Sign garden at Hack House
When I wrote this article last weekend looking out the window at the blustery, soggy scene – I began to think how lucky the Milan folks were with the simply gorgeous weather they had for their annual Fall Festival at Hack House.
SW porch repairs
On the contrary, this old house now serves as a living museum of what “life” was like in late 19th century rural Milan. The outbuildings and main house have been filled with numerous period furnishings and artifacts worthy of Sauder Village – with the added bonus that most of these are original to the structure. This is really a “must see” for anyone with children to not only connect them with their local roots, but to show how people can come together and volunteer their time and labor to preserve a piece of history.
Milan gang at work
Well, this article is supposed to be about the gardens that our hard working MGs, Naida, Norma, Amy, Doris and Barb and their fellow Milan Garden Club members managed to wrestle out of a pile of overgrown thickets! Naida is currently down in the wilds of Brazil, so I am posting her emailed comments about how the gardens came into being.
“The Milan Garden Club, which was formed in 1998, was looking for a community project. In the spring of 1999, one of our members, who belongs to the Milan Area Historical Society, suggested we establish and maintain a few flower gardens at the Friend/Hack House museum.
SE porch front garden
We started slowly the first couple of years – with a lot of willing helpers and some very good advice from Jennie Stanger – and our projects and gardens expanded quickly. In 2007 we decided to create a new garden area in front of ( at first glance) a chicken coop. We later discovered it had held exotic birds and was used in 1888 as an aviary.
Aviary front gardens
Shortly after taking on this new area in front of the aviary, we looked to the east side and saw it was just a mass of overgrown wild raspberries, grape vines, junk trees and weeds which we felt detracted from our new garden. About this time, many of our members were” running out of steam” – but that darn Doris Campbell (MG class of 2010) kept gravitating to that area, cutting out brush, etc. I got hooked also and we burned a lot of calories doing our best to clear that area. I even talked my husband into bringing his chainsaw to cut down some of the larger trees. Doris built a tower (about 8ft high x 12ft wide) of brush – and finally got help from some friends of the Historical Society to take down more of the very large trees and dispose of our pile.
Half finished aviary brush pile
Like the house and outbuildings, the gardens are a work in progress. We managed to cut back the bulbs and give a quick tidy up of the beds in time for the Fall Festival.”
Naida
Former brush area
So many stories here, but this is just a blog. This house is not your typical 1880 farmhouse. The wood paneling and doors speak of lavishness that came from other than farm labor. The inlaid marble fireplace in the parlor would not look out of place in an expensive home today. The kitchen is “period 1920” and not that unusual – unlike the 3 hole outside privy in a very elegant building that had a somewhat ingenious “flushing” system. They needed it as the farm help lived in the attic over the family quarters!
The blue "Electric Sugar Machine" on stove in Summer Kitchen
The summer kitchen contains an interesting assortment of laundry artifacts – and the “The Electric Sugar Refining Machine” – the profits from which today would be called a stock swindle or ponzi scheme, that funded all this opulence, briefly landed the grieving widow in jail and definitively her husband had he not unexpectedly died. Their farm encompassed what is now the former Ford plant and the original Owens-Illinois corrugated box facility. Infact, Sharon Diefenthaler can recall people living in the house in the late seventies when she worked at the box plant.
The elegant outhouse
After looking at that brush pile, now I can see why the Milan gang made such short work of our garden this year. These gals just thrive on the challenge of knocking a neglected garden into shape. Maybe as an association, we owe them at least one good gardening day to help them in the spring?
The museum is open from May to late November, Sundays 1-4 pm.
Monroe County Master Gardener Association 
Thanks for the well written article. It has been a lot of work to get the gardens in the shape they are today. What fun to see what hard work can do. It is a joy to work in the gardens at the Hack House.
Doris Campbell