About Our Gardens

Yarb Garden: Located below the Herb Cabin. This was our first herb garden. The granny woman or "yarb" doctor would have used many of the plants found here.

Dye and Textile Plants: Located next to the Spinning Shop. This garden not only contains plants that produce color in cloth, but also plants that produce cloth!

Terraced Hillside: Located above the Herb Cabin. Covering the hillside and root cellar, these plantings include native wildflowers, old fashioned varieties, and herbs of the world.

Raised-Up Rock Garden: Located across from the Smokehouse. These raised beds are built of native stone and are planted with herbs that are to be touched, pinched, and smelled, and can be accessed by a smooth pathway.

Native Plant Wildlife Garden: Can be viewed from the Ozark Folk Center's Skillet Restaurant. For birds, bees, and butterflies, a rock pool graces the garden providing a water source for flora and fauna.

Butterfly Hill: Located below the Administration Building. Plantings include a whole host of nectar and larvae food plants, including early blooming bulbs, iris varieties, nasturtium, poppy, zinnias, sunflowers, bronze fennel, garden phlox, five varieties of butterfly bush, and butterfly weed.

Firecracker Hill: Located outside the Homespun Gift Shop on the Craft Grounds. This garden area is planted with flowers that explode in fiery color causing visitors to stand in the heat to admire the show! By the 4th of July, the hill is ablaze with old time daylilies, Turks Cap lilies, Butterfly Weed, and Oswego Tea (Red Monarda) that create a shining sea of gold, yellow, and red heralding summer's glory!

Kitchen Garden: Located just outside the Skillet Restaurant, within easy access of the chef. Herbs, edible flowers and vegetables thrive in soil enhanced with compost, agricultural meals, minerals, and mulch.

Ozark Spring: Located on the Craft Grounds. Early settlers depended upon life-giving water for sustenance. With the advent of gris and lumber mills, powered by water wheels, towns and industry sprang up. The plants in and around the spring, stream and pond are native to America, to remind of us of a time before Europeans settled the land.

Woodland Medicinal Plants: Located on the forest floor in a little patch above the Terraced Garden. Though this is the smallest garden within the Heritage Herb Garden, it is the most important. The plants are native to these hills. Many an Ozark family kept body and soul together "diggin" roots to sell and to make bitters and tonics to ease their miseries.

Rose Garden: Located between the Blacksmith and Potter's shop in the Craft Village. The old-time roses thrive in the coal smoke, trellised by the black smith's handiwork. We think it is the sulfur in the smoke keeping diseases at bay. Of course, the heritage rose varieties live long in our country gardens because they resist disease and bugs so much better than their fancy-pants cousins grown in the cities.

Herb Cabin: Across the way from the Country Kitchen we keep folk remedies and herbs for housekeeping and animal husbandry within the log walls. Herbs and everlastings are hung or spread on racks for drying in the old herb cabin. Every plant has usefulness and a story to tell. The cabin is for the edification of curious budding herbalists.

Plant Start Arbor: Stands at the beginning and end of your adventure through the Ozark Folk Center Craft Village. Just across from the Old Country School there stands a brush arbor made of cedar logs. In the protected shade of the arbor is a nursery of many diverse herbs, from native medicinals to pass-along-plants to the most rare of the basil varieties. All of our plant starts are grown using organic methods. Park visitors may buy the plants offered here. (Sorry, we are not able to take plant orders by phone or e-mail as we are unable to ship plants through the mail.)

Volunteer Program: We have a "gardening angel" volunteer program for those of you who would like to come and play in our gardens with us. The very best way to learn is hands-on experience. Just get in touch with us and tell us when you can be here!