Colonial America’s Gardens

by Carolyn Williams

Earlier this summer I traveled with my daughter and two grandsons (ages 13 and 10) to visit Washington, D.C., Mt. Vernon, Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg as we learned about our founding fathers and early colonial American gardens.

After our visit to Washington, D.C., we headed to Mt. Vernon where our first president lived and gardened.

President Washington oversaw every part of the planning and planting of his gardens, but yes, it is true that he had slaves that did much of the labor, and the work was supervised by hired gardeners. Over the years Washington developed five different gardens at Mt. Vernon. The first was the landscape garden, including the bowling green and its surrounding serpentine walks, which greet the visitor as they arrive. The other four gardens were essential to the estate as they produced the vegetables, fruits, and herbs that were used by the plantation. The upper garden, which was surrounded by a formal pleasure garden, included the greenhouse with an ingenious heating system that generated radiant heat from a series of flues under the floor. The lower garden served mainly as the kitchen garden. The rest of the garden included the botanical garden, where Washington experimented with new plants, and the fruit garden and nursery, which contained fruit trees and plantings of grass crops, greens and vegetables.

The lower garden, along with its kitchen garden, was surrounded by 4’ brick walls for protection and warmth, terracing for level gardening, and espaliered pears and apples along the walks that provided a windbreak for the vegetables. It produced such things as lettuces, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and herbs, such as dill and chives. A cistern was located in the center in order to have a constant and easy supply of water at hand. To me this garden was absolutely lovely, and is said to have been Martha Washington’s personal pride.

Two additional interesting things were the “dung repository” and “ha-ha-walls.” The dung repository was designed to compost animal droppings and other organic waste for use as fertilizer in the nearby gardens. It certainly illustrated Washington’s dedication in finding ways to improve soil fertility and to making Mt. Vernon a progressive farm. The ha-ha-walls were sunken brick walls enclosing the east lawn that form a physical barrier for keeping farm animals from wandering into the living area while also preserving the view of the Potomac River. Legend has it that the walls got their name from people who stumbled upon them, unaware that they were there.

Both President and Mrs. Washington’s tombs are located on the Mt. Vernon estate.

Next we traveled higher into the Virginia hills, arriving at Thomas Jefferson’s beloved Monticello plantation. Anyone who has read about President Jefferson knows of his love of gardening, his love of sharing plants and seeds, and his constant desire to produce new and better flowers and vegetables in his hillside terraced gardens that surround Monticello.

When we arrived, a summer shower had recently passed Monticello, and the soil smelled rich and fertile. The gardens that Peter Hatch had labored over for nearly four decades and his loving, historical restoration of the sweeping Monticello landscape were beautiful.

Thomas Jefferson was a visionary founding father and a true gardener at heart, having planted and grown over time around 330 varieties of 99 species of vegetables and herbs. These numbers are staggering, but walking around the wide garden spaces, you can envision Jefferson’s inquisitive and intelligent mind always striving for a better garden and a more productive yield. It is an Ellis Island of introduced economic plants.

Jefferson wrote, “the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture,” and he envisioned his garden as a means for transforming society. He distributed seeds of his latest novelty vegetable to neighbors and to political allies like George Washington, James Madison and John Adams (who was friend and foe at different times).

As with Washington, Jefferson too had slaves to run his plantation, and while he oversaw most all of the planning, it was his slaves that toiled to make his plans become reality.

Although it is difficult to verify that Jefferson was the first to introduce any specific vegetable into American gardens, the recitation of crops grown at Monticello is a roster of rare, unusual, and pioneering species; asparagus bean, sea kale, tomatoes, rutabaga, okra, potatoes, pumpkins, winter melons,
tree onions, peanuts, serpentine cucumbers, Brussels sprouts, chickpeas, gherkins, cayenne peppers, rhubarb, sesame, and eggplant.

Jefferson had a 400-tree south orchard surrounding two vineyards, and, extended below the wall and vegetable terrace, the entire complex was enclosed by a 10’ high paling fence running for more than half-a-mile. At any time, Jefferson could look down upon his row-after-row of vegetables, which he liked having served at every meal. Many of his dishes were ultimately prepared by African American chefs trained in the fine arts of French cuisine in the kitchen at Monticello. Having served as the Ambassador of France, Jefferson fell in love with French cooking and saw that his kitchen was never without a French cook.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We walked around the attached restored Monticello kitchen, which was stocked with various copper pots, wooden trays and just about every kitchen tool known at that period of time. Even today, it is a beautiful, large area where everything needed is available to produce delicious meals.

In 1811, Thomas Jefferson who had retired from the Presidency to his lifelong home at Monticello, wrote to the Philadelphia portrait painter Charles Peals the following, “I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position and calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. …Under a total want of demand except for our family table I am still devoted to the garden. But tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
President Jefferson is buried at the end of his gardening path, in a rich spot of earth.

Williamsburg was a quiet college town (William & Mary), and many of its 18th-century buildings survived into the early 20th century. Restoration began in 1926 when the Rector of Bruton Parish Church brought it to the attention of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and his wife, Abby, who then funded the massive preservation and reconstruction of this lovely early 18th-century city.

Restored along with the buildings were several examples of colonial gardens and the crops that would have been planted. Each garden had a person dressed according to the fashion of the 18th century who was eager to talk about how and what they grew.

One such crop was tobacco and I listened as the gardener talked about his methods of raising such a crop and how he had to use lots of manure plus crop rotation, much as we do with our gardening today.

I came upon a beautiful vegetable garden where the gardener talked about her clever tomato cages, which I just may give-a-try next year. Divided into four equal squares, her crops of lettuces, onions, squash/corn/beans together and tomatoes were partly shaded by huge sunflowers in bloom. Additionally, one garden was supported by Master Gardeners.

The Founding Fathers knew this new nation would have to be independent, self-sufficient and strong. They knew agriculture would be one of the keys to standing on its own!

 

 

 

Further reading:
Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulff

George Washington’s Mount Vernon: Official Guidebook by The Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association Of The Union
“A Rich Spot Of Earth”: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden At Monticello by Peter Hatch