FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Genia Hesser or Mark Halvorson
October 30, 2009
(701) 328-2666
BISMARCK –Gardening is a year-round activity, and has been a part of life in what is now North Dakota for hundreds of years. The fruits and vegetables produced in gardens often have been the key to surviving the long winters of the Northern Plains. They are also the source of many of the pleasures of summer – including sun-ripened tomatoes and fresh corn on the cob – coupled with aching backs and sunburns.
The history of gardening in North Dakota is explored in a new exhibit at the North Dakota Heritage Center in Bismarck. How Does Your Garden Grow? Gardening in North Dakota opens Friday, November 20 at 3 p.m. with a ribbon cutting ceremony. Remarks will also be made by Barbara Handy-Marchello, associate history professor emerita of the University of North Dakota, who researched the exhibit’s content.
The exhibit explores gardening in North Dakota, using photographs, colorful images from seed catalogs and posters, heirloom seeds, gardening tools, and preserving utensils. All are from the collections of the state’s history agency, the State Historical Society of North Dakota (SHSND).
The exhibit is produced by the State Historical Society, and funded in part by the North Dakota Humanities Council.
“Everyone has some connection to gardening,” said Chris Johnson, SHSND Museum Director. “It’s a story that crosses all different time periods and cultures.”
Said Genia Hesser, SHSND Curator of Exhibits: “It’s a fun exhibit. It’s colorful, with original artwork and it’s something that will appeal to a lot of people.”
The exhibit tells the story of about 900 years of gardening in what would become North Dakota, beginning when American Indians began cultivating corn, squash, sunflowers, and beans along the Missouri and other river systems in the state. All these required careful, patient cultivation by generations of Indian farmers, primarily women, to develop varieties that would flourish in the extreme climate of the Northern Plains. Lewis and Clark and other early visitors were astonished by the productivity of these pioneer horticulturalists. Gardens were also essential for the survival of frontier soldiers sent to remote outposts in the 1860s and 1870s. Fresh supplies had to be shipped hundreds of miles from supply depots, and were always at the mercy of the weather. Growing produce in military post gardens was necessary to bridge the gap between shipments and stave off scurvy and other health problems.
When American pioneers arrived in the new territory, gardens quickly appeared on these new homesteads. Women from the eastern United States, Norway, Germany, Russia, and other parts of Europe brought new vegetables to add to the garden staples developed by their Indian and military predecessors. Gardens remained an essential part of life on the farm, and often in town. For many people whether or not a garden would survive during the drought years of the 1930s was of critical importance; during the two world wars, a flourishing garden was a patriotic imperative. Gardening would also become almost a competitive sport, with agricultural fairs that awarded prizes for the finest vegetables dating back to the 1870s; such contests are still part of the North Dakota State Fair.
Over the centuries many of the issues faced by gardeners have remained the same. These continuing problems, and the varying solutions gardeners have found, will be included in the exhibit. For instance, while the need to break the soil and remove weeds is always present, the tools used for gardening, from a buffalo scapula hoe to a rototiller, have changed. In the same way the means of protecting a garden against pests, from small boys with bows and arrows to scarecrows and steel traps, have also changed. Once the produce is safely gathered, various means of preserving the bounty, from drying to canning and now freezing, have been used.
All these changes in technology will be illustrated in the exhibit with objects from the Society’s collections. Images of early Indian gardens and photographs of military and pioneer gardens will show how the work of gardening has changed over the years, but also how the essentials remain the same. Colorful posters urging the planting of Victory Gardens as a means of winning two world wars, as well as prizes from agricultural fairs, will illustrate some of the reasons, besides dinner, for doing all that work.
“We have everything from gopher traps to examples of seeds,” said Mark Halvorson, SHSND Curator of Collections Research. “We are trying to make it as family-friendly as possible, and I think there is something for everyone in this exhibit.”
A special exhibit highlight will be the many beautiful catalog covers, dating back to the turn of the 20th Century, created by the Oscar H. Will Seed Company. These catalogs vividly illustrate that the January dream of the perfect summer garden has been an affliction of gardeners, to the benefit of seed companies, for many years. Later Will Seed Company covers, also to be part of the exhibit, are perhaps unique in their emphasis on the American Indian gardeners whose seeds were the basis of many of the items, such as the Great Northern Bean, popularized by Will and sold in the catalogs.
Throughout the exhibit, it will be clear how necessity and pleasure, and ingenuity and hard work, have been part of the story of gardening through the centuries. How Does Your Garden Grow? will be at the North Dakota Heritage Center through November 2011.
In conjunction with the exhibit, a Traveling Interpretive Exhibits Service (TIES) exhibit will also be available for display at such facilities as museums, libraries and schools. The Seeds of Victory: Home Gardening Posters from the World Wars, features 37 full-color war garden posters, reproduced from the originals in the State Archives at the North Dakota Heritage Center. To schedule the exhibit, which will be available beginning Monday, November 23, contact the State Historical Society of North Dakota’s Outreach Program Coordinator, Scott Schaffnit, at (701) 328-2794 or email sschaffnit@nd.gov.
For more information about the TIES program and the How Does Your Garden Grow? Gardening in North Dakota exhibit, visit the agency's web site at www.history.nd.gov.
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