Explore historically important plants and their contribution to science. Celebrate the importance of peanuts and strawberries in Battle Creek's history by looking above and below ground! Don't miss the opportunity to walk right through the "peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich" at the end of the Science Maze.

  

Dr. Kellogg was looking for a substitute for butter. He focused on the peanut because it was high in protein, rich in vitamins, and the kind of unsaturated fats that we now call "healthy" fats. He described it was a "pasty adhesive substance that for convenience of distinction he termed nut butter." His recipe did not call for roasting the peanuts before grinding them. In 1895, Dr. Kellogg held the first patent on peanut butter! Today we know it is the roasting that gives peanut butter it's especially delicious nutty flavor.

Ella Eaton Kellogg was also involved in developing health food products. She developed an affinity for strawberries, and even wrote a report on them! She also wrote about them in her widely known book, Science in the Kitchen.

 Science in the Kitchen Book 1893

Cupola Compass Circle

 Find out what the connection of certain crops, particular sugar beets and celery, have to Michigan's agricultural history!
 Without plants, we would not have blue jeans.
 Find out about plants that make us cry and give us color as well as plants that provide us with materials that we use to make cloth.

A cupola is definite as a small structure, usually a dome, on top of a roof or building. In the Children's Garden, the restored cupola and the original fieldstones serve as symbols for local scientific discovery, and as a visual reminder of the health and breakfast cereal industry that put Battle Creek on the Map!