Exchange Place showcases heirloom vegetables, herbs, field crops, and native trees and wildflowers that enhance the historic and natural setting of the 60+ acre site. Click on the tabs below to read more about these gardens.
(north side of Orebank Road)
The area adjacent to the log kitchen and surrounded by a tall board fence represents a 19th-century Appalachian farmstead kitchen garden, where vegetables, herbs, and flowers would have been grown for culinary and household purposes. Unique heirloom vegetables like salsify, tree onions, and scallop squash grown here are frequently used for foodways demonstrations at festivals and events. This garden is maintained by the Eden’s Ridge Hearth Cookery Society and the Exchange Place Junior Apprentices, who use historic and natural gardening techniques.
Beyond the historic kitchen garden is the Demonstration Garden, which is managed by the Master Gardeners of Northeast Tennessee and other Exchange Place volunteers. They use modern, yet eco-friendly techniques to grow a wide variety of interesting heirloom and hybrid plants and vegetables. Using raised beds and row cover extends the growing season so that crops can be harvested across four seasons. The Overmountain Weavers Guild also maintains two raised beds of plants that can be used for dying textiles.
Located in a corner outside the kitchen garden, the pollinator garden features native perennials and shrubs that are especially attractive to beneficial insects. Many of these plants are also useful medicinal or edible plants. This garden is maintained by the Master Gardeners of Northeast Tennessee.
The beds around the Cook’s Cabin contain plants that were grown primarily for medicinal and household use in the 19th century. Herbs like lemon balm and yarrow were used to make restorative teas and healing salves, while pungent tansy and lavender cotton were used to repel insect pests. On the west side of the building is a patch of madder, whose roots were commonly used to produce a reddish/orange dye for yarn and cloth.
These beds are maintained by the Eden’s Ridge Hearth Cookery Society and Exchange Place Junior Apprentices.
The large area of cultivated ground east of the Cook’s Cabin grows a demonstration patch of sweet sorghum cane, which is harvested and processed in the fall to make a syrup called sorghum. Exchange Place volunteers maintain this patch as a tribute to small community “stir offs” (as the boiling of the cane juice is called) to demonstrate how this annual plant was–and still is!–grown and refined to provide a valuable source of sweetening.
There are many varieties of sorghum, most all native to the eastern hemisphere. The kind used for grain (as flour or fodder) was brought to America from Africa as early as the 17th century, perhaps as a potential food for slaves. (Broom corn, also a type of sorghum, was used for making brooms and pot scrubbers.) The variety used for syrup, whose origin is a little more mysterious, however, was not grown and processed in America until the 1850s. It quickly became a favorite sweetener, especially for those who could not afford refined sugar or were looking for a substitute for molasses that was not produced by slave labor. The agricultural census of 1860 shows that James Preston produced eight gallons of “molasses” (whereas in 1850, he produced none). Here, “molasses” most certainly means sorghum syrup, as true molasses is the byproduct of the processing of sugarcane, which requires extreme heat and humidity and was only grown farther south (mainly in Louisiana and the Caribbean). Sorghum cane, on the other hand, thrives in the moderate climate of the Upper South.
The area around the creek has been planted with native shrubs and wildflowers to create a naturalized setting.
In 2014, hundreds of heirloom daffodil bulbs were planted in the Native/Wildflower Garden by the Southern Appalachian Plant Society (SAPS) in memory of Laurie Feit. Laurie was a passionate gardener, a teacher who loved helping people learn, and a devoted community volunteer. She was a Tennessee Master Gardener, longtime editor of the SAPS newsletter, and a member of Herb Saplings.
(south side of Orebank Road)
The heirloom rose garden on the west side of Roseland represents a smaller version of the large rose garden that once grew around the home at its original location on Shipp Street. It was planted in memory of Anna Gash.
The beds around the gift shop contain herbs and heirloom flowers. They are maintained by Herb Saplings (a subgroup of the Southern Appalachian Plant Society).
The shade garden behind Roseland contains woodland ferns and wildflowers and was planted in honor of long-time Exchange Place volunteers Ray and Martha Hunt.
The trees at Exchange Place are either specimens original to the site or newly planted native species, including black walnut, ash, oak, maple, tulip poplar, yellowwood (named the Tennessee Bicentennial tree), and hybrid American Chestnut.
The mission of Exchange Place Living History Farm is to preserve and interpret the heritage of mid-19th century farm life in Northeast Tennessee. A private, non-profit organization, Exchange Place is maintained and operated primarily by volunteers and is supported by donations, fundraisers, memberships, and grants.
Exchange Place
4812 Orebank Rd,
Kingsport, TN 37664
423-288-6071