The early New England family found it necessary to have a kitchen garden, close by for use and for tending. Familes would grow their own herbs for medicinal purposes but would also use them as flavoring for foods and dyes for cloth. The Reading Garden Club plants and tends a typical dooryard garden at the Parker Tavern. Care is taken to have plants authentic to the 18th and early 19th centuries and some of these plants are still familiar to us today.

Please click here for a listing of what's growing in the gardens at the Parker Tavern; this will open a .pdf file in a new window. Click here for a word document.

The Parker Tavern also has a vegetable garden, tended by board members, to reflect the many period vegetables grown by families who lived in the Tavern during the 18th and 19th centuries. These vegetables include squash, pole beans, chards, carrots, radishes, pumpkins, corn and potatos.