Peruvian Zinnia (Zinnia peruviana)
Although zinnias did not become popular garden plants until late in the 19th century, Peruvian Zinnias were grown in 18th-century gardens and were sold by Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon in 1804. This South American annual produces flowers in shades of red and yellow throughout the summer. The small but attractive flowers are perfect for cutting and are very different from the improved hybrids now so popular.
Johnny-jump-up, or Heartsease, is a showy, self-seeding annual with small pansy-like flowers, each of them showing three colors: deep purple, yellow, and white. The plant was established in American gardens before 1700, and Jefferson sowed it at Shadwell on April 1, 1767, calling it “Tricolor.”
Empress of India Nasturtium (Tropaeolum minus cv.)
Eastern North American seed companies were offering this showy, award-winning variety by the 1880s. Empress of India Nasturtium has a dwarf, bushy habit, dark purplish-blue foliage, and brilliant crimson-scarlet flowers. The 1884 Burpee's catalogue described it as "the most important annual in recent introduction."
This summer-blooming annual vine was introduced to Britain from India in 1823. Black-eyed Susan Vine is included in a charming book, The Parlor Garden, which Thomas Jefferson's granddaughter, Cornelia Jefferson Randolph, edited and translated from French into English (1861); she noted, “it becomes covered with charming flowers, of a fine nankeen yellow, set off with a black spot in the middle."
Nasturtium, also known as Indian Cress, was often grown as an edible plant in the 18th century, as seen by its inclusion in Jefferson's vegetable garden. The young leaves and flowers can be enjoyed in salads, and the seeds can be pickled like capers, just as they were in Jefferson’s day. These attractive plants will bloom in an array of colors--reds, oranges, yellows--and with the trailing habit typical of the species before mid-19th century breeding.
Striped French Marigold (Tagetes patula)
The species French Marigold was introduced to European gardens from South America in the late 16th century. A handsome striped form of this annual flower was first illustrated in the London-based periodical Curtis' Botanical Magazine, 1791, and was being grown in America by that time. Striped French Marigold is perfect for cutting, with flowers that vary from yellow streaked with maroon to solid yellow and occasionally all red; prune and deadhead to prolong flowering.
Sweet William Catchfly is a showy, self-seeding annual flower native to Europe with blue-green leaves and a long succession of purplish-pink flowers from late spring into summer. Sometimes called Lobel's Catchfly or None-So-Pretty, it was established in American gardens by the 1820s. The 1804 broadside of Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon offered seed for both red and white forms.
Thomas Jefferson's “Plane-tree” (or Sycamore, Platanus occidentalis) Peggy Cornett at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, tells us that - Jefferson noted “Plane-tree” (or Sycamore, Platanus occidentalis) in a list of ornamental plants in his only published book, Notes on the State of Virginia. In 1812 he sowed Plane-tree seeds in his nursery, eventually intended for the Monticello landscape. Jefferson was captivated by the quality of shade that different species afforded.
In July 1793 Thomas Jefferson wrote from Philadelphia to his daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph “I never before knew the full value of trees. My house is completely embosomed in high plane-trees, with good grass below; and under them I breakfast, dine, write, read, and receive my company. What I would not give that the trees planted nearest round the house at Monticello were full-grown.” The mottled bark of American Sycamore (Jefferson’s "plane-tree") makes a dramatic statement in the winter landscape.
Peggy Cornett, who is Curator of Plants at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, tells us that -
Floss Flower was discovered in Central America by William Houston (c. 1695-1733), a Scottish botanist, plant collector, & ship’s surgeon. Houston sent seeds to England in the early 18th century & British author Philip Miller referenced the species in a 1768 edition of his Gardener’s Dictionary. It was first documented in American gardens in 1836. This self-seeding species forms a spreading, loose-growing plant. The pale blue, & occasionally white, tassel-like flowers bloom from midsummer until the first autumn frost.
William Houstoun (occasionally spelt Houston) (1695?–1733) was a Scottish surgeon & botanist who collected plants in the West Indies, Mexico and South America. Houstoun was born in Houston, Renfrewshire. He began a degree course in medicine at St Andrew's University but interrupted his studies to visit the West Indies, returning circa 1727. On 6 October 1727, he entered the University of Leyden to continue his studies under Boerhaave, graduating M.D. in 1729. It was during his time at Leyden that Houstoun became interested in the medicinal properties of plants. After returning to England that year, he soon sailed for the Caribbean & the Americas employed as a ship's surgeon for the South Sea Company. He collected plants in Jamaica, Cuba, Venezuela, & Vera Cruz, despatching seeds & plants to Philip Miller, head gardener at the Chelsea Physic Garden in London. Notable among these plants was Dorstenia contrayerva, a reputed cure for snake-bite, & Buddleja americana, the latter named by Linnaeus, at Houstoun's request, for the English cleric & botanist Adam Buddle, although Buddle could have known nothing of the plant as he had died in 1715. Houstoun published accounts of his studies in Catalogus plantarum horti regii Parisiensis.
When Houstoun returned to London in 1731, he was introduced to Sir Hans Sloane by Miller. Sloane commissioned him to undertake a three-year expedition, financed by the trustees for the Province of Georgia 'for improving botany & agriculture in Georgia', & to help stock the Trustee's Garden planned for Savannah. Houstoun initially sailed to the Madeira Islands to gather grape plantings before continuing his voyage across the Atlantic. However he never completed his mission as he 'died from the heat' on 14 August 1733 soon after arriving in Jamaica; he was buried at Kingston. Houstoun was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in January 1733.
Houstoun's writings & plant specimens, preserved in the botanical department of the British Museum, passed from Miller to Sir Joseph Banks, by whom the manuscripts were published as Reliquiae Houstounianae in 1781.
Peggy Cornett, who is Curator of Plants at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, tells us that -
The male and female Ginkgoes at Monticello are showing their golden fall color. In 1806, William Hamilton wrote to Thomas Jefferson that he intended to send him three trees that he thought Jefferson would "deem valuable additions" to his garden. Ginkgo biloba or the China Maidenhair tree was one of the three. Hamilton went on to say that it produced a "good eatable nut." The Gingko is a large, hardy, deciduous tree with delicate, fan-shaped leaves that turn bright yellow in fall, and it has been used medicinally for thousands of years. The female trees produce edible fruit, which many find malodorous.
The moment anyone mentions trees and George Washington, you probably think of the famous Cherry Tree Story. However, this tale of young George taking a hatchet to his father cherry tree and, when confronted about the act, asserting "I cannot tell a lie" is probably just that -- a story meant to demonstrate the integrity of the Father of Our Country. In reality, the trees of Ferry Farm have a much more fascinating history. Their story reflects, on a small local scale, vast environmental changes in eastern North America and shifting American attitudes toward the environment throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
Today, we see wilderness as a good thing that needs protected and preserved. But in the 1700s, Europeans settlers saw wilderness as a bad thing. Preeminent environmental historian William Cronon notes, Europeans described wilderness as “’deserted,’ ‘savage,’ ‘desolate,’ ‘barren’—in short, a ‘waste,’.” People did not look at forests, deserts, or mountains as places to protect and visit. Instead, they were places to be feared and tamed.
The opposite of wilderness was the managed landscape of Europe. In cities, towns, and farms, Europeans tried to control nature and make it follow humanity’s rules. These efforts to tame the wilderness were transplanted to colonial plantations in the Americas.
The first step in building a plantation and taming the wilderness was clearing the land for farming. Huge numbers of trees were cut down to do this. On top of that, trees were cut down to make almost everything people of the 1700s and 1800s used and owned. Furthermore, they were also cut down to do many everyday tasks.
Throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, the wood from trees was…
used as the main architectural building material in houses, most other structures, farm buildings, fences, and more
used to build ships, boats, ferries, bridges, carriages and wagons that moved people and things from place to place
used to make everyone’s furniture (beds, chairs, tables, desks, cabinets, and trunks) as well as many household items and farming tools
These large scale trends can be seen on a small scale at Ferry Farm. The European settlers who lived here, including the Washingtons, cut down a significant number of trees but not so many that there weren’t still quite a few standing when John Gadsby Chapman painted Ferry Farm’s landscape in 1833.
"The Old Mansion of the Washington Family" (1833) by John Gadsby Chapman shows the foundation stones of the house where George grew up at Ferry Farm and trees along the riverbank.
We also have archaeological evidence showing the locations of trees during the Washington era. This past summer in the yard north of the Washington house replica archaeologists uncovered “soil stains” left after trees fell in the past. Soil stains are where the soil is a slightly different color than surrounding areas and indicate where people filled in holes created by uprooted trees. In other words, such soil stains indicate that a tree once stood there.
In some cases, our archaeologists found that the holes were filled in multiple episodes, indicating that the soil settled and new dirt was later added or the person filling the hole borrowed different dirt of different colors from multiple locations. By excavating the soil from these soil stains and analyzing the artifacts, we can tell around when the holes were filled.
Soil stain marking the site of an 18th and 19th century tree on the landscape at George Washington's Ferry Farm.
One very large tree left the sizable soil stain – almost 5ft x 5ft – pictured above. Based on artifacts found in its soil, the hole was filled during the mid-19th century. We can tell by the size of the stain that the tree was quite mature. Together, these facts are evidence of a tree that grew just 40 feet north of the original Washington house during the time George and his family lived at Ferry Farm. This discovery gives us another detail about the landscape so it can eventually be accurately recreated just as we did the main house.
Finally, Ferry Farm archaeologists learned from these tree features and from the lack of other features in this yard that the area was well-kept. In the 18th century, this portion of the landscape was probably well-maintained because it was visible from Fredericksburg across the river.
In the 1860s, the Civil War exacerbated deforestation at Ferry Farm and throughout Stafford County. Hundreds of thousands of Union Army soldiers radically altered the local environment to get the wood they needed for cooking and heating, to help build their fortifications and pontoon bridges, and even to build shelters. During winter lulls in fighting, 18th and 19th century armies did not camp in tents. The soldiers built small log cabins. By war’s end, Ferry Farm and Stafford County were nearly treeless as seen in the two photos of Ferry Farm below taken in the decades after the war ended.
As the 19th century turned into the 20th, wilderness, nature, and the environment were increasingly seen as special and deserving of protection and preservation, sparking the creation of national and state parks, government agencies like the Forest Service, private conservation groups such as the Sierra Club, and, in 1872, the very first Arbor Day.
We can see the impact of new attitudes toward the environment at Ferry Farm in photos below. The top one from the 1930s, a period of intense conservation efforts nationwide, shows trees starting to appear once again while the other from 2017 shows trees on a portion of Ferry Farm stretching out as far as the eye can see to the north.
The early 20th century saw the nadir of American deforestation in 1910. But since that year, forest acres in the U.S. have largely held steady [PDF]. The new conservation ethic symbolized in the practice of planting trees to replace those cut down, the reduced use of wood as a building material and fuel source, the need for less farm land, and the movement of people from rural to urban areas (all of which present their own challenges to the environment) have provided a reprieve for America’s forests.
While George’s mythical chopping of the Cherry Tree is the most well-known tale about trees at Ferry Farm, the more important and fascinating story is how the 300 hundred year history of trees at Ferry Farm reflects broader post-settlement environmental changes in North America and how the Americans who made those changes grew to see the world differently.
Peggy Cornett, who is Curator of Plants at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in Virginia, tells us that -
During cool autumn days the lush, blue-green leaves of the Sea Kale revive. Crambe maritima was among Thomas Jefferson's favorite vegetables; he first planted seed of it at Monticello in 1809. Native to the seacoast of Great Britain, this hardy perennial of the cabbage family is grown for the early spring sprouts that arise from well established plants (2 to 3 years old).
Sea Kale is also quite ornamental with showy white flowers in summer. Sea Kale has a pleasing, mild cabbage taste. At Monticello the shoots are often covered with large blanching pots as they emerge in spring. When the leaves get six inches high, they are cut from the ground and can be prepared like asparagus.
Halberd-leaved Rose Mallow, a large, native perennial with light pink, hollyhock-like flowers, was noted by John and William Bartram during their explorations of the South in 1765-66. “Halberd,” the name of a 15th century weapon, was given to describe its spear-shaped, triangular leaves on tall, straight stems.
Great Red Hibiscus, a perennial native to the coastal swamps of Georgia and Florida, was adopted as an ornamental in American gardens by the end of the 18th century, when George Washington ordered a plant for Mount Vernon. The species bears palmately-lobed leaves and bright scarlet blossoms that are attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies.
This unusual short-lived yet self-seeding perennial – native to the coastal regions of North Africa, Europe, Britain, and Western Asia – was observed naturalized along the New England coast as early as the 17th century. Thomas Jefferson planted seeds of Yellow Horned Poppy at Monticello in an oval bed southeast of the house in 1807. It has attractive, bluish-gray foliage and bears bright golden-yellow, poppy-like flowers followed by strange, “horned” seed pods.
As the Lewis and Clark Expedition crossed the Continental Divide on July 6th, 1806, this showy native species was collected. Blanket Flower blooms from summer through autumn, with yellow ray florets sometimes tinged red at the base, and reddish-orange central disk florets that are attractive to pollinators. Deer and drought tolerant.
Purple Coneflower is native to the central and southeastern U.S. and is valued for its showy pink daisy-like flowers, attractiveness to pollinators and birds, and its drought and deer tolerance. It was first exported to Europe in 1699 by John Banister, the Virginia botanist. In the 19th century, American garden writer Thomas Fessenden commented on Coneflowers: "many flowers . . . very durable . . . and much admired."
Narrow-leaved Coneflower is a summer-blooming perennial bearing daisy-like, rosy-pink flowers with reflexed petals; attractive to butterflies. Like the common Purple Coneflower (E. purpurea), this species is native to the Midwestern U.S. Also known as "Mad Dog Plant" because the Plains Indians prized it as a remedy for rabid dog and rattlesnake bites, this species was likely included in an 1805 shipment of plants sent to Jefferson by the Lewis & Clark Expedition. Deer-resistant and drought-tolerant.
This charming, self-seeding perennial bears pale yellow tubular flowers in late spring. Small Yellow Foxglove, native to the Mediterranean region, has been cultivated since the 16th century in Britain and was established in American gardens by 1800. Deer-resistant and attractive to hummingbirds, it was recommended by American garden writer Joseph Breck in his book, The Flower Garden (1851).
The early summer-flowering Rusty Foxglove is native to southeastern Europe, Turkey, and Lebanon, and documented in the 16th-century British herbals of Parkinson and Gerard. Philadelphia nurseryman Bernard McMahon listed it as "Iron-coloured Fox-glove" in The American Gardener's Calendar (1806) and he sold it by 1810. The plant sends tall flowering spikes above its dark, evergreen foliage, and bears showy, golden-brown flowers with unusual rusty-brown veining.
The moment anyone mentions trees and George Washington, you probably think of the famous Cherry Tree Story. However, this tale of young George taking a hatchet to his father cherry tree and, when confronted about the act, asserting "I cannot tell a lie" is probably just that -- a story meant to demonstrate the integrity of the Father of Our Country. In reality, the trees of Ferry Farm have a much more fascinating history. Their story reflects, on a small local scale, vast environmental changes in eastern North America and shifting American attitudes toward the environment throughout the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.
