History Plants

In our travels we like to collect plants and seeds from the places we visit. We have two Balasm trees from our friends lake property in Maine. They were about 8" high when we got them, now they are 3 feet high and starting to give off that heavenly scent.

Shortly after we moved into our home we visited Mount Vernon. I bought a small boxwood at their nursery, and it too was taken from bushes that have been on the property probably since the time of Washington. Boxwoods are an extremely slow growing plant, so they can be rather old. They give off a unique scent, that we always call "that old Virginia smell". Our little bush is starting to give us that scent.

My brother used to live in a house in Maryland that was built in 1760's by the man that was a tailor to George Washington. My brother gave us chives from the garden on the property, and they are in our garden.

A number of years ago we went to Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson. At the nursery, we bought a bayberry bush, it wasn't very big, but it was grown from the plants that were on the property. The bush looses it's leaves for the winter. However our snowy day on Wednesday, left the bayberry looking ever so lovely with snow on it's branches.


We also have family history plants too...the lilacs were given to me by my grandfather, the lilies of the valley came from my grandmother's yard, and the rose-a-sharon came from my great aunt. We also have daffodils that my grandfather initially planted in his woods, that we dug up and moved here.