Plimoth Patuxet

Plimoth Patuxet Museums is a living history museum located on the banks of the Eel River overlooking Cape Cod Bay in Plymouth, MA. The Museum offers powerful personal encounters with history built on thorough research about the Wampanoag People and the Colonial English community in the 1600s.

While a private residence of the Hornblower Family at the start of the twentieth century, the property was landscaped by the Olmstead Brothers and Mary Parsons Cunningham. Henry Hornblower II founded the museum in 1947 and it has since expanded to include a 17 th Century English Village, Historic Patuxet Homesite, a Grist Mill on Town Brook and a replica ship, Mayflower II. Today the 137-acre museum is home to a wide variety of plants, including many native pollinators that nourish the pollinators from bees to hummingbirds to monarch butterflies that can be found across campus. Every spring, the museum hosts a plant sale of thousands of plants, including many native varieties like Hoary Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum), Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum), Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Black Eyed Susans (Rudbeckia hirta) and more.

Visitor Center Pathway Garden

 The paved pathway from the large archway to the parking lot to the scenic pavilion overlooking the Eel River leads museum guests to the Visitor Center and provides a popular walking path for several locals and their dogs. Flowering species including Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), Yellow Goldenrod (Solidago Canadensis), Hoary Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum), Beach Plums (Prunus maritima), Bee balm (Monarda didyma), Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium purpureum) and White Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) create a rainbow of native plants from early spring to late fall.

Patuxet Homesite Gardens* 

The Historic Patuxet Homesite provides space for guests to learn about the Native peoples who have lived here for over 12,000 years and the 17th-century lifeways of a culture that continues to thrive today. Every year the gardens at the center of the site and by the cooking arbor and plants in the surrounding landscape blossom with native pollinators including Butterfly Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnate), Sunflower (Helianthus annuus), Wild Strawberry (Fragaria vesca), Virginia Rose (Rosa virginiana), Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus) and High Bush Blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum).

17th Century English Village Gardens* 

The 17th Century English Village creates an immersive reproduction of the first street of Plymouth Colony in 1627. Kitchen gardens, a large corn field and the surrounding landscape feature Yellow Goldenrod (Solidago Canadensis), Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnate), Butterfly milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa), Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) and High Bush Blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum).

Pollinator Garden* 

The forthcoming Pollinator Garden is planned for planting by the Craft Center Pavilion in Summer 2024 thanks to volunteers from the museum’s Horticulture Volunteer Team. The Pollinator Garden will give a sampling of the variety of native pollinator plants present in Southern Massachusetts. Some plants that will be found here are New England Aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae), White Yarrow (Achillea millefolium), Iron Weed (Vernonia noveboracensis), Hoary Mountain Mint (Pycnanthemum incanum) and Bee Balm (Monarda didyma).

Plimoth Patuxet Museums is open daily 9am-5pm from April-November. Tickets to the museum may be purchased online at https://plimoth.org/plan-your-visit.

* Indicates gardens that are accessible with an entry ticket to the museum.