Rooted in Simplicity: Shaker Gardening Methods & Philosophy

Many of us view our gardens as peaceful, bountiful spaces. The Shakers, a religious group that peaked in the mid-19th century, saw theirs as real pieces of heaven on earth. Their legacy inspires gardeners today to plant with purpose and to imagine each simple task as part of something bigger.

“Hands to work, hearts to God” is a quote attributed to Mother Ann Lee, an early leader of this peace-loving, industrious community. This concept shaped the Shaker way of life, which embraced simplicity, pacifism, gender equality and a direct experience with God. 

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Founded in England in the early 1700s, the Christian sect earned the name Shakers through their unconventional services, which included ecstatic dances, singing in the Spirit, speaking in tongues and even seeing visions. In 1774, Lee led a small band from England to colonial America to escape persecution. 

A celibate society, the Shakers relied on conversion to grow their numbers. In the 1840s, over 5,000 members lived in 19 communal villages across the Northeast and Midwest. After the Civil War, the number of Shakers dwindled. Currently there are only three members, who live at the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Village in New Gloucester, Maine. 

In Shaker belief, Christ’s second coming had already occurred, so the goal was to model heaven in day-to-day life. They lived communally, without owning private property, and viewed every task—from sweeping the floor to creating furniture—as a form of prayer. 

“Being fully present in work as worship. That’s a beautiful idea,” says H. P. Lovelace, farm manager at the Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill in Harrodsburg, Kentucky. Lovelace oversees agriculture at this 3,000-acre living museum, once home to the third-largest Shaker community in the United States.

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“It’s a lot of work. We try to embody that philosophy ‘hands to work, hearts to God,’” Lovelace says. “Part of it is practical, because we are providing food for the (on-site) restaurant, but we are also creating an art exhibit. We like that goal. I have a small team, but we have volunteers. We put our hands to it.” 

Shaker communities were comprised of four to eight “families,” groups of 30 to 100 celibate men and women (referred to as brothers and sisters), plus adopted children and those of new converts. Each family was self-sufficient, with its own dwelling house, workshops, barns, gardens and orchards. 

Feeding dozens of people required a two- to three-acre kitchen garden for day-to-day meals, plus field plots of brassicas and root vegetables grown for winter storage. Summer crops included tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, peppers, peas and beans. 

Herbs, including peppermint, wormwood, thyme, basil and others, were grown for cooking, teas, fabric dyeing and the Shakers’ herb trade, a cutting-edge endeavor. The first commercial producer of medicinal herbs in America, they sold dried herbs, tinctures and salves. 

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Seed production often accounted for a Shaker community’s most significant income, with many selling over 100,000 packets per year, at five to six cents each.

“They had a seed industry in the mid-1800s. They were one of the first paper packets,” explains Lovelace. While they were not the first group to sell seeds, they are credited with innovative marketing featuring elegant yet practical packets with complete instructions on sowing. 

“Especially in New England, they had territories where they went to sell the seeds. It was big business for the Shakers,” he says. 

Many Shaker communities also shared gardening advice through manuals that covered how much to plant per person, soil preparation, the use of hotbeds, pest control and more. 

The Gardener’s Manual from the Shaker village in New Lebanon, New York, includes this advice for dealing with “cabbage lice,” better known as aphids: “Plaster, ashes or quick lime, sprinkled over them in a dewy morning will check their progress, but will not destroy them, unless rubbed in. To (affect) this, (the substance) & a brush or cloth may be used, unfolding the (leaf) with one hand and applying the brush with the other. A decoction of tobacco, administered with a sponge in the same way, is very effectual; fermented urine is equally so.”

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Meticulous by nature, Shakers advocated keeping the garden neat and tidy. “Weeding should be early performed, and continued with persevering faithfulness, as often as necessary, through the season,” states the New Lebanon manual.

Their gardens, fields and orchards, which could harbor four dozen varieties of apples and other fruit trees, were examples of simplicity and efficiency.

“This style was very much straight lines that are easy to harvest. I find the order in the symmetry very beautiful, and it mirrors the architecture of the buildings here,” says Lovelace. “There’s a certain confidence and sense of security in order.”

Beyond their acres of vegetables and herbs, Shaker farmers raised field crops such as wheat, oats, rye and corn, as well as hay for their livestock, which included cattle, sheep, goats, horses and pigs. Of course, chickens took center stage for both meat and eggs, as well as their valuable manure. 

At the Pleasant Hill village, visitors today encounter American shorthorn cows and Katahdin meat sheep, plus Shetland and Dorset sheep raised for wool. Draft horses pull tour wagons and step up to skid logs, haul hay or plow on any given day. 

“As a farmer, I really appreciate the pace of that type of labor. You slow down and appreciate what you’re doing,” Lovelace says. This slow, conscious work allowed the Shaker members to integrate their beliefs into their daily tasks; today, it relates to modern ideas of mindfulness in the garden.

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It wasn’t unusual for Shaker farmers to plant a couple of acres of sorghum, a cash crop that could be pressed into a sweet syrup or used to make brooms, a significant source of income. 

There are reports of Shakers intercropping this tall plant with shorter crops, such as oats and potatoes, as well as young apple trees—essentially creating a food forest long before there was a term for such practice. As the trees grew to cast more shade, the understory of edible crops was moved elsewhere. Lovelace is pleased to continue these efforts. 

“We’re very much into regenerative agriculture. We try to mimic the natural systems,” he says, noting that they practice companion planting, sow sunflowers throughout the garden and plant a pollinator strip between every fourth row to encourage a diversity of insects. 

At the soil level, Lovelace rotates crops, uses cover crops, allows certain fields to lie fallow for a season, relies on animals for manure and grazing and lets the pigs till areas when needed. Just like the Shaker brothers and sisters, he says, “We are trying to leave the land healthier.” 

He is also honoring the seed-saving tradition, aiming to maintain crops that thrive in the village’s environment. 

“I select the seeds if they do very well in drought,” he notes. “They are alive and adapting. They are changing with the changing climate. Seeds carry knowledge of the ancestors and the future of what things are going to be.” 

We can all aspire to the horticultural perfection of the Shaker gardens. Their beauty shines in their simplicity, and the Shakers’ practical approach resonates through the centuries, giving us the possibility of creating our own heaven on earth by following their example.   

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Amy grisak is a freelance journalist, avid gardener and outdoorswoman based in Montana.