Wyckoff House & Association

Community
Garden

The Community Demonstration Garden occupies a central portion of M.Fidler-Wyckoff House Park in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. The Garden brings to life the site's agrarian history. The programs are supported by grants from the J.M. Kaplan Fund and Brooklyn’s Delegation to the State Senate.

MISSION: A COMMUNITY CENTER FOR SUSTAINABLE LIVING

The 19th-century Kings County market farm serves as historical precedent for the Wyckoff Farmhouse Community Demonstration Garden. The residents of southeastern Brooklyn live in a densely populated and highly polluted urban environment, yet this land was once some of the most fertile farmland in the nation.

The Garden is planned and cultivated under the full-time supervision of the Wyckoff Farmhouse Caretaker/Gardener.

Given that most of the techniques of chemical agriculture did not develop until after World War II, it is certain that the Wyckoff family farmed their land using more traditional and sustainable means.

The Community Demonstration Garden is intended to be a center for historical and horticultural education, with an emphasis on sustainable, organic production. The hope is that the Garden's most enduring product will be an educated community.

WYCKOFF FARMHOUSE HISTORIC LANDSCAPE FEATURES

The first phase of the landscape reconstruction of M. Fidler Wyckoff House Park was completed in November of 2004. A berry garden including raspberries, blackberries, currants, blueberries, and strawberries was planted along the wall to the east of the house. Besides providing berries for consumption and ink-making, the berry garden is intended to function as a hedgerow, an essential feature for maintaining ecological balance in a traditional organic garden. An herb garden is planted with historic herbs and heirloom vegetables in the raised beds on the south side of the house. The herb garden will play an important part of the museum's educational programs on Colonial cooking, medicine, and self-sufficiency. It is also documented that the Wyckoff farm included a fairly extensive orchard to the west of the house. An apple orchard consisting of antique apple varieties will be planted in the northwest corner of the park upon completion of the Museum’s Wyckoff-Durling Barn Education Center. We hope to provide all our own apples for cider-making demonstrations throughout the fall season.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

A principal purpose of the Wyckoff Farmhouse Community Demonstration Garden is to reconnect Brooklyn with its proud history as some of the most fertile and productive farmland in the United States. Although it is difficult to imagine in present-day, urban Brooklyn, Kings County was primarily farmland through most of its history. Pieter Claesen Wyckoff and his descendents farmed their property, mostly southeast of the House, from 1652 until 1901. For much of its early history, the Dutch farmers of the area produced mostly grain crops for sale: wheat, corn, oats, rye, and hay. For their personal use, they also would have grown a wide variety of vegetables in their kitchen garden. The kitchen garden was also the home of many household herbs used for cooking and medicine. Kings County farmers frequently had orchards with multiple species of fruit trees.

The 19th century saw a great change in the character and production of Kings County farms. As New York City and Brooklyn rapidly expanded, the outlying farmland became progressively more oriented towards providing for the needs of the urban market. By the later half of the century, most of the land in Kings County had been converted to market farm production. Vegetables and fruit were grown at high profit to supply demand in the adjacent cities, while less perishable grain crops were increasingly supplied by farms of the Midwest. Records show that Brooklyn farms produced a wide variety of vegetables, including: cabbage, potatoes, sweet corn, carrots, cucumbers, beans, peas, onions, tomatoes, celery, beets, rhubarb, squash, asparagus, cauliflower, and turnips. They also grew fruit for market, including apples, cherries, raspberries, and pears. As late as the 1880's, Kings County ranked second in the United States in terms of agricultural production; Queens County ranked first.

Despite the dramatic expansion of urban Brooklyn, the Flatlands survived as a farm community into the 20th century. The Wyckoffs on Canarsie Lane were among the first families in the area to sell their land to developers, perhaps motivated by the incursion of the Long Island Rail Road across their lands in 1897. By 1940, urban Brooklyn had essentially enveloped all of Kings County and its agrarian past was no more than a memory.