Bartram's Garden Or Philly, Again

This weekend I visited Bartram's Garden and his house. John Bartram, an early American naturalist, rebuilt an existing house in the 1760's or 70s--it's fascinating and odd, with hand-carved decoration and three stone pillars.

Below one window, Bartram carved a neat Puritan rhyme: "It is God alone, Almighty Lord / The Holy One by me adord / John Bartram 1770."

Above a window on the original house, he engraved, "John Ann Bartram 1731."

Bartram supplied seed to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, among others. The gardens were overgrown, but it was obvious that it held a lot of exotic plants in his day; you can still see there the oldest gingko in North America.

We discovered an old cider press carved out of a gigantic rock down by the river. A wheel used to sit in the groove and mash the apples.