Tho Jefferson's (1743-1824) Legacy in Gardening & Food

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817)

 Thomas Jefferson's Legacy in Gardening and Food

Jefferson's Monticello garden was a Revolutionary American garden. One wonders if anyone else had ever before assembled such a collection of vegetable novelties, culled from virtually every western culture known at the time, then disseminated by Jefferson with the persistence of a religious reformer, a seedy evangelist. Here grew the earth's melting pot of immigrant vegetables: an Ellis Island of introductions, the whole world of hardy economic plants: 330 varieties of eighty-nine species of vegetables and herbs, 170 varieties of the finest fruit varieties known at the time. The Jefferson legacy supporting small farmers, vegetable cuisine, and sustainable agriculture is poignantly topical today.

Thomas Jefferson's 1,000-foot-long, terraced vegetable garden is the true American garden: practical, expansive, casual, diverse, wrought from a world of edible immigrants. Although the variable continental climate of Virginia presents unique horticultural challenges, few places on earth combine tropical heat and humidity with mildly temperate winters like those at Monticello. The microclimate, and really the genius, of the south-facing, terraced Monticello garden exaggerates the summer warmth, tempers the winter cold, and captures an abundant wealth of crop-ripening sunshine. To grow so many tropical species like sweet potatoes, peanuts, and lima beans in the same garden as traditional cool-weather crops like cauliflower, endive, and celery, without artificial hot beds, had likely never been done before Thomas Jefferson accomplished this feat at Monticello.

Aside from its diverse population of mostly introduced crops, the Monticello garden was American in its size and scope, experimental character, and expansive visual sweep. 600,000 cubic feet of Piedmont red clay was moved with a cart and mule to create the "hanging garden," and the terrace was supported by a rock wall as tall as fifteen feet and also running 1,000 feet. Below is the six-acre fruit garden that contained 170 varieties of the most celebrated varieties known at the time. As it stretches to the western horizon, seemingly limitlessly against the background of Montalto, Jefferson's "high mountain" to the southwest, or as one looks across the garden terrace to the forty miles of rolling Piedmont, the "sea view," one is struck by the garden's uniquely continental panorama.

Thomas Jefferson liked to eat vegetables, which "constitute my principal diet," and his role in linking the garden with the kitchen into a cuisine defined as "half French, half Virginian" was a pioneering concept in the history of American food. The Monticello kitchen, as well as the table at the President's House in Washington, expressed a seething broil of new, culinary traditions based on these recent garden introductions: French fries, peanuts, Johnny-cakes, gumbo, mashed potatoes, sweet potato pudding, sesame seed oil, fried eggplant, perhaps such American icons as potato chips, tomato catsup, and pumpkin pie. The western traditions of gardening—in England, France, Spain, the Mediterranean—were blended into a dynamic and unique Monticello cookery through the influence of emerging colonial European, native American, slave, Creole and southwestern vegetables.

Jefferson's daughter, Martha, left a recipe for okra soup, in effect, gumbo, a compelling metaphor for the Monticello garden: a rich blend of American native vegetables grown by American Indians like lima beans and cymlins; South and Central American discoveries adapted by both northern (potatoes) and southern (tomatoes) Europeans; and tied together by an African plant, okra, grown by both the French and enslaved blacks in the West Indies, rarely known among white Virginians, and prepared by African-American chefs at Monticello.

Jefferson, according to culinary historian Karen Hess, was "our most illustrious epicure, in fact, our only epicurean President," and his devotion to fresh produce, whether in the President's House at a state dinner, or at Monticello for the large numbers of celebrity tourists who crowded the retired President's table, remains a central legacy of Jefferson's gardening career. Jefferson also promoted commercial market gardening. The remarkable calendar he compiled while President, delineating the first and last appearance of thirty-seven vegetables in the Washington DC farmer's market, is among the most revelatory documents in the history of American food. As well, it was Jefferson himself who obtained new vegetable varieties from foreign consuls, passed them on to Washington market gardeners, and ordered his maitre'd to pay the highest prices for the earliest produce.

In 1792 Jefferson, while serving as Secretary of State in Philadelphia, received a letter from his daughter, Martha, complaining about the insect-riddled plants in the Monticello Vegetable Garden. His response is a stirring anthem to the organic gardening movement. "We will try this winter to cover our garden with a heavy coating of manure. When is rich it bids defiance to droughts, yields in abundance, and of the best quality. I suspect that the insect which have harassed you have been encouraged by the feebleness of your plants; and that has been produced by the lean state of the soil." Jefferson's rallying cry on the remedial value of manure, the horticultural rewards of soil improvement, has inspired gardeners of all kinds. Jefferson not only enjoyed the garden process and relished eating fresh produce, but the garden also functioned as an experimental laboratory, in some ways, as a vehicle for social change. He wrote that, "the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture," and Jefferson ranked the introduction of the olive tree and upland rice into the United States with his authorship of the Declaration of Independence. A Johnny Apple seed of the vegetable world, Jefferson passed out seeds of his latest novelty with messiahinistic fervor: not only to friends and neighbors like George Divers and John Hartwell Cocke, his family of daughters, granddaughers, and sons in law, but to fellow politicians—from George Washington to James Madison—and the leading plantsmen of the early nineteenth century like McMahon, William Bartram, William Hamiton of Philadelphia, and Andre Thouin of Paris.  Although few species can be proven as Jefferson introductions into American gardens, the recitation of vegetables grown at Monticello is a meditative chant of rare, unusual, and pioneering species: asparagus bean, sea kale, tomatoes, rutabaga, lima beans, okra, potato pumpkins, winter melons, tree onion, peanuts, "sprout kale," serpentine cucumbers, cauliflower, broccoli, Brussells sprouts, orach, endive, peanuts, chick peas, cayenne pepper, "esculent Rhubarb," black salsify, sesame, eggplant.

Although a modest endeavor, Jefferson's only published horticultural work was "A General Gardening Calendar," a monthly guide to kitchen gardening that appeared in a May 21, 1824 edition of the American Farmer, a Baltimore periodical of progressive agriculture. Here Jefferson authoritatively instructed gardeners to plant a thimble spool of lettuce seed every Monday morning from February 1 to September 1, as if the Monday morning lettuce sowing was a life lesson or discipline akin to dutifully saying your prayers or cleaning one's dinner plate; the rites of Monday morning led to a long life, happiness, and good teeth.

In 2009, White House chef and Coordinator of the White House Food Initiative, Sam Kass, reserved a discrete section of this garden in honor of Thomas Jefferson. In the spring of 2009 it was planted with seeds and plants of Thomas Jefferson's favorite vegetable varieties: Tennis-ball and Brown Dutch lettuce, Prickly-seeded spinach and Marseilles fig. The Jefferson legacy in gardening and food is not a mere historical curiosity, but is a compelling force in the movement toward a more sustainable agricultural future.

Peter J. Hatch, Director Monticello Gardens and Grounds, 2010

Research & images & much more are directly available from the Monticello website - to begin exploring, just click the highlighted title above. 

Tho Jefferson's (1743-1824) Letters mentioning Gardening

 

Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Andrzej Bonawentura Kosciuszko (1746 - 1817) 

1786 May 4.  (Jefferson to John Page).  "The gardening in that country [England] is the article in which it surpasses all the earth. I mean their pleasure gardening. This indeed went far beyond my ideas."

John Page (1743–1808) of Rosewell in Gloucester County was a noted amateur astronomer & served in the Virginia legislature & as governor of the state.

1890 Advice on teaching Boys to Garden

The Christian Recorder, August 21, 1890, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Boys and Gardens

"By all means, let the boy have a garden, If it be only a bunch of sunflowers in a six-feet square city back yard, let him have something of his own to plant and watch the growing of.

"But if you live in the country, you can let him have a considerable plot of ground, where he can raise flowers, and also edible vegetables. Nothing will ever taste so good to him as his own lettuce and beets and radishes.

"Don’t imagine for a moment, however, that your boy, unless he be a genius, will know how to take care of these plants of his. No matter how much he loves them, he will require a good many weary hours of careful teaching and training before he is able to do efficiently even his small duty by his garden patch.

"The trouble is that boys love so many things. If they loved their garden only, or their lessons only, or ball-playing only, or stamp-collecting only; but it is with them as it is with the perplexed lover – “how happy could they be with either were t’other dear charmer away!” It is a good deal more trouble to see that the boy keeps his garden well than it would be to keep it yourself; but it is a good deal of trouble to bring up a boy right anyhow, and that is something that a mother might as well understand at the outset. Those who try to do it by easy means generally rue it with anguish of soul in the end.

“I never knew a boy who was fond of a garden,” said a wise man who had brought up many boys , “to go far astray. There seems to be something about working in the soil and loving its products that does the boys good morally as well as physically.”

And honest Jan Ridd says, “The more a man can fling his arms around Nature’s neck, the more he can lie upon her bosom like an infant, the more that man shall earn the trust of his fellow-men.” Again he says, “There is nothing better to take hot tempers out of us than to go gardening boldly in the spring of the year.” And every one who has tried this can testify that it is true.

"A certain little boy , who left a garden at home to take a trip with some friends, wrote home to his mother,” I am having a splendid time, but I wish every morning that I was sitting on my little green cricket in the backyard, watching my plants grow.” This little boy always thought that some time, if he watched closely enough, he should see a flower open, but beyond a few four o’clocks, he has never witnessed this ever-recurring but magically secret phenomenon.

"If possible, supply your own table with your boy’ s produce at ruling market rates, having it well understood beforehand how the money will be expended. Praise whenever you consistently can; offer prizes for the best fruits, flowers and vegetables, if you have several boys at work; and in every way treat the enterprise with consideration and respect. Many a boy who has put his best efforts into his garden loses heart when he hears it sneered at or made light of ” Your garden? Oh dear! I never thought of that! What does that amount to?”

"It cannot be too early impressed upon a boy that whatever he does should be done well. Therefore make his garden seem as important as you can without dwelling unduly upon it; and remember that the physical and moral effects of the garden are not all. The information that a boy gets from it concerning a variety of seed and soil may be invaluable to him later on.".

Interior of 1873 New York Seed & Plant Store

Inside the Store Wood engraving from Vick's Illustrated Floral Guide for 1873

History Blooms at Monticello - Dwarf Crested Iris

Dwarf Crested Iris (Iris cristata)

This charming woodland iris is native to the eastern North American deciduous forest where it often grows on rocky slopes. Peter Collinson, an English patron and regular correspondent of John Custis from Williamsburg and the Bartrams of Philadelphia, grew this plant from roots sent to him during the mid 18th century. 

In 1766 Jefferson began his Garden Book with observations of wildflowers along the Rivanna River, including the “Dwarf flag” flowering May 4th “in our woods.” Dwarf crested iris spreads slowly creating large mats of handsome light green foliage that deer do not find attractive. A white form, Iris cristata ‘Alba’, also occurs in the wild.

For more information & the possible availability for purchase

Contact The Tho Jefferson Center for Historic Plants or The Shop at Monticello 

Women & Gardens - 19C Gardening Manuals from Seed & Plant Dealers entice Women to Garden

When Gardens Replaced Children
Justor Daily By: Livia Gershon May 4, 2018

"Historian Robin Veder explains that the way we associate female nurturing with gardens goes back to the way ideas about gender & work changed in the mid-19C.

"Think about gardening, or tending houseplants, & you most likely think of a woman—perhaps a woman who has plenty of leisure time & loves taking care of living things. Historian Robin Veder explains that the way we associate female nurturing with raising flowers goes back the way ideas about gender & work changed in the mid-19C...

"Gardening manuals of the 19C described flowers taking “the place of children in bereaved homes” or in families where adult children had moved out.  Wealthy households depended on skilled horticultural workers—either hired or enslaved—to care for their flowering plants. But middle-class homeowners were limited to their own amateur efforts. So professional horticulturists, who stood to benefit from new customers at their nurseries & greenhouses, began writing manuals, magazines, & columns.

"Before 1840 or so, Veder writes, most authors of gardening manuals assumed their readers were male. But from the 1850s through 1870s, there was a flurry of books about flower gardening & indoor floral decorations. Women’s magazines including Ladies Home Journal actually grew out of horticultural & agricultural publications’ efforts to reach a female audience.

"Gardening manuals written in this period described flowers taking “the place of children in bereaved homes” or in families where adult children had moved out. 

"Prolific California gardener Mrs. Annie C. Brown explained in Ladies Home Journal in 1887 that her only daughter was now grown “so all my spare time is given to my flowers. They are to me as children…” 

"Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote that a successful gardener treats her plants as children: “She loves them; she lives in them; she has in herself a plant-life & a plant-sympathy. She feels for them as if she herself were a plant...”

"In books & articles from this era, to buy a plant was to remove it from the cold world of market forces & transform it into an object of love...Veder writes that 19C gardening manuals drew on a long tradition of sentimental pastoralism—a tradition that “aestheticizes economically significant work by framing it as leisure.” Gardening, like parenting, clearly involves mental & physical labor, & both provide something of value to the household. But books & articles portrayed both activities as a natural extension of women’s being, rather than “work.”

To read about women's changing roles in the 2nd half of the 19th century. see:
Boorstin, Daniel. The Americans: The Democratic Experience. New York:Random House, 1973.
Clinton, Catherine. The Other Civil War: American Women in the Nineteenth Century. New York: Hill and Wang, 1984.
Cott, Nancy. A Heritage of Her Own: Toward a New Social History of Women. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1979.
Cott Nancy. History of Women in the United States, Part 6, Working the Land. New York: K. G. Saur, 1992.
Degler, Carl. At Odds: Women and the Family from Revolution to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.
Green, Harvey. The Light of the Home: An Intimate View of the Lives of Women in Victorian America. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983.
Juster, Norton. So Sweet to Labor: Rural Women in America 1865-1895. New York: The Viking Press, 1979.
Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage Earning Women in the United States. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982
Mintz, Stephen and Susan Kellogg. Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life. New York: Free Press; London: Collier Macmillan, 1988.
Ryan, Mary P. Womanhood in America front he Colonial Times to the Present. New York: F. Watts, 1983.
Smith-Rosenberg, Caroll. Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985.
Strasser, Susan. Never Done: A History of American Housework. New York Pantheon Books, 1982.
Welter, Barbara. Dimity Convictions : the American Woman in the Nineteenth Century. Athens : Ohio University Press, 1976.

South Carolina - Plants for the Table - Slaves & Rice in Georgetown

"The intricate steps involved in planting, cultivating, harvesting, and preparing rice required an immense labor force. Planters stated that African slaves were particularly suited to provide that labor force for two reasons: 1) rice was grown in some areas of Africa and there was evidence that some slaves were familiar with the methods of cultivation practiced there, and 2) it was thought that the slaves, by virtue of their racial characteristics, were better able than white laborers to withstand the extreme heat and humidity of the tidal swamps and therefore would be more productive workers. Rice cultivation resulted in a dramatic increase in the numbers of slaves owned by South Carolinians before the American Revolution.

"In 1680, four-fifths of South Carolina's population was white. However, black slaves outnumbered white residents two to one in 1720, and by 1740, slaves constituted nearly 90% of the population. Much of the growing slave population came from the West Coast of Africa, a region that had gained notoriety by exporting its large rice surpluses.

"While there is no consensus on how rice first reached the American coast, there is much debate over the contribution of African-born slaves to its successful cultivation. New research demonstrates that the European planters lacked prior knowledge of rice farming, while uncovering the long history of skilled rice cultivation in West Africa. Furthermore, Islamic, Portuguese, and Dutch traders all encountered and documented extensive rice cultivation in Africa before South Carolina was even settled.

"At first rice was treated like other crops, it was planted in fields and watered by rains. By the mid-18th century, planters used inland swamps to grow rice by accumulating water in a reservoir, then releasing the stored water as needed during the growing season for weeding and watering. Similarly, prior records detail Africans controlling springs and run off with earthen embankments for the same purposes of weeding and watering.

"Soon after this method emerged, a second evolution occurred, this time to tidewater production, a technique that had already been perfected by West African farmers. Instead of depending upon a reservoir of water, this technique required skilled manipulation of tidal flows and saline-freshwater interactions to attain high levels of productivity in the floodplains of rivers and streams. Changing from inland swamp cultivation to tidal production created higher expectations from plantation owners. Slaves became responsible for five acres of rice, three more than had been possible previously. Because of this new evidence coming to light, some historians contend that African-born slaves provided critical expertise in the cultivation of rice in South Carolina. The detailed and extensive rice cultivating systems increased demand for slave imports in South Carolina, doubling the slave population between 1750 and 1770. These slaves faced long days of backbreaking work and difficult tasks.

"A slave's daily work on an antebellum rice plantation was divided into tasks. Each field hand was given a task--usually nine or ten hours' hard work--or a fraction of a task to complete each day according to his or her ability. The tasks were assigned by the driver, a slave appointed to supervise the daily work of the field hands. The driver held the most important position in the slave hierarchy on the rice plantation. His job was second only to the overseer in terms of responsibility.

"The driver's job was particularly important because each step of the planting, growing, and harvesting process was crucial to the success or failure of the year's crop. In the spring, the land was harrowed and plowed in preparation for planting. Around the first of April rice seed was sown by hand using a small hoe. The first flooding of the field, the sprout flow, barely covered the seed and lasted only until the grain sprouted. The water was then drained to keep the delicate sprout from floating away, and the rice was allowed to grow for approximately three weeks. Around the first of May any grass growing among the sprouts was weeded by hoe and the field was flooded by the point flow to cover just the tops of the plants. After a few days the water was gradually drained until it half covered the plants. It remained at this level--the long flow--until the rice was strong enough to stand. More weeding followed and then the water was slowly drained completely off the field. The ground around the plants was hoed to encourage the growth and extension of the roots. After about three weeks, the field was hoed and weeded again, at which time--around mid-June or the first of July--the lay-by flow was added and gradually increased until the plants were completely submerged. This flow was kept on the field for about two months with fresh water periodically introduced and stagnant water run off by the tidal flow through small floodgates called trunks.

"Rice planted in the first week of April was usually ready for harvesting by the first week of September. After the lay-by flow was withdrawn, just before the grain was fully ripe, the rice was cut with large sickles known as rice hooks and laid on the ground on the stubble. After it had dried overnight, the cut rice was tied into sheaves and taken by flatboat to the threshing yard. In the colonial period, threshing was most often done by beating the stalks with flails. This process was simple but time consuming. If the rice was to be sold rough, it was then shipped to the agent; otherwise, it was husked and cleaned--again, usually by hand. By the mid-19th century most of the larger plantations operated pounding and/or threshing mills which were driven by steam engines. After the rice had been prepared, it was packed in barrels, or tierces, and shipped to the market at Georgetown or Charleston. In 1850 a rice plantation in the Georgetown County area produced an average yield of 300,000 pounds of rice. The yield had increased to 500,000 pounds by 1860."

See The U.S. National Park Service