[Thomas Jefferson’s entries are from The Garden and Farm Books of Thomas Jefferson, edited by Robert C. Baron. Bob’s entries are handwritten notes (30 lines per day) from his brown, spiral-bound 2015 Garden Journal.]
. . . but tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.
(from a letter to Charles Willson Peale, 20 August 1811)
* * * * *
1 July 2015. Beautiful day, temp in upper 70's. Began Alum Garden work by walking around garden, taking photos of each bed, trying to capture total landscape. Garden is close to maximum % bloom. With all the rain and relatively cool temps, everything looks fresh, healthy. Rain garden pit still full of water, making it difficult to finish that project, and in ten days I must leave for the Field Station. . . . Weeded stretch of walkways east of fountain. Trying to do bits of the walkways 2/3 times per week so never a big amount to catch up. Wendy came by and I gave her a sample of the purple loosestrife groundcover in “G”. I had already taken to the dumpster the crab apple limbs I cut yesterday. Spent rest of morning and digging trench from rain garden overflow channel to storm sewer. Very slow going because many roots from old crab tree are still there, close to the surface. This afternoon to Wickiup [my 80' x 100' vegetable garden is near Wickup Hill Outdoor Learning Center]. 1" in rain gauge. Today was mostly weeding, trying to get garden so it looks semi-orderly. In last two nights deer had done major damage to tomato plants, plus many have the blight–brown, rolled, dying leaves. [The 40 tomato plants never recovered, only producing a handful of cherry tomatoes.] Went through squash and cukes, weeding and looking for squash and cucumber bugs (killed about 20). So far cukes and squash look good. Harvested some lettuce for neighbors. Pulled 4 onions, 3 radishes, and plastic bag full of peas. Will be more tomorrow.
3 July. Beautiful day, temp in upper 70s, perfect for working outside. Morning at Alum Garden. Ethan [my summer student assistant] & I focused on rain garden. I put on boots and shoveled mud; also dug out the north channel. Ethan covered slope around west drainage hole with weed carpet and the rocks. He also cleared trail in “H” and covered with wood chips. Looks pretty good–though major part of path still not done at the compost bin corner. Finished about 11:30. After Ethan left, I planted some hostas and ferns in shade in “G”. Dry weather forecast for next two days, so we have a chance to finish rain garden digging.
8 July. Beautiful day. Cool, slight breeze, temp in low 70s. Ethan & I made good progress on rain garden. It was dry enough that we could so some serious digging. Because of the densely packed soil/rock foundation under the rain garden area (once directly under Avenue A), we are digging one foot deeper than we had intended, hoping to reach soil that will drain. Tomorrow we may be ready to reattach drainage tiles and set up the stepping stones for the path through the rain garden. Immediate problem is getting stones and tiles on stable foundation.
10 July. Sunny, temp in 80s, felt like summer. Big day in Alum Garden. We finished digging, arranged the stepping stones, and started filling rain garden with the sand/compost mix. Ethan loaded bigger wheelbarrow and brought into garden, dumped mix in two batches in smaller wheelbarrow in the pit, and I then dumped and spread mix. We left some limestone blocks out of their eventual home to have maneuverability for small wheelbarrow. A slow process–and it will get slower at next stage when we start mixing in top soil. But today it felt like progress, moving about 1/4 of total sand/compost mix.
* * * * *
July. 15. [1772] Cucumbers came to table.
planted out Celery.
sowed patch of peas for the Fall.
planted snap-beans.
22. had the last dish of our spring peas.
31. had Irish potatoes from the garden.
July 13 [1774]. last dish of peas.
18. last lettuce from Gehee’s
23. Cucumbers from our garden.
31. Watermelons from our patch.
Aug. 3. Indian corn comes to table.
black eyed peas come to table
July 1, 1792. Sunday. The thermometer at Dr. Walker’s was this day at 960. which he says is 30. higher than he ever knew it since he lived at the mountains. there was no thermometer at Monticello, but I have observed when I had one here, that it was generally about 20. below Dr. Walker’s. & mr Maury’s. so we may suppose it would have been 940. It was at 970. at mr Madison’s, in Orange on the same day, and at 990. in Richmond. this was probably the hottest day ever known in Virginia. on the same day was a violent hurricane from about the capes of Virginia Northwardly. it overset vessels & blew down chimneys & the tops of houses in Philadelphia & N. York, & destroyed a great deal of timber in the country.
* * * * *
13 July. Temp in low 90s, another hot, humid day. Alum Gordon in the morning. Focused on the drainage tile. Drove to Menard’s, purchased two connectors for linking together tile sections. Got them hooked up and started covering them with sand/compost mix. Ethan was not feeling well, so didn’t get any sand/compost mix moved into garden. Was at home by 11:00. . . . After supper out to Wickiup. Picked peas (near the end of the harvest), a lot of green & yellow beans, six zucchini, couple cukes, a few radishes. One lovely experience. As the sun was setting, about 8:15, there was a transition moment when the air felt cooler–though still mixed in with hotter chunks of air–and there was a clean clarity to everything, with a hint of freshly mown hay, wonderfully refreshing. I could sense the heat dissipating. Frequently experienced such liminal moments in the summer when living on the farm, but it had been years since this passing of day into night had hit my sense so immediately, directly–bringing back such a rush of memories of a life now gone, completely gone.
17 July. Sunny, very humid, temp in low 90s, heat index above 100. A big day. We finished the rain garden. Mixed one final round of soil/sand/compost and then added layer of mulch. Dumped 16 bags of rocks into drainage channels. Still needs finishing off at front of drain, but we are basically done. Though nothing yet planted, it looks good. . . . After supper drove out to Wickiup. Weeded tomatoes. Picked a dozen zucchini, dozen cukes, a few onions, and some radishes. Most of the produce going to Field Station, departing tomorrow morning. I should have picked beans but ran out of daylight and I was exhausted, sweating profusely, my glasses fogged over. I was not feeling well–just going on adrenalin. But it felt great driving back, the air blowing through pickup window. Got home and drank several glasses of water, tea, and lemonade–and then topped it with a strawberry pop poured over vanilla ice cream. Perfect ending to a hot summer day–plus my last shower for a month.
21 August. Got back from the Field Station on the 16th. Spent the last five days cleaning up the gravel walkways, over-run with grass, purslane, and a sedum whose name escapes me. Finally, it’s beginning to look better. Foxtail prolific in daylily beds, but they are now mostly pulled. Rock garden looked good. Raised “E” beds were a bit chaotic but at least most flowers are still in bloom. Drainage canals and rain garden appear to be doing well. Problems with large plants becoming top heavy and leaning over, burying smaller plants. I’ve cut back a lot of the asters and goldenrod. In future I need to be more aggressive earlier in the summer in dealing with these fall bloomers.
During the summer I was reading Henry Mitchell’s collection of short essays On Gardening. Here are three passages I found particularly appealing:
“If the element of play is not present, there is no point in gardening.” (p. 99)
“I well know I have neither the time nor the energy nor even the desire to have a garden that people admire. It is not for them but for me. I attach far more importance to the progress of the plants–the cycle of growth and decay–than to the floral display of the moment or to the effects of open space. If I want a few tiger lilies, as I certainly do, and if the best site for them happens to be beside a crimson shrub rose, then that’s where they go.” (p. 120)
“As one fine gardener of England put it, his was a garden made by doing unnecessary things that he could not afford at the wrong time of the year.” (p. 204)
3 September. Sunny, hot (upper 80s) and humid. Morning at Alum Garden. Helped Kendra [work-study helper garden helper during the year and summa cum laude graduate in May] learn how to use the leaf mulcher, including how to turn on electricity. Most of my work was in “G”, bringing in four more wheelbarrow loads of sand/compost–not much left on the parking lot. Worked on last section of new chip path along east end of rain garden. Tomorrow I should be able to lay down weed suppressant cloth, spread rocks leading to storm sewer, and cover with mulch. Not much more to do except in area behind Leopold bench–and that will need to wait until after we get back from England [where we did a week-long walking trek along Hadrian’s Wall].
* * * * *
Jefferson writing to his friend William Hamilton in July, 1806:
Your favor of the 7'th came duly to hand and the plant you are so good as to propose to send me will be thankfully rec'd. The little Mimosa Julibrisin you were so kind as to send me the last year is flourishing. I obtained from a gardener in this nbh'd [neighborhood] 2 plants of the paper mulberry; but the parent plant being male, we are to expect no fruit from them,unless your [trees] should chance to be of the sex wanted. at a future day, say two years hence I shall ask from you some seeds of the Mimosa Farnesiana or Nilotica, of which you were kind enough before to furnish me some. but the plants have been lost during my absence from home. I remember seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet height in a pot the fragrance of which (from it's gummy bud if I recollect rightly) was peculiarly agreeable to me and you were so kind as to remark that it required only a greenhouse, and that you would furnish me one when I should be in a situation to preserve it. but it's name has entirely escaped me & I cannot suppose you can recollect or conjecture in your vast collection what particular plant this might be. I must acquiese therefore in a privation which my own defect of memory has produced, unless indeed I could some of these days make an impromptu visit to Phila. & recognise it myself at the Woodlands.
Having decisively made up my mind for retirement at the end of my present term, my views and attentions are all turned homewards. I have hitherto been engaged in my buildings which will be finished in the course of the present year. The improvement of my grounds has been reserved formy occupation on my return home. For this reason it is that I have put off to the fall of the year after next the collection of such curious trees as will bear our winters in the open air.
The grounds which I destine to improve in the style of the English gardens are in a form very difficult to be managed. They compose the northern quadrant of a mountain for about 2/3 of its height & then spread for the upper third over its whole crown. They contain about three hundred acres, washed at the foot for about a mile, by a river of the size of the Schuylkill. The hill is generally too steep for direct ascent, but we make level walks successively along it's side, which in it's upper part encircle the hill & intersect these again by others of easy ascent in various parts. They are chiefly still in their native woods, which are majestic, and very generally a close undergrowth, which I have not suffered to be touched, knowing how much easier it is to cut away than to fill up. The upper third is chiefly open, but to the South is covered with a dense thicket of Scotch (Spartium scoparium Lin.) which being favorably spread before the sun will admit of advantageous arrangement for winter enjoyment. You are sensible that this disposition of the ground takes from me the first beauty in gardening, the variety of hill & dale, & leaves me as an awkward substitute a few hanging hollows & ridges, this subject is so unique and at the same time refractory, that to make a disposition analogous to its character would require much more of the genius of the landscape painter & gardener than I pretend to. I had once hoped to get Parkins to go and give me some outlines, but I was disappointed. Certainly I could never wish your health to be such as to render travelling necessary; but should a journey at any time promise improvement to it, there is no one on which you would be received with more pleasure than at Monticello. Should I be there you will have an opportunity of indulging on a new field some of the taste which has made the Woodlands the only rival which I have known in America to what may be seen in England.
Thither without doubt we are to go for models in this art. Their sunless climate has permitted them to adopt what is certainly a beauty of the very first order in landscape. Their canvas is of open ground, variegated with clumps of trees distributed with taste. They need no more of wood than will serve to embrace a lawn or a glade. But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed. This organ must yield it's gratification to that of the other senses; without the hope of any equivalent to the beauty relinquished. The only substitute I have been able to imagine is this. Let your ground be covered with trees of the loftiest stature. Trim up their bodies as high as the constitution & form of the tree will bear, but so as that their tops shall still unite & yeild dense shade. A wood, so open below, will have nearly the appearance of open grounds. Then, when in the open ground you would plant a clump of trees, place a thicket of shrubs presenting a hemisphere the crown of which shall distinctly show itself under the branches of the trees. This may be effected by a due selection & arrangement of the shrubs, & will I think offer a group not much inferior to that of trees. The thickets may be varied too by making some of them of evergreens altogether, our red cedar made to grow in a bush, evergreen privet, pyrocanthus, Kalmia, Scotch broom. Holly would be elegant but it does not grow in my part of the country .
Of prospect I have a rich profusion and offering itself at every point of the compass. Mountains distant & near, smooth & shaggy, single & in ridges, a little river hiding itself among the hills so as to shew in lagoons only, cultivated grounds under the eye and two small villages. To prevent a satiety of this is the principal difficulty. It may be successively offered, & in different portions through vistas, or which will be better, between thickets so disposed as to serve as vistas, with the advantage of shifting the scenes as you advance on your way.
You will be sensible by this time of the truth of my information that my views are turned so steadfastly homeward that the subject runs away with me whenever I get on it. I sat down to thank you for kindnesses received, & to bespeak permission to ask further contributions from your collection & I have written you a treatise on gardening generally, in which art lessons would come with more justice from you to me.