An initiative of the Harriet Beecher Stowe House and the University of Cincinnati

The Stowe Garden project is an initiative to restore the two-acre historic landscape around Cincinnati’s Harriet Beecher Stowe House as a vibrant, educational greenspace for the community. Located at a busy urban intersection, the property faces several challenges, including an outdoor classroom overlooking a gas station, an underused event space due to traffic noise, and a wooded area littered with detritus from demolished homes and years of illegal dumping. We will remove invasive species and reintroduce native ones, restoring the historic plant communities that would have grown in the area.

Within this landscape we will embed a kitchen garden highlighting two eras in the house’s history: the nineteenth-century Beecher residence and the twentieth-century Edgemont Inn, an African American boarding house. The garden will feature medicinal herbs used by the Beecher sisters and crops traditionally grown by African American farmers.

By displaying non-native, legacy species within a restored native setting, we will emphasize the vital role of environmental stewardship in preserving both natural and cultural legacies. The Stowe House has already undergone a major interior restoration and serves students, families, and visitors from across the country. The landscape should reflect the museum’s work. We want to revive it as a beautiful, historically accurate, and environmentally sensitive greenspace.