Throughout the Museum’s 19 acres you will find a diverse collection of gardens, trees, and shrubs, many of which are labeled indicating both the common and botanical name. Our gardens contain hundreds of different varieties of plants that accentuate the beauty and historical context of the Mystic River and 19th-century village.
The Museum’s gardens are educational tools used to create interest in plants and gardening. They are designed to motivate and excite visitors about horticultural history and our heritage as New England gardeners.
Mystic Seaport Museum has re-created two 19th-century gardens, the Burrows House garden and the Buckingham-Hall House garden, that portray the social order, economy, and cultural pursuits brought about by the Industrial Age. Most plants used are heirloom varieties, many of which are popular today. Additional gardens can be found throughout Museum grounds, including a Children’s Zoo garden featuring plants with fun names—like elephant ear plants—to appeal to future gardeners.
AFRICAN GARDEN
Location: Between the Treworgy Planetarium and the Children’s Museum
Type: Cultural / interpretive garden
Description:
This garden of perennials honors the medicinal and culinary plant knowledge of African and African American communities. Enslaved people brought from Africa to work in households and plantations in the Americas brought their own traditional knowledge with them, and in some cases their own plants. They also learned the culinary and medicinal uses of plants that were native here, many of which were also used by Indigenous people.
Notable Plants:
Additional interest:
Bottle Tree: Bottle trees have a long history in southern African-American communities, and the tradition has clear origins in Africa. As early as 1776, a European visiting the Kingdom of Kongo, on the West African coast, wrote of people hanging broken pottery vessels on tree branches as protection from evil spirits.
BIRDS AND BUTTERFLIES GARDEN
Location: Entrance to Home Port
Type: Wildlife habitat garden
Description:
Originally planted by Sprigs and Twigs, and now maintained by Museum staff, this garden supports hummingbirds, butterflies, and pollinators with shrubs and seasonal annuals.
Plants (perennials):
Plants (annuals):
BUCKINGHAM-HALL HOUSE KITCHEN GARDEN
Location: Backyard of the Buckingham-Hall House
Type: Historic kitchen garden and fruit yard (1830s–1840s)
Description:
Reflects early American domestic gardening practices and heirloom plant varieties.
Potential Crops:
Heirloom fruit plants:
BUCKINGHAM-HALL HOUSE PARLOR GARDEN
Location: Front yard of the Buckingham-Hall House
Type: Historic parlor garden (1830s–1840s)
Description:
Reflects early American domestic gardening practices and heirloom plant varieties. All the flowers and shrubs in this garden were in general use during the 1830s and 1840s. In 1835, as President Jackson was growing citrus trees and tropical flowers in White House greenhouses, the Buckinghams and other American families were planting flowers in small, front-yard “parlor gardens” such as this one. Popular gardening manuals and agricultural newspapers encouraged readers to cultivate flowers, vegetables, and fruit and to see their bountiful gardens as signs of God’s providence and their own virtue. A simple fence often protected favorite flowers, like the newly introduced Chinese peony, from man and roving beast. As interest in horticulture grew, fruits and flowers became favorite motifs in the decorative arts, used even by sailors at sea on their scrimshaw.
Plants:
Plants possibly included annually:
BURROWS HOUSE GARDEN
Location: Burrows House
Type: Historic domestic garden (1860s–1870s)
Description:
Represents a working-class family garden with practical vegetables, herbs, and ornamental plants typical of the 1860s and 1870s.
Perennials:
Recent Perennial Additions (2024):
Woody Ornamentals:
Annuals that may be planted for summer color:
Edibles that may be planted:
CAMBRIDGE PLAZA GARDEN
Location: Thompson Exhibition Building
Type: Native and pollinator garden
Description:
Originally designed by Kent + Frost Landscape Architecture with native grasses, such as Sesleria and prairie dropseed, winterberry and viburnum shrubs, and decorative snowbell and dogwood trees. The garden was expanded to include native pollinator-friendly plants.
Recent Additions:
CHILDREN’S ZOO GARDEN
Location: Children’s Museum
Type: Themed children’s garden
Description:
Features plants with animal-themed names to engage young visitors.
Notable Plants:
Additional plants:
FOUNTAIN GARDEN
Location: Membership Yard
Type: Memorial-style ornamental garden
Description:
Designed with a limited color palette.
Plants:
MALLORY BUILDING GARDEN
Location: Entrance to Mallory Building
Type: Ornamental perennial display
Description:
Edited in 2025 to enhance color and seasonal interest at the exhibit entrance.
Plants:
MCGRAW GALLERY QUADRANGLE
Location: South side of the Thompson Exhibition Building
Type: Formal landscape planting
Description:
Originally designed by Kent + Frost Landscape Architecture, this garden is now maintained by Museum staff.
Grasses:
Trees and Shrubs:
MEMORIAL GARDEN
Location: Behind the Treworgy Planetarium
Type: Reflective memorial garden
Description:
A quiet space with a gazebo, memorial bricks, and a calming palette of shade-tolerant perennials.
Plants:
Also on display are Heliotrope standards, given to the Museum from Harkness Memorial Park. Heliotrope was a favorite plant of Mary Harkness, who was a granddaughter of Thomas Greenman.
PLANETARIUM GARDEN
Location: Treworgy Planetarium yard
Type: Ornamental perennial garden
Theme:
Celestial-themed plant varieties (circa 2010)
Notable Plants:
PLANETARIUM “MOON” TREE
Location: Front yard of Treworgy Planetarium
Established: 2025
Type: Interpretive / Specimen Tree
Description:
This American sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) was grown from a seed that orbited the Moon during NASA’s Artemis I mission in 2022. The Artemis Moon Tree program is a modern-day reimagining of the Apollo Moon Trees of 1971, when Apollo 14 astronaut Stuart Roosa carried seeds on his journey to and from our closest neighbor in space. Following a voyage of nearly 500,000 miles, this tree, along with dozens of others, germinated at the J. Herbert Stone Nursery in Central Point, Oregon. Mystic Seaport Museum’s Treworgy Planetarium is a NASA Community Anchor institution. As part of that partnership, the Museum was awarded a Moon Tree—the second to arrive in the state of Connecticut. The Moon Tree stands as a testament to the resiliency of life amidst extreme conditions. We hope it inspires you to dream of the possibilities that the future holds. If a tiny seed can survive a journey to the moon and back, what else is possible when it comes to exploration?
Highlights:
SAILORS’ READING ROOM WINDOW BOXES
Location: Seamen’s Friend Society Building in the Seaport Village
Type: Seasonal display planting
Description:
Inspired by Victorian gardening traditions.
Plants:
SANGER VISITOR RECEPTION CENTER GARDEN
Location: Interior grounds at the south entrance
Established: 2022
Type: Designed landscape
Description:
Garden was originally planted by Sprigs and Twigs, and now maintained by Museum staff.
Plants:
SECURITY BUILDING GARDEN
Location: Security building
Established: 2024
Type: Native plant garden
Description:
Designed with an emphasis on native species.
Plants:
STONEWALL GARDEN
Location: Membership Building
Type: Rock garden/perennial border
Description:
Following 2023 yew hedge pruning, the garden was underplanted with low-growing perennials.
Plants:
THREE SISTERS GARDEN
Location: Behind the School House in the Seaport Village
Type: Indigenous agricultural garden
Description:
Demonstrates traditional Indigenous companion planting of corn, beans, and squash.
Plants possibly included:
VIETOR GARDEN
Location: South side of the Meeting House
Established: 2017
Type: Ornamental perennial garden
Description:
Originally designed by Kent + Frost Landscape Architecture, now maintained by Museum staff, this garden was given in memory of Anna Glen Butler and Alexander Orr Vietor by their children. Designed with a color palette of blue, pink, purple, and white and strong seasonal interest.
Plants (perennials):
Recent additions:
