Celebrate USA's 250th Birthday With A Garden That Honors The Country's Founders

America's 250th birthday marks one of the biggest commemorations in the nation's history. Although 250 years of time and history have passed since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it's never too late to learn more about the country's founding, even through gardening. Burpee, the famous seed company, has partnered with various historic places and organizations to offer commemorative seed kits based on famous colonial gardens. Each kit comes with individual seed packets, plant labels, and a special keepsake card.

Burpee's limited edition collection includes four different collaborative seed kits. In partnership with Thomas Jefferson's Monticello (his historic home), you can grow Thomas Jefferson's Revolutionary Garden. Or, in collaboration with George Washington's Mount Vernon (the Washington's historic home), Burpee also offers Martha Washington's Kitchen Garden. Other historically-accurate gardens you can try include A Colonial Dooryard Herb Garden, which features herbs commonly grown by early colonists. Several of these seed kits include many heirloom seeds to grow in your garden and provide a little bit of history to make your gardening adventures a little more interesting.

While exploring colonial gardening, you can also try another planting tradition with deep roots in American history. The Three Sisters method, a type of Indigenous American companion planting to use in your garden, is another way to celebrate the long history of America and its many cultures.

Along with being a Founding Father, Thomas Jefferson enjoyed experimenting in his garden at Monticello, his home in Virginia. Today, visitors can still tour the 1,000-foot-long garden terrace that he designed and where he endeavored to figure out which vegetables grew best in the U.S. climate. Several of the vegetable varieties offered in this seed kit include those mentioned specifically by Jefferson. The 'McMahon's Bird' hot pepper, native to the U.S., was actually first documented by Jefferson.

When it comes to Martha Washington's garden legacy, her original kitchen garden layout is still cultivated at Mount Vernon to this day. Kitchen gardens were an essential part of colonial life and hers contained many heirloom varieties. However, Burpee's kit also includes varieties such as 'Amish Deer Tongue' lettuce and 'Georgia Rattlesnake' watermelon, which were developed long after Martha Washington's lifetime. If you are interested in the most accurate garden based off of hers, make sure to grow 'White Lisbon Bunching' onion, popular since the 1700s, 'Armenian' cucumber, a unique vegetable grown since the 1400s, and 'Blue Curled Scotch' kale, first mentioned in the 1600s in America.

But if you're just looking for ways to give an old-world feeling to your garden, consider planting your own colonial herb garden. Burpee's seed kit for this garden includes a design card to help you get started, and comes with parsley, chives, lemon balm, hyssop, dill, fennel, chamomile, and nasturtium. Burpee also offers The Declaration Bouquet, a seed kit featuring new flower varieties to honor the 250th birthday of the USA, including bright-orange 'Liberty' cosmos and delicate purple 'Freedom' verbena.