The Warren and Margaret Barham Heritage Garden

The Warren and Margaret Barham Texas Heritage Garden was the first substantial garden developed in the Holistic Garden Complex. It replaced the original 30 X 30 ft. garden. The funding to develop this garden was a gift from Dr. Warren Barham, the first department head of current Horticultural Sciences Department. The garden illustrates our gardening heritage in Texas. It has plantings of fruits, vegetables, herbs and ornamental/medicinal plants. At the center of this garden is a rustic cottage which would have been the home for a family of ten back in the 1850's. This garden represents our Texas gardening heritage in several ways:

• many of the plants are the first to be introduced in Texas and others are the first to be grown successfully in our state

• it illustrates the components of an early garden in which plants were grown for food, for seasoning, for medicine and for beauty

• it illustrates various plants brought to Texas by the various ethnic groups that settled our great state, plants from Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Mexico.

• it is used to teach beginning garden science to a new generation of gardeners who will add to our gardening heritage in their own ways.

The Heritage Garden is used to teach garden science students with an interest in learning how to become gardners.Many of these students have been in a garden, but know gardening from the chores that they had to do in their parents' gardens. Now they want to learn to have their own gardens. The garden is also used to help the students learn how to use fresh garden produce. In every lab meeting we harvest something from the garden and prepare it in the lab room, among the more popular recipes are salsas, broccoli soup, fresh herb spread, cabbage-sausage, microwaved spicy okra snake, and others. The students in the beginning garden science course are the primary persons involved in maintaining this garden.