Some quick thoughts....Late 1700's. Survival is the name of the game. Fencing to keep community cattle out of the growing areas. Chicken coop which could be a shed designed to compliment house, hang herbs to dry, store equipment. Several rows of grapes. Design at that time still influenced by Old World, thus a study of parterre gardens designs looking for the more informal ones should be helpful. This is where you will find the 'middle ground'. Put yourself back in that time period. How would you set up your space to grow maximum production mixing edibles with herbs and flowers? Remember...the design rule of this time period is growing to sustain the family. Perhaps the 'common sense' design based on 1700's needs might be your best approach.

I live in the certified epicenter of "saltbox house" territory... Essex County, Massachusetts. :) Some of our treasured historic homes are 17th-century saltboxes, and include the oldest remaining such houses in the land.

The houses are lovingly maintained. But I'm sorry to say that few of them have authentic period gardens. One of the better examples of such a garden is at the House of The Seven Gables (of Nathanial Hawthorne fame) in Salem. They have a period garden that occasionally gets a few overhauls, but stays true to the era. The head gardener is an expert in maintaining authenticity of style, though according to the info on their Website, they do change the plantings now and then..

They are a National Historic Site museum. For info about the garden, go to the Site Map on their Website and click on Seaside Gardens. You might be able to contact the head gardener through them museum.

Here is a link that might be useful: House of the Seven Gables

I think you should start with a smaller area and then grow into it. I believe that the size is overwhelming you.

Lancelot "Capability" Brown was one of the first landscape designers to have a major influence in landscapes thoughout the Americas.

And during this landscape era Thomas Jefferson after visiting Europe brought forth a newer version of the English garden design to our shores.

Capability Brown's works were more towards large acreages and estates while Jefferson's designs were more towards the smaller residential environment.

Search and review what these two have done and you will also find many others who have added to the Early American / Colonial landscape designs.

You will be more than impressed and have so many decisions to ponder and make that you will be slow moving in the design of your period landscape.

Some more is too much and again sometimes more is not enough.

Good luck and enjoy your seach and new found knowledge.

Jake

PS - find the book called - "The Garden Makers" The Great Tradition of Garden Design from 1600 to the Present. by: George Plumptre

The people who settled in the new world came from different countries and cultures and would have brought their own notion of what a garden should be with them. If the house was authentic, meaning an original, you could find out who owned it and where they came from and what they did for a living which would help. I take "updated version" to mean that it is 'in the style of' rather than an original so you are free to invent. A Dutch Merchant would likely have a formal garden (boxwoods, topiary etc.) whereas an English merchant might have a cottage style. Jake is right that the aristocracy, with huge estates, might have a Capability Brown inspired parkland but they would be unlikely to live in a saltbox.

None of these are historically accurate, but they are useful in bridging various formal/informal gaps.

A.J. Downing, Landscape Gardening and Rural Architecture - THE *19th* century American book of landscape design. In print for more than 50 years, and running into about 10 editions, the book was a serious and largely successful attempt to translate Capability Brown's ideas to American climatic and social conditions. While a lot of the specific examples are for relatively large estates, the book was written with the idea of being 'scalable' down to maybe an half-acre lot. It relates back to early American egalitarianism, where good design should at least be available to the middle class. The language is more than a little dated, and I find reading some Jane Austen can help tremendously in attaching meanings to vague words.

Gertrude Jekyll and Lawrence Weaver, Gardens for Small Country Houses- another book connected with historic trends, this is Jekyll's somewhat infamous 'small' garden book, where small is anything under ten acres that can be maintained by two men and a boy. The reason I mention it here, is because it does a very good job of illustrating the concept of informal planting of formal beds that is very common in Golden Age house museums around here. If you are familiar with it, and most midwesterners don't seem to be, it seems to solve a multitude of cold climate problems. The bed shapes themselves provide winter interest (this isn't straight rectangle, circle stuff, but not overly ornate), but during the growing season, the plants soften the lines. It's informal enough to cover planting mistakes and winter losses, but formal enough to have structure. It seems to be very East Coast.

Roy Strong, assorted books - Strong is a garden historian, connected for many years with the Victoria & Albert Museum, so his take on things is a bit different. Basically, when 'formality' became a dirty word in gardening, the baby got thrown out with the bathwater. His books tend to provide brief overviews of historic garden styles.

This is more aiming at something you will find suitable than something that is historically correct. I spend enough of my life inside the rather stiffling box of historically correct to not want to wander into it without a very good reason. Since the house probably isn't authentic, the garden shouldn't have to be either.

Miss Jekyll's genius came a hundred years after the period in question and may even be the dividing line between the two in terms of what a perennial garden was so that is probably a curve ball mad.

Check these out:

http://www.fairfieldhistoricalsociety.org/ogdonhouse.html

http://www.historicnewengland.org/visit/homes/

http://www.victoryseeds.com/catalog/themes/18th_century.html

see this:

Here is a link that might be useful: course books for colonial gardening class

PS the Ann Leighton book in the above link is available at amazon, also Penelope Hobhouse has a huge book on garden history (worldwide) that has a chapter on early american landscape design and gardening (it's in one of the last chapters). I have this book--it's quite interesting.

Here is a link that might be useful: The Story of Gardening (Hobhouse)

I was going to suggest Colonial Williamsburg for inspiration, also see if you can find anything about Old Sturbridge Village in MA, which is a living history museum. Books on colonial era architecture or colonial life may supply some clues as well.

The New Traditional Garden by Michael Weishan has information about gardens of that period, along with lists of plants that would have been found in them.

Old Sturbridge Village is mainly 19th century. Last years 3rd graders went there or I wouldn't know this! Plimouth Plantation (17th century) and Pioneer Village in Salem MA (also 17th century),might be helpful as well, although the time period isn't correct.

I'm sure there are plenty of 18th century gardens still in the Philadelphia area--we toured Ben Franklin's a few years ago, although it was probably too small/urban/formal for your taste. It had a courtyard.

Linked below is another one that is interesting--it was a plant nursery.
http://www.bartramsgarden.org/see/garden.html

I wonder what would come up if you searched for farms/homesteads rather than gardens.

Pioneer Village is a replica of a 17th-century primitive settlement -- the original Salem colony. The gardens are defunct, as the village has been broke and closed for years. There is a group trying to revive it, though, and they are having the roofs rethatched, but the gardens will be on hold for a while.

As I mentioned earlier, the best existing resource for saltboxes is really the House of the Seven Gables Historic Site(see link in my previous post) here in Salem. It is a compound of period 17th-century saltboxes, not just the Seven Gables, and includes a Jacobean-period garden, which is just what the OP seems to be seeking.

Here on the North Shore of Mass., you can't spit without hitting one of the country's last genuine saltbox homes. But not many have authentic gardens. The Gables compound is one that does.

I agree with Laag that the size of Saltbox 2006's garden area seems overwhelming, but I believe that it would be good to draw up a plan to create the "big picture," but to work on the area in smaller, more manageable pieces.