Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature, and the Shaping of the American Nation by Andrea Wulf (PDF)

Description

A groundbreaking look at the Founding Fathers and their obsession with gardening, agriculture, and botany by the author of Magnificent Rebels and New York Times bestseller The Invention of Nature. • “Illuminating and engrossing.” —The New York Times Book ReviewFor the Founding Fathers, gardening, agriculture, and botany were elemental passions: a conjoined interest as deeply ingrained in their characters as the battle for liberty and a belief in the greatness of their new nation.Founding Gardeners is an exploration of that obsession, telling the story of the revolutionary generation from the unique perspective of their lives as gardeners, plant hobbyists, and farmers. Acclaimed historian Andrea Wulf describes how George Washington wrote letters to his estate manager even as British warships gathered off Staten Island; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’s faith in their fledgling nation; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of environmentalism. Through these and other stories, Wulf reveals a fresh, nuanced portrait of the men who created our nation.

User’s Reviews

Editorial Reviews: Review “Illuminating and engrossing. . . . The reader relives the first decades of the Republic not only through [Wulf’s] eloquent and revelatory prose but through the words of the statesmen themselves.” —The New York Times Book Review“[A] lively and deeply researched history.” —The Washington Post Book World“Anecdotes . . . shimmer through Andrea Wulf’s fine story. . . . Luxurious and sharp-witted.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A work of historical and horticultural importance, one that examines America’s origins through a new prism, and in so doing enriches Americans’ understanding of their heritage.” —Richmond Times-Dispatch“Eloquently written and very beguiling. . . . [Wulf] is a writer of considerable grace and breadth of vision, and Founding Gardeners is an excellent portrait of the early years of the federal republic.” —The Plain Dealer “A new interpretation of early American history, one that connects the founders’ zeal for agriculture and gardening to their thoughts on politics, independence, self-sufficiency, and patriotism. It’s terrific.” —The Philadelphia Inquirer“One of those rare books that, by focusing on a single angle of vision, brings to life a whole era and cast of characters.” —The Dallas Morning News “[Wulf] infuses her text with such liveliness, grace and original scholarship that the reader happily follows the author at a brisk trot wherever she may lead. And what a journey. For the first time, we are vividly shown how the founding fathers reinvented a system of agriculture geared to the needs of the young country.” —The Washington Times “Wulf has wonderfully illuminated an often overlooked and very important aspect of the founders’ lives, providing new reasons to be inspired by them. . . . Delightful, enlightened reading.” —Nashville Scene “A timely and passionate book, with resonances beyond today’s legion of new gardeners . . . Wulf traces the birth of the modern environmental movement back beyond Thoreau and Muir to the founding fathers’ passion for nature and plants.” —The Guardian (London)“Full of wonderful details.” —Literary Review “The book fizzes with energy.” —The Lady “Highly enjoyable and thought-provoking. . . . Wulf combines a sure knowledge of garden history and eighteenth-century politics with a keen eye for domestic detail and evocative description. . . . The best kind of popular history.” —The Irish Times “Wonderfully engaging. . . . Wulf may be at her best when she invites us to enter the founding fathers’ gardens themselves. Her knack for description is marvelous. . . . Breaks new ground.” —The Times Literary Supplement (London) “Founding Gardeners is genuinely illuminating, illustrated with a wealth of compelling detail and well-chosen quotations from personal correspondence, and provides succinct accounts of both the founding of America and some of the country’s earliest and most spectacular gardens.” —The Spectator “The founding fathers really do come alive. . . . They express their deep belief in freedom through the way they garden much the same way they do in their writings.” —New York Journal of Books “Superb. . . . This book will fascinate anyone interested in gardening, agriculture or American history, offering new insights into four familiar lives and conjuring up the gardens of the new republic.” —Mail on Sunday (London) “Andrea Wulf found a timely topic, has done excellent research, and has written a wonderful book to demonstrate the thesis. . . . Brother Gardeners, Ms. Wulf’s previous book, was such fascinating reading that I slowed down as I anticipated its ending. In Founding Gardeners, she neatly continues the historical thread of the previous work: its blend of history and gardening is as interestingly written as before. . . . Extraordinary.” —The Martha’s Vineyard Times “Carefully researched and well-told. . . . Their passion for plants will inspire pride in your garden plot that is indeed America under your very own gardening feet. . . . You will never garden the same way again.” —Michigan Gardener “Lovely book. . . . Fascinating story.” —The Sunday Telegraph “The reader’s reward is a fresh appreciation for the talents, vision and energy of the men who shaped their farms and gardens along with the nation.” —The Post & Courier (Charleston) “Founding Gardeners is a great achievement and deserves its place on the shelves of political as well as garden historians.” —Country Life “An original, insightful look at the characters and passions of the men who shaped our country. Wulf’s colorful prose, superb research, and driving narrative make for an engrossing read that will give you new appreciation for horticulture’s influence on history.” —The American Gardener “Artfully composed. . . . Wulf’s scholarship, passion and pleasing prose make for a happy combination: a history book for gardeners, a gardening book for historians. A fresh look at the Founders that charms even as it irresistibly convinces.” —Kirkus Reviews, A Best Book of 2011 About the Author ANDREA WULF was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art and is the author of The Invention of Nature: Alexander Von Humboldt’s New World and Founding Gardeners, The Brother Gardeners, and Chasing Venus,as well as the coauthor (with Emma Gieben-Gamal) of This Other Eden: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History. She has written for The Sunday Times, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, and she regularly reviews for several newspapers, including The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Times Literary Supplement. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Prologue My first impressions of America were shaped when I went as a young woman on a seven- week road trip across the States, from Washington, D.C., to San Francisco. We drove hundreds of miles on roads that never curved, along a grid that mankind had imposed on nature. Some days we passed sprawling factories that were pumping out clouds of billowing smoke; other days we saw vast fields that seemed to go on forever. Everything differed in scale from Europe, even suburban America, where rows and rows of painted clapboard houses sit proudly on large open plots of immaculately shorn lawns. America exuded a confidence that seemed to be rooted in its power to harness nature to man’s will and I thought of it as an industrial, larger- than- life country. I certainly never thought of it in terms of gardening— whereas in Britain, everybody seems to be obsessed with their herbaceous borders and vegetable plots. In America, I believed, I was more likely to see someone driving a riding mower than pruning roses. Then, in 2006, I went to visit Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s mountaintop home in Virginia, and began to understand how wrong I had been. On a sunny October morning, I stood on Jefferson’s vegetable terrace, with straight lines of cabbages and squashes at my feet, and saw man and nature in perfect harmony. In the distance the horizon seemed to stretch into infinity; behind me was a manicured lawn lined with ribbons of flowers and, below, a romantic forest that crept into the gardens. The magnificent view from the terrace across the arboreal sea of autumnal reds and oranges of red maples, oaks, hickories and tulip poplars brought together Jefferson’s neat plots of cultivated vegetables and sublime scenery of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Jefferson had combined beauty with utility, the untamed wilderness of the forest with the orderly lines of apples, pears and cherries in the orchard, and colorful native and exotic flowers with a sweeping panorama across Virginia’s spectacular landscape. If nature had been dominated by man, it seemed it was only in order to celebrate it. Later, I couldn’t put Monticello out of my mind. I was in the midst of writing about the eighteenth- century American farmer and plant collector John Bartram, the British obsession with gardens and the introduction of non-native plants into the English landscape—many of which had been sent by Bartram from the American colonies. The more I learned about Bartram, the more fascinated I became by the American relationship to nature during the eighteenth century. I pored over the correspondence between John Bartram and Benjamin Franklin, and after my visit to Monticello, I learned that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington had also ordered plants from Bartram, and that James Madison had visited Bartram’s garden just before the Great Compromise of the Constitutional Convention in the summer of 1787. I read in John Adams’s diaries how much he enjoyed working in his garden, fork in hand. Slowly, through records, letters and diaries, I came to see how vegetable plots, ornamental plants, landscapes and forests had played a crucial role in America’s struggle for national identity and in the lives of the founding fathers. Golden cornfields and endless rows of cotton plants became symbols for America’s economic independence from Britain; towering trees became a reflection of a strong and vigorous nation; native species were imbued with patriotism and proudly planted in gardens, while metaphors drawn from the natural world brought plants and gardening into politics. The founding fathers’ passion for nature, plants, gardens and agriculture is woven deeply into the fabric of America and aligned with their political thought, both reflecting and influencing it. In fact, I believe, it’s impossible to understand the making of America without looking at the founding fathers as farmers and gardeners. Founding Gardeners examines the creation of the American nation and the lives of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison through the lens of gardens, landscapes, nature and agriculture. Part of this is played out in Washington’s Mount Vernon, Jefferson’s Monticello and Madison’s Montpelier— all large plantations in Virginia— as well as Adams’s much smaller farm, Peacefield, in Quincy near Boston. But it was Benjamin Franklin who was the first of the revolutionaries to place plants at the heart of the country’s struggle. In response to the tensions between Britain and America, Franklin turned to plants and agriculture. In his “Positions to be examined concerning National Wealth,” Franklin listed in 1769 the three ways by which a nation might acquire wealth, and gave his opinion on each: “The first is by War . . . This is Robbery. The second by Commerce which is generally Cheating. The third by Agriculture the only honest Way.” Eleven years before the thirteen colonies threw off the yoke of Britain’s rule in 1776, the controversial Stamp Act had been given Royal Assent by King George III. This tax on paper affected almost every colonist, for it was applied to newspapers, legal documents, liquor licenses, books and every deck of cards. It was a desperate attempt to fill Britain’s depleted coffers, run low by the Seven Years’ War, which had seen Britain fight against the French on North American soil. When the war had come to an end in 1763, the British economy lay in crisis, riddled with war debts and plagued by a series of bad harvests. Britain’s solution was to make the colonists pay. As news of the ratification of the Stamp Act reached America, colonists rallied together to protest against Parliament’s rule. The Virginia House of Burgesses— the legislative assembly of colonial Virginia—declared the tax illegal. Throughout the colonies, riots broke out. The protesters burned effigies and raided the houses of British officials— on the way drinking their wine cellars dry—insisting that the British had no right to levy such taxes on the colonies. In Boston, an effigy of Andrew Oliver (the man who collected the stamp duty) and of the devil holding a copy of the Stamp Act were hung from an ancient elm tree near the town common. In the evening, 3,000 people marched through the streets, smashing the windows of Oliver’s house before beheading and burning his effigy on a bonfire made from his furniture. Franklin was in London at the time, having arrived in December 1764 on behalf of the Pennsylvania Assembly. His mission was to change the governance of Pennsylvania which was controlled by the so- called “proprietors,” the heirs of William Penn, who had founded the colony in the seventeenth century. It was his third visit to the British capital, a place he loved for the intellectual stimulation and sociability. But during this visit, his relationship with Britain underwent a seismic shift— a shift that not only led to his assured signature on the Declaration of Independence, but that is also mirrored in his changing attitude toward seeds and crops. Indeed, his involvement with plants can be seen as a kind of barometer of his political convictions. For a long time Franklin had been interested in plants, both for their scientific and economic value. Part of a lively network of letter- writers who exchanged seeds with each other, he corresponded with farmers, gardeners and botanists in America and Europe, and experimented in his Philadelphia garden with different vegetables and crops. From London, he regularly sent seeds home to his wife, Deborah, helped by his British scientific and gardening friends. When one of them couldn’t procure a new species of grain that Franklin wanted, another offered the entire produce of the previous year (clearly realizing how keen Franklin was). Franklin sent a new kind of oat and barley to Deborah to distribute among the plantsmen in Philadelphia, as well as sending vegetable seeds and Chinese rhubarb, which was valued for its medicinal properties. As the political troubles intensified, so did Franklin’s agricultural interest. The outbreak of the anti–Stamp Act protests in America had forced Franklin to become the unofficial ambassador for the colonies in Britain. He met the Lord Treasurer, Lord Grenville, in an attempt to persuade him to abandon the scheme but to no avail. Grenville, Franklin said, was “besotted” with it. Yet, though Franklin thought the Act to be unconstitutional and believed that the colonies had to be represented in Parliament, he did not, at this point, contemplate the possibility of independence. A “faithful Adherence to the Government of this Nation,” Franklin insisted as houses were burned in Philadelphia, “will always be the wisest Course.” But he misjudged how much his fellow colonists hated the impositions. In Pennsylvania, Franklin’s steadfast defense of Britain was held against him and in late September 1765, furious rioters threatened to destroy his house in Philadelphia. Britain had always nurtured the colonies as her greatest export market— paper, nails, glass, clothes and linen were all produced in Britain’s burgeoning manufacturing sector and sold in American markets. In addition to staples, luxury products such as silverware, porcelain, carpets and silk became an important British export. The trade of hundreds of ships connected London, Bristol and Liverpool with Boston, Philadelphia and New York. Between 1730 and 1760, exports to the North American colonies quadrupled, filling the purses of British merchants and manufacturers. At the same time laws, regulations and duties imposed by the British and a lack of labor prevented the colonists from developing their own manufacturing sector. With plenty of fertile soil, the colonies instead became the fields of the mother- country— shipping grain, corn and tobacco to Britain. Consequently almost all colonists lived off the land. They fought against the wilderness, draining swampy soil and snatching plots from the rugged embrace of the forest. As they wrested their fields from the forest, trees fell in the thousands, clearing the way for cash crops such as tobacco, rice and indigo. Franklin believed that the colonists’ reliance on agriculture for their main income, combined with the seemingly endless resources of land, could be turned to their advantage. America could be self- sufficient. And as tension over the Stamp Act grew, Franklin argued that the colonies would be able to pressure the British by boycotting their goods. “I do not know a single article,” Franklin told MPs, that the colonies couldn’t either “do without or make themselves.” It was his four- hour testimony in front of Parliament, many believed, that led to the repeal of the Stamp Act a few weeks later. But it soon became clear that the British had no intention of offering the colonies representation in Parliament. Instead, more duties were imposed, including on tea, paint and glass— all imported products that the colonists were only allowed to buy from Britain. For the next three years Franklin tried to persuade both the colonists and the British politicians to reach a compromise. In essays and letters in newspapers, he was constantly explaining, moderating, smoothing and arguing. But when the government refused to compromise, he finally had to admit that words were no longer enough. In January 1769, he rallied behind the colonists’ call for a sweeping boycott of British goods. The boycott made Franklin’s seed collecting all the more urgent. Not only was he sending larger amounts of seeds and more varieties home, but these were now for America’s profit alone, not for Britain’s. Every time someone told Franklin about a new edible plant, he was thrilled by the possibility of its economic potential. “I wish it may be found of Use with us,” he told one correspondent when he forwarded seeds for a new crop, and when he heard of tofu, it so excited his curiosity, he said, that he procured a recipe from China, dispatching it together with chickpeas to a friend in Philadelphia. These dried seeds carried the possibility of a new world and political freedom. In the coming years he sent upland rice and tallow tree† from China and seeds of “useful Plants” from India and Turkey, as well as introducing kohlrabi and Scottish kale, among many others, to America. Franklin, who had been the “chairman of British Colonies” of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts Manufacturers and Commerce in London, now rarely went to the Society’s meetings. The Society had tried to encourage colonists to grow commercial crops by paying premiums and awards, but by 1770 Franklin accused the Society of betraying the new nation, claiming that the “true Spirit of all your Bounties” were in the interest of Britain, not America. No longer was America to be a colonial grain store, or a market for Britain’s goods. America, Franklin was convinced, could provide all the necessaries herself and they would just have to renounce the luxuries they couldn’t produce. He echoed what John Adams had written in Boston’s newspapers under the rustic pseudonym Humphrey Ploughjogger. In response to the Stamp Act, Adams had suggested that colonists should wear coats made of the hides of their own oxen rather than woollen ones from Britain. Adams promised that he would not buy “one shilling worth of any thing that comes from old England.” As such, self- sufficiency became a weapon in the fight for parliamentary representation and against British economic restrictions. Slowly colonists began to equate home production and agriculture with the upholding of domestic liberty. To Franklin’s regret, the boycott did not pressure Parliament into relinquishing authority over the colonies. Nothing was achieved, and in May 1771 Franklin wrote that “the seeds [are] sown of a total disunion of the two countries,” while at the same time urging patience in order to postpone “this catastrophe.” Franklin continued to plead for moderation, but it became clear that Britain would never accept an empire that would give the colonial assemblies the same rights as Parliament. As the clashes between Britain and her colonies escalated, Franklin became the voice of American rights in Britain and the scapegoat for the troubles. At the end of January 1774, six weeks after a group of colonists dumped more than three hundred chests of tea into Boston’s harbor in protest against the tax on tea—known as the Boston Tea Party— Franklin was questioned and attacked in the Privy Council about the colonial affairs. As the abuse was hurled at him, the sixty- eight- year- old Franklin, dressed in a blue suit made of Manchester velvet, stood motionless and with his head held high before the British accusers. Three days later he wrote to his son William that “my Office of Deputy- Postmaster is taken from me.” The British government had stripped him of the post that he had held for almost twenty years, severing their connection with Franklin. In this briefest of letters, Franklin then advised William, who was the royal governor of New Jersey, to give up his position in order to become a farmer: “I wish you were well settled in your Farm. ’Tis an honester and a more honourable because a more independent Employment.” It was a turning point for Franklin, who for so long had clung to the idea that Britain would recognize the rights of the colonists. Farmers, he now believed, held the key to America’s future because they, not the henchmen of the British empire, would create a new nation. For one more year Franklin tried to facilitate a compromise, but then he realized that it was time to return home. With no reason to stay any longer in “this old rotten State,” he boarded an American ship in March 1775, never to return to Britain. When he arrived in Philadelphia a little more than six weeks later, the Second Continental Congress was convening and the following day Franklin was made a delegate. “We should be prepared to repel force by force, which I think, united, we are well able to do,” Franklin wrote to a gardening friend shortly after his arrival. He described the atmosphere in Philadelphia as one of mounting belligerence, containing “all Ranks of People in Arms.” The next day George Washington, with his military uniform packed in his trunks, arrived in the city. The colonists were preparing to fight the British. Franklin believed firmly in America’s ability to survive. America would rise, Franklin wrote to an old friend in Britain in September 1775, because “it will itself by its Fertility enable us to defend it. Agriculture is the great Source of Wealth and Plenty. By cutting off our Trade you have thrown us to the Earth, whence like Antaeus we shall rise yearly with fresh Strength and Vigour.” The other founding fathers shared his belief. Agriculture and the independent small- scale farmer were, in their eyes, the building blocks of the new nation. Ploughing, planting and vegetable gardening were more than profitable and enjoyable occupations: they were political acts, bringing freedom and independence. When, after the War of Independence in 1783, the former colonies had to mature from being a war alliance to being a united nation, nature also became a unifying force. It was the Constitution that welded them together politically, legally and economically, but it was nature that provided a transcendent feeling of nationhood. America’s endless horizons, fertile soil and floral abundance became the perfect articulation of a distinct national identity— of a country that was young and strong. The founding fathers’ passion for nature and plants can still be seen today for it shaped America in all its contradictions— from the rise of industrial agriculture in the Midwest to the protected wilderness in the national parks. America’s most revered patriotic songs revel in images drawn from nature: the “amber waves of grain, / For purple mountain majesties / Above the fruited plain!” in “America the Beautiful”; in “God Bless America,” “From the mountains, to the prairies, / To the oceans, white with foam”; and in Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land,” with its chorus of “From the redwood forest, to the Gulf Stream waters / This land was made for you and me.” Today’s slowly changing attitude toward local produce, home- grown vegetables and inner- city gardening in the United States are part of the same endeavor. The new “food movements” (accompanied by a flurry of books and initiatives)—ranging from the promotion of urban agriculture to the preservation of farmland, from the first lady’s vegetable garden at the White House to the returning interest of native species in ornamental gardens—can be placed in the context of the founding fathers’ legacy. For me, one of the greatest surprises was that the cradle of the environmental movement did not lie in the mid- nineteenth century with men like Henry David Thoreau or John Muir, but that it could be traced back to the birth of the nation and the founding fathers. The protection of the environment, James Madison had already said in a widely circulated speech in 1818, was essential for the survival of the United States. The founding fathers might not have romanticized nature as later generations did, but they were equally passionate about it. Madison did not suggest living in misty- eyed harmony with nature but living off it in the long term. He condemned the Virginians for their ruthless exploitation of the soil and the forests, fearing that nature’s equilibrium would be unbalanced. Humankind, Madison said, could not expect nature to be “made subservient to the use of man.” Man, he believed, has to find a place within the “symmetry of nature” without destroying it— words that remain as important today as they were when he spoke them. In politics, the founding fathers have been evoked by almost every politician across a wide spectrum. This book offers a window into a new and important aspect of the lives of the founding fathers. It is significant that the old elm in Boston, from which the effigy of the loathed stamp distributor had dangled, was renamed the Liberty Tree. America’s landscape, soil and plants played a crucial role in the creation of the nation and became steeped with political ideology but also with hope for the future. Jefferson, for example, crafted the grounds at Monticello as carefully as his words— it became a living tapestry of the themes that made America after the revolution. Every time I visit Monticello now, I go first to the vegetable terrace. Each time, no matter how often I see it, the contrast between the breathtaking view and the orderly rows of vegetables stirs me. I pick up a handful of the red soil and let it run through my fingers and I feel a visceral connection to the founding fathers and to their vision for this country. Read more

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Andrea Wulf has a great little book here about the relationship between the farming and gardening activities of the United States founding fathers and their political philosophies for the new country. My only criticism is the lack of critical analysis of their use of slaves. I am only halfway through the book, so maybe Wulf gets to it in later chapters, but it’s disappointing to see the central reality of slaveholding in their gardening and farming affairs receive such disappointing treatment.

⭐It is a pleasure to report that this is one of those unique and rare books that is both a delight to read as well as being chock full of important information and significant insights. The author, a Brit, argues that “it’s impossible to understand the making of America without looking at the founding fathers as farmers and gardeners” (p. 4). To support her thesis, the author looks at principally Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, although Franklin, George Mason, and George Wythe (among others) also make appearances. All of these four were deeply involved in agriculture and gardening, in addition to their political lives. I was surprised to learn how grumpy old John Adams turned into a happy camper when working on his farm or in his Philadelphia greenhouse (a gift of Abigail). While I knew that Jefferson was passionate about plants, so it was true of the other three as well, especially Washington who was quite the student of agriculture.The author focuses upon some key events to develop her argument. Washington’s American garden of native plants and shrubs is discussed. The 1786 garden tour that TJ and Adams made in England where they visited many of the famouns English gardens and discovered them to be largely populated with American plants. This was the work of the little-known John Bartram (1699-1777), who shipped American plants and seeds to England from his Philadelphia nursery, as well as supplying the framers. The author’s “The Brother Gardeners” looks at these splendid English gardens and the role Bartram played in supplying American plants for them. One chapter deals with the deadlocked Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, which the author suggests might have been able to reach compromise due to a visit of some key delegates to Bartram’s nursery for a refreshing break. While some have criticized this suggestion, I found it interesting, and whether one agrees with it or not does not affect the great value and enjoyment of the book.Next we follow the 1791 New England purported garden tour of Jefferson and Madison, which was probably more political than botanical. A chapter discusses the selection and creation of Washington, D.C. The final chapters focus on Jefferson and Madison. Of course who better than Jefferson to organize and direct the Lewis and Clark expedition which resulted in a treasure trove of new trees and plants. TJ’s retirement at Monticello is for me one of the most interesting stages of his life, and he was extensively involved in agricultural research during this period–as an “experimental gardener” to use the author’s description. And the more shadowy Madison emerges as the father of the American environmental movement with his 1817 address to the Agricultural Society of Albemarle (Virginia).The author explains how plants were more than just a hobby; these patriots saw American plants and shrubs as one basis for continued independence since they supplied our needs domestically. These framers shared the view that a nation of independent small farmers would foreclose the inherent corruption of laborers forced to survive in “putrid” cities. How slavery fitted into all this is also touched upon by the author. The author’s research (reflected in 81 pages of notes, including important references to electronic data sources) is awesome. The book has 16 color plates and 19 B&W illustrations. I knew nothing of plants, but the author’s skillful narrative is rich in descriptive power. The book itself is beautifully produced, from the colorful dust jacket to the fine paper–yet another example of the superb work done by Berryville Graphics in Virginia. Accept the author’s argument or not, this book stands as a unique and insightful study of the sometimes mythical “founders”.

⭐I have loved reading this book. As an avid gardener, always wanting to learn new things….and as one interested in history, this book has been a joy to read. I highly recommended it. I also bought it as a gift for someone who loves the land, has an agricultural background and now gardens as well- and lives history. It’s absolutely a fascinating book. I’m so glad that the author chose to write this book.

⭐In the prologue of this fascinating study of the inner lives of Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison, historian Wulf says that by carefully studying records, letters and diaries, she came to see “how vegetable plots, ornamental plants, landscapes and forests had played a crucial role in America’s struggle for national identity and in the lives of our Founding Fathers.Wulf tells of Benjamin Franklin’s early certainty that America’s future rested on it’s “endless horizons, fertile soil and floral abundance” – a belief, she states, “became the perfect articulation of a distant national identity – of a country that was young and strong.”The author claims Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison felt the same and offers their stories and letters to prove it.Even as Washington struggled through the eight year ordeal of the Revolutionary War, his thoughts were constantly of his gardens, his fields and the wooded lands of Virginia. At the war’s end, he wished to return to his life as a “farmer and plantsman”.And, he did, throwing himself with passion into daily life as a “hands-on” gardener – an intellectual gardener, sending out seeds, acorns and thoughts on soil conservation, etc. He accepted the presidency with great reluctance.Jefferson would also serve as president but saw himself as “farmer, gardener and philosopher”. Adams regarded himself as a farmer first, stating, “zeal at my Heart for my country” was the reluctant drive that kept him in politics. Jefferson in Paris and Adams in London were profoundly affected by English gardens. When the Adames returned home in 1788, Wolfe clims they packed “books, seeds and plant lists of American trees, shrubs and flowers discovered in English gardens” for use at home in Massachusetts.The Constitutional Congress of 1788 brought fifty-five delegates to Philadelphia, bound only by the Articles of Confedertation. Vicious disputes marked the convention. The tenuous bond between the delegates was that most were farmers or from a planter’s background. Their uniting agreement was that the rich expanse of soil and the variety of possible plantings in this new land of theirs would allow personal livelihoods, individual state independence and a common commitment as a people.Wolfe moves from the national story to a detailed account of the first presidents’ dedication to and involvement in their own lands, homes and gardens – Washington at Mount Vernon, Adams at Peacefield, Jefferson at Monticello and Madison at Montpelier.Well-described. Intimate details. Meticulously researched.A new favorite on my bookshelf.

⭐This book documents the psychopathic maniacal nature of the people who run our world – brilliant.

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