HART starts work on historical garden

The Hanna Agricultural Resource Team (HART) met at 9 a.m. on June 13 at the Hanna Basin Museum to work on the historical tea garden the group had offered to create for the museum.

Members Linda Goodrich and Rose Dabbs have looked at compiled lists of flowers and pictures of English gardens that were once common in Hanna during the turn of the 20th century over the past year. The Hanna Basin Museum had asked HART to put in an English garden at the cottage back in the summer of 2019.

The museum and HART came to an agreement to have the group replicate these gardens with plants and flowers from that time. Currently there are only two trees and grass in the garden.

L. Goodrich came up with a diagram of the flowers to be planted and where. She waited for stumps that had to be removed from the yard before HART started with their project. That recently happened. The next phase of getting the beds and yard ready was started on the morning of the June 13.

There is a history of these gardens unique to Hanna. When these individual gardens were in existence throughout the town, there were competitions to see who had the best. The contests got so strong that owners would sabotage neighbors' gardens in order to win.

The work required HART members to be cautious with the landscape present.

"It is going to be a chore around the roots of the trees," Perry Goodrich, HART director, said when approaching the project at the beginning of the day. "We are going to have to be careful around them."

The group finished their goals for the day by the afternoon.

It is only a matter of time before visitors will be able to see a replica of a garden that made Hanna famous for its competitions back in the day.