Plants in Early American Gardens - Arikara Sunflower

Arikara Sunflower (Helianthus annuus variety)

One of the major goals of the Jefferson-sponsored Lewis & Clark Expedition was botanical exploration of North America. In 1805 the members of the “Corps of Discovery” spent 6 winter months at Fort Mandan on the Missouri, near the Arikara, Hidatsa, & Mandan villages. The Arikara people planted these Sunflowers as the ice broke on the Missouri River, with soil temperatures at 45°F, because the seeds will not germinate in intense summer heat.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

18C American Cultural Landscape -

18C New England

Plants in Early American Gardens - Globe Amaranth

Globe Amaranth (Gomphrena globosa)

Globe Amaranth seeds were first planted by Thomas Jefferson at Shadwell, his boyhood home, on April 2, 1767. It was introduced into Europe from India in 1714 and was grown in Virginia by John Custis of Williamsburg as early as 1737. The clover-like flowers bloom from summer through fall in shades of magenta, pink, and occasionally white. This plant thrives in hot, dry weather and the long-lasting flowers are superb for fresh or dried arrangements.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Gardens Display Economic & Cultural Ambitions - Refuge & Redemption...

Gardening in Early America for 

Refuge & Redemption

In a garden one could order a small corner of the world & each spring begin life all over again.

Nancy Shippen, daughter of Alice Lee Shippen of Stratford Hall in Virginia, had married Col. Henry Beekman Livingston, from a rich, New York family, in March 1781.  Nancy, just 18, moved to his house in Rhinebeck on the Hudson, with Livingston family.  There she soon learned that he was insanely jealous & had several illegitimate children, some with slaves.  Nancy, pregnant soon after marriage, moved back to her parent's house in Philadelphia to give birth to a girl they named Peggy.  She tried to mend her marriage by returning to the Livingston home in Rhinebeck, but left for good in the spring of 1783.  By 1784, Nancy Shippen, whose philandering husband had assumed custody of their only child, retreated with her mother to a country house that was “pleasantly situated on a hill with a green Meadow before it.” Behind the house were “a garden & a nursery of trees,” to which she directed daily attention.  She wrote in her journal of the consolation she expected to find there. Although she could not help feeling like an outcast, “with all these conveniences,” she declared, “I ought to be contented.”  

For centuries gardening had appealed to some fundamental spiritual need of humans, whose religions traditionally depicted a garden as the ideal abode for mankind on this earth & beyond. The ordered garden was, after all, Everyman’s refuge from the terrifying unknown, & certain evils, known & unknown.

The garden offered sanctuary from the threat of wild nature & escape from barbarian outsiders. The great garden of the vast American frontier held some frightening connotations for many early colonists. New Englander Michael Wigglesworth wrote of it in 1662, A waste & howling wilderness,
where none inhabited
But hellish fiends, & brutish men
That devils worshipped.

The evils of avarice & the injustices of power politics drove even wealthy colonists to seek spiritual refuge in a nature, that they ordered around themselves.

In 1771, as frustrations with England mounted, a future signer of the Declaration of Independence, Charles Carroll of Carrollton, wrote to a friend, “The wisest Philosophers, the greatest poets, & the best men have constantly placed the most perfect sublime happiness in rural retirement. Under the shades of Forrests statesmen have sought happiness having in vain sought after it in the perplexed mazes of ambition & interest.”

Charles Willson Peale (741-1827) Portrait of John Beale Bordley America was viewed by some as a seedbed in which to establish natural spirituality; & gardening was one method to nurture higher values. John Beale Bordley (1727-1804) gave up the public life in Annapolis to pursue experimental agriculture & moved to a 1600-acre Wye Island estate he acquired in 1770. He was instrumental in founding, the 1785 Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture, an association whose membership included 23 Marylanders by 1798.  In his 1797 Essays & Notes on Husbandry & Rural Affairs, Bordley offered his ideas on keeping the common man happy on the farm. He suggested that each worker be given a garden 80, 90, or 100 feet square, because “it was observed by a clergyman…cottagers who had a garden were generally sober, industrious & healthy; & those who had no garden, were often drunken, lazy, vicious & ailing.”

Thomas Jefferson agreed with Bordley. Jefferson wrote to James Madsion in 1785 that, "It is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land. The small landholders are the most precious part of a state."

Interestingly, there is a high correlation between those with whom Annapolis craftsman William Faris shared church membership & those with whom he exchanged plants & gardening advice. Even though it was 20 years after the colonial period of mandatory church attendance, the people Faris came to know through nearby St. Anne’s Church formed the nucleus of his pleasure gardening colleagues.

The garden was a symbolic religious battleground, where good battled evil, where temptation & sin were overcome by forgiveness & reconciliation. Philadelphia seed dealer, & writer Bernard M'Mahon (1775-1816) wrote that gardening could even end dangerous “intemperance.”

History Blooms at Monticello

Note from Monticello's Keith Nevison

Common primrose coming into bloom now at the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants. TJ listed this plant in his garden book in 1771. Native to Northern Africa, parts of SW Asia and across western and Southern Europe, Primula vulgaris has long been cultivated in gardens. Hooray for coming spring!

Plants in Early American Gardens - Snow-on-the-Mountain

 Snow-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata)

Snow-on-the-Mountain (Euphorbia marginata)

On July 28th, 1806, William Clark, co-captain of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, collected this curious plant while exploring Montana's Yellowstone River. Plant hunter and botanist Frederick Pursh called it a "very handsome species" in his Flora Americae Septentrionalis (1813), which described many plants collected by Lewis and Clark. Snow-on-the-Mountain is distinguished by white-edged and veined upper leaves, is now popular in cutting gardens, and tolerates deer, drought, and poor soils.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

History Blooms at Monticello

Note from Monticello's Peggy Cornett

Crocus tommasinianus, flowering now along the winding walk flower border, is native to the limestone hillsides and woodlands of Hungary, northern Bulgaria, and former Yugoslavia. This species was first introduced into cultivation in 1847 and was named after the Hungarian botanist, Muzio G. Spirito de Tommasini (1794-1879), who was mayor of the city of Trieste. Early twentieth-century American garden writer Elizabeth Lawrence had an enormous stand of this charming bulb in her Raleigh, North Carolina garden. Also known as tommies, these crocus are squirrel-resistant and great for naturalizing in lawns.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Tassel Flower

Tassel Flower (Emilia javanica)

Tassel Flower, a native of the Far East introduced into England in 1799, bears flame-colored, button-like flowers on slender stems in summer. Also called Irish Poet and Flora’s Paintbrush, this fast-growing, self-seeding annual is an attractive addition to the flower border and makes a lovely cut flower.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

History Blooms at Monticello

Note from Monticello's Peggy Cornett

On March 31, 1774, Thomas Jefferson recorded in his garden diary planting four "Ciriege Corniole" or Cornelian Cherry (Cornus mas) trees along with 16 other varieties of fruit trees and vegetables.

The Cornelian Cherry,which is flowering now in Monticello’s South Orchard, is a native to southern Europe and western Asia and has been cultivated since ancient times for the fruit, which is excellent for preserves and syrup. However, by the 19C, the use of this fruit was already in decline, and it wasn't until the 20C that gardeners appreciated its ornamental features (a winter flower display and attractive red fruits in late summer).

18C American Garden & Cultural Landscape -

Plants in Early American Gardens - Hyacinth Bean

Hyacinth Bean (Dolichos lablab)

The Hyacinth Bean is featured on the arbor in the Monticello vegetable garden and draws countless questions from visitors every year. In his Garden Book in 1812, Jefferson mentioned, "Arbor beans white, scarlet, crimson, purple . . . on the long walk of the garden." Although not specifically mentioned by Jefferson, Hyacinth Bean was sold by his favorite nurseryman, Bernard McMahon, in 1804. This tender annual vine produces attractive purplish-green leaves, showy rose-purple flowers and pods, and unusual black and white seeds.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Geo Washington (1732-1799) - Student of Agriculture

George Washington as Farmer by Junius Brutus Stearns. 1851

George Washington: Farmer  

Paul Leland Haworth (1876-1936) 

Student of Agriculture

Washington took great pains to inform himself concerning any subject in which he was interested and hardly was he settled down to serious farming before he was ordering from England "the best System now extant of Agriculture." Shortly afterward he expressed a desire for a book "lately published, done by various hands, but chiefly collected from the papers of Mr. Hale. If this is known to be the best, pray send it, but not if any other is in high esteem." Another time he inquires for a small piece in octavo, "a new system of Agriculture, or a speedy way to grow rich."

Among his papers are preserved long and detailed notes laboriously taken from such works as Tull's Horse-Hoeing Husbandry, Duhamel's A Practical Treatise of Husbandry, The Farmer's Compleat Guide, Home's The Gentleman Farmer, and volumes of Young's Annals of Agriculture.

The abstracts from the Annals were taken after the Revolution and probably before he became President, for the first volume did not appear until 1784. From the handwriting it is evident that the digests of Tull's and Duhamel's books were made before the Revolution and probably about 1760. In the midst of the notes on chapter eight of the Compleat Guide there are evidences of a long hiatus in time...

Tull's Horse-Hoeing Husbandry was an epochmaking book in the history of English agriculture. It was first published in 1731 and the third edition, the one I have seen and probably the one that Washington possessed, appeared in 1751. Possibly it was the small piece in octavo, "a new system of Agriculture, or a speedy way to grow rich" concerning which he wrote to his agent. It deals with a great variety of subjects, such as of roots and leaves, of food of plants, of pasture, of plants, of weeds, of turnips, of wheat, of smut, of blight, of St. Foin, of lucerne, of ridges, of plows, of drill boxes, but its one great thesis was the careful cultivation by plowing of such annuals as potatoes, turnips, and wheat, crops which hitherto had been tended by hand or left to fight their battle unaided after having once been planted.

Duhamel's book was the work of a Frenchman whose last name was Monceau. It was based in part upon Tull's book, but contained many reflections suggested by French experience as well as some additions made by the English translator. The English translation appeared in 1759, the year of Washington's marriage. It dealt with almost every aspect of agriculture and stock raising, advocated horsehoeing, had much to say in favor of turnips, lucerne, clover and such crops, and contained plates and descriptions of various plows, drills and other kinds of implements. It also contained a detailed table of weather observations for a considerable time, which may have given Washington the idea of keeping his meteorological records.

Young's Annals was an elaborate agricultural periodical not unlike in some respects publications of this sort to-day except for its lack of advertising. It contains records of a great variety of experiments in. both agriculture and stock raising, pictures and descriptions of plows, machines for rooting up trees, and other implements and machines, plans for the rotation of crops, and articles and essays by experimental farmers of the day. Among its contributors were men of much eminence, and we come upon articles by Mr. William Pitt on storing turnips, Mr. William Pitt on deep plowing; George III himself contributed under the pen name of "Ralph Robinson." 

As one looks over these publications he realizes that the scientific farmers of that day were discussing many problems and subjects that still interest those of the present. The language is occasionally quaint, but the principles set down are less often wrong than might be supposed. To be sure, Tull denied that different plants require different sorts of food and, notes Washington, "gives many unanswerable Reasons to prove it," but he combats the notion that the soil ever causes wheat to degenerate into rye. This he declares "as ridiculous as it would be to say that an horse by feeding in a certain pasture will degenerate into a Bull." 

Plants in Early American Gardens - Japanese Anemone

Japanese Anemone (Anemone hupehensis)

Japanese Anemone was introduced to western gardens by plant hunter Robert Fortune in 1844. In Our Garden Flowers (1910), Harriet Keeler declared, “[t]he autumnal equinox comes and goes, but the Anemones bloom on, careless of threatening skies or pinching cold.” A. hupehensis may require staking but is generally a low-maintenance plant that is great for cutting and makes an impact in the fall garden, especially if planted in large groupings.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Plants in Early American Gardens - China Pink

China Pink (Dianthus chinensis)

This showy, short-lived perennial, often grown as an annual, bears single to semi-double, mixed-color flowers from early June until late fall, and has dark-green, grass-like foliage. Thomas Jefferson planted China Pinks along his winding flower border in 1807, along with Sweet Williams and Carnations. Although its fringed petals resemble the perennial Fringed Pink (D. superbus), this species has no fragrance.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Gardens Display Economic & Cultural Ambitions - Inspiration & Remembrance

Gardening for Inspiration & Remembrance

Plantings of both trees & flowers triggered emotional responses in both garden owners & vistors. In the British American colonies, some groves of trees were planted for remembrance honoring a passed friend or relative. Groves were often seen as solemn, whether intentionally planted as a memorial or not.

Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1722-1793) wrote in a letter in 1742, from Charleston, South Carolina, "You may wonder how I could in this gay season think of planting a Cedar grove, which rather reflects an Autumnal gloom and solemnity than the freshness and gayty of spring. But so it is...I intend then to connect in my grove the solemnity (not the solidity) of summer or autumn with the cheerfulness and pleasures of spring, for it shall be filled with all kind of flowers, as well wild as Garden flowers, with seats of Camomoil and here and there a fruit tree--oranges, nectrons, Plumbs."

American colonists understood that flowers were inspirational symbols for higher thoughts. In 1766, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1782) wrote to a friend from Annapolis, “If you have a turn for gardening or for exotick Plants & flowers I shall perhaps be able to send you such of these which as uncommon in England may afford you some pleasure as a florist, or matter of thought & speculation as a naturalist, or Philosopher.”

Flowers could signify a personal friend as well as a distant hero. William Gordon wrote George Washington (1732-1799) in 1786, “Shall I endeavor to furnish your garden…with flowers & plants that may keep up the remembrance of an absent friend.”

Becoming a gardener helped a person understand the cycle of life & death, & many American gardeners chose to bury their loved ones in their gardens & went there to remember departed relatives & friends. If the spiritual garden was the place we all began, they reasoned, then it was comforting to return to the garden when we died. Where sufficient land was available, a cemetery was often created adjacent to the garden. As one traveler recorded in 1790, “It is very common to see in large plantations in Virginia, & not far from the dwelling house, cemeteries walled in, where the people of the family are all buried. These cemeteries are generally built adjoining the garden.”

Christoper Wormley (1646-1701), in his 1698 Middlesex County, Virginia will, asked to be buried "in my own Garden and Betwixt my first wife..." Wormley's first wife Frances Armistead died in 1685, and his second wife Elizabeth Travers died in 1693, and he obviously did not want to play favorites. In the same county, Joshua & Thomas Long reserved a part of a tract that they were offering for sale "a certain Spott...twenty foot square Lying in the orchard it being the place where their father and mother were buryed."

Employees as well as relatives were buried in southern plantation gardens. At Nomini Hall on June 23, 1789, Robert Carter (1728-1804) recorded, “On Saturday the 20th June Mr. George Randell departed this Life & his Remains were interred in the Garden near to the Grave of Mr. Jos. Taylor School Master.”

Burying a dear one close to home may have resulted from a concern in addition to remebrance. Some preferred burial in their own gardens was security. In his journal on January 29, 1774, Philip Vickers Fithian (1747-1776), visiting Nomini Hall in Virginia, quoted his host, Robert Carter, on this subject, “he much dislikes the common method of making Burying Yards round Churches…almost open to every Beast…he would choose to be laid under a shady Tree where he might be undisturbed, & sleep in peace & obscurity---He told us, that with his own hands he planted, & is with great diligence raising a Catalpa-Tree at the Head of his Father who lies in his Garden.”

Others felt that burying the dead in a common community or church cemetery was too impersonal and made the sight & thought of death too familiar. One observer commented, “Instead of producing those solemn thoughts & encouraging those moral propensities…it renders death & the grave such familiar objects to the eye as to prevent them from awakening any serious regard…&…to eradicate every emotion naturally excited by the remembrance of the deceased.”

The peace & quite of a personal garden or a peaceful grove of trees, especially one planned & tended by the survivor, was seen as the most appropriate & intimate place to reflect & remember. A writer explained in the 1811 Philadelphia Port Folio, "My garden is my scene of reflection, and of rational amusement. If I wish to indulge myself in that pleasing melancholy, which is sometimes so grateful to the imagination, I repair to my garden."

Plants in Early American Gardens - Plains Coreopsis

Plains Coreopsis (Coreopsis tinctoria)

The Plains Coreopsis is a fast-growing annual native to North America from Canada to Northwest Mexico and especially common in the Great Plains and southern states. By the mid-19th century the Plains Coreopsis was touted for its showy yellow flower heads with striking, deep red to dark maroon centers. This species is attractive to pollinators and considered highly deer resistant.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

18C American Cultural Landscape - New England Farm

Michele Felice Corne (1752–1845) Ezekiel Hersey Derby Farm

Plants in Early American Gardens - Larkspur

Larkspur (Consolida ajacis)

Jefferson noted Larkspur blooming at Shadwell in July 1767, thought it suitable for naturalizing at Monticello "in the open ground on the west" in 1771, and sowed seed around his winding flower border on April 8, 1810. Larkspur is a self-seeding annual with blue, pink, and occasionally white flowers that usually appear during the early summer months.

For more information & the possible availability
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

1704 connection between Massachusetts & the Gardens at Dyrham in Gloucestershire, England

Engraving of Dyrham Park by Johannes Kip, 1712. In 1688, William Blathwayt  (1649-1717) inherited the Dyrham estate in Gloucestershire upon the death of his father-in-law. Blathwayt was a civil servant & politician who played an important part in administering the British American colonies.  He joined the diplomatic service in 1668, to serve at a post at the English embassy in The Hague.  In 1680, he became the 1st auditor-general of royal revenues in America; & after 1685, became the secretary of the Privy Council's committee on trade & foreign plantations, a key figure in American affairs. He was responsible for establishing the charter of the Crown colony of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, which would become the state of Massachusetts.  He promoted trade in America & the Caribbean, which included the slave trade, & reportedly he benefited considerably from "gifts"  received in connection with his office (as was the usual practice in his day). In 1686, he married Mary Wynter, a wealthy heiress. It was her father who died, leaving his estate to Blathwayt only 2 years after their marriage.  Diarist John Evelyn commended him as "very dexterous in business" & as a man who had "raised himself by his industry from very moderate circumstances."

Michael Dahl (1659–1743) Portrait of Colonial Secretary William Blathwayt (1649-1717)

Soon after Blathwayt inherited Dyrham, he commissioned an estate plan to be drawn in the Dutch style he had seen as a young man in The Hague.  Formal Dutch & French style gardens were the height of fashion in England from about 1660 to 1715.  Completed in 1704, William Blathwayt’s Dutch garden to the east & west of the mansion was geometric in design. The west garden had a cascade, 2 pools, a fountain & flower beds planted in a fashionably sparse style. The east garden had a canal, fountains & a cascade.  There there were parterres cut out of grass & filled with colored gravel; shrubs in tubs clipped into formal shapes of cones & spheres; & terraces on the slopes from which visitors could admire Blathwayt's creation.

Plants in Early American Gardens - Spider Flower

 Spider Flower (Cleome hasslerana)

Spider Flower (Cleome hasslerana)

Spider Flower is a self-seeding annual native to southern regions of South America and was introduced to England via the West Indies in 1817. Also called Spider Legs and Grandfather’s Whiskers, it was considered a choice flowering annual by Robert Buist in his 1839 edition of The American Flower Garden Directory. Its showy pink and white flowers, large multi-lobed leaves, and strong growth habit make it a handsome addition to the flower border in summer and fall. Attracts bees and butterflies; deer resistant.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase
Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello