But Boone Hall is actually where pecans came to be grown much quicker and more easily, thanks to an enslaved gardener known only as Antoine from Louisiana, enslaved at the Oak Alley Plantation, who successfully propagated pecans by grafting a superior wild pecan to “seedling” stock. This was the first time the nation had such a commercially viable grafted pecan tree—giving us nuts that previously were only considered a foraged food.
