. We were happy to learn that this team enjoyed our time working together in the garden and they had fun learning more about what the Kinney Center has to offer. Through our collective hard work, we are building a community for the garden that encourages students to get involved and engage with the land and soil.
Volunteers use wheelbarrows and rakes to shape beds. Spring 2025
“Transplanting”
With the herb and annual portion of the garden done in Spring 2024, we waited until Fall 2024 to tackle our goals for the perennials. By waiting until the Fall, we were able to see the existing plants fully grown, and clean up without damaging the plants. Using shovels and a weedwacker, we cut back overgrown plants and transplanted them to fit the beds. Transplanting allowed us to move the thriving, mature plants into a location that provided more space within the pathway without getting rid of the plant. STOCKSCH 200 Plant Propagation and work experience has provided us with the knowledge to properly transplant established perennials to reduce plant waste and prevent damage to thriving root systems. Fall provided the perfect opportunity to adjust the garden before the first hard frost. Afterwards, we hauled some wood chips and soil to shape the beds and pathways.
“The Music and Poetry of a Garden”
We also fixed the gate and created plant ID markers. The markers feature the plant’s common name, along with either quotes from early modern texts, poems, recipes or passages from modern song lyrics and poems. Each marker invites visitors to consider our real and imagined relationships to plants in the early modern period and our own. The plant ID markers fulfills one of our primary goals to embed educational material for the community within the garden. Once new plantings are added, we will generate additional markers to bring these plants into the conversation.
With the garden layout complete, we were ecstatic for the garden to have a fresh start for 2025!
“Garden as Medicine”
As we moved plants and reimagined this space as a teaching garden, we aimed to expand the variety of plants which provide aesthetic, aromatic, and medicinal benefits to those that interact with the garden. We made these additions so that future visitors and stewards could have the opportunity to work in the garden with rotating annual vegetables and still have the opportunity to learn about thriving old world medicinal plants.To determine our new plantings, we selected herbs and medicinal perennials found in John Gerard’s Herbal (1633). We placed these new plants among the more well-established ones throughout the garden:
Pink = Annuals/vegetables
Green = Perennials
Blue = Bird bath
“Welcome Pollinators!”
At the Kinney Center, we are committed to preserving sustainable management practices. Many of the new plants we added will attract beneficial insects and pollinators, reduce soil compaction, and eliminate chemicals. As members of the UMass Amherst community, we have an obligation to advocate for and model sustainable ecosystems. By applying what we’ve learned through 21st century coursework to a model of an early modern kitchen garden, we achieve our goal of inspiring visitors and students to engage with this sustainable process and follow in our footsteps.
“An Invitation to Join the Passion Project”
For years, the Kitchen Garden has been a source of inspiration for us, as well as for our guests and scholars who visit the Kinney Center. As Renaissance of the Earth fellows, we hope that our journey with the garden provides a legacy for other students to engage with the Kinney Center and everything it has to offer. Serving as stewards of this garden has been a passion project for both of us as we navigate our future careers and relish in our final moments at UMass Amherst.
Hannah & Melanie at the end of the 2024 season.
Hannah and Melanie would like to extend their deepest gratitude to the following individuals for their time and effort in making the kitchen garden redesign come to life.
Cameron Dennison, 2024 Graduate
Danica Shores, 2024 Graduate
Jeffrey Goodhind, Kinney Center Librarian
Liz Fox, Arts and Academic Coordinator at the Kinney Center
Marjorie Rubright, Director of the Kinney Center & Associate Professor of English
Pamela Monn, UMass Amherst Custodial & Grounds Services
Rene Jatoi, 2024 Graduate
Sarah Jones, Natural Resource Conservation Sophomore