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 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, 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 Appleseed 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, granddaughters, 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.
Michelle Obama recently declared that the White House kitchen garden "has been one of the greatest things I've done in my life so far." An admirer of Thomas Jefferson and inspired by a visit to the Monticello garden, 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.
This year's Heritage Harvest Festival will took place on September 11, 2010, and was held at Monticello for the first time, where the recently renovated dining room, wine cellar, and kitchen were open to the public. For more information please visit: www.heritageharvestfestival.com
Peter Hatch is the Director of Gardens and Grounds at the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.
Jefferson's commitment to participatory democracy, as opposed to rule by the elites, is found in the spirit of today's blogs. His love of learning led to the creation if the library of Congress when his book collection was purchased by the government. The list of this remarkable mans achievements can never be underestimated. No he was not a top scientist, but then very few scientist can claim to excel in so many diverse fields of knowledge as Jefferson.
Trying to discredit Jefferson for owning slaves is simply an attempt to smear Jefferson's contributions to this country. Something the Hamiltonian's have been trying to do since the founding of this country.
Plenty of people born at the same time as Jefferson saw the evils of slavery and fought against it. Jefferson might have himself, had he not valued his own comfort and luxury so highly. He personally embodies the terrible compromise and hypocrisy upon which the country was founded and that better people than Jefferson condemned. In this, and in his romantic mythologizing of agrarian virtue that fed the fantasies of the confederates, he helped allow slavery to continue far longer than it otherwise might have.
We gain nothing by venerating such a man.
Jefferson also wrote movingly in his letters of the concept of usufruct, or the land belongs to the living, which more or less eliminates debt and the taxation of the unborn.
Tina Traster
Author of Burb Appeal: The Collection
http://www.amazon.com/Burb-Appeal-Collection-Humorous-ebook/dp/B0042G0SZA/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1284411635&sr=1-1
the same bed ,separate bedroom idea was fantastic...........It is surprising that in our time such an idea has not been utilized.........
The "one idea" we "latch on to" is that everything this article praises Jefferson for he did with slave labor, a fact that the article fails to mention. It's kind of an important omission, like writing an article on a garden in a concentration camp, and limiting yourself to praising the beauty of the roses.
In his life Jefferson did all he could to hide his slaves. That was the point of many of the clever architectural innovations of Monticello. It seems that the keepers of Jefferson's legacy are determined to keep up that deceit (do docents at Monticello still refer to slaves as "servants," I wonder?). But any discription of Jefferson the farmer that does no mention slavery is dishonest. This is all the more true of a description that praises him as a visionary. And this is no small point: Jefferson's utopian romanticizing of rural agricultural life and his habit of hiding, rather than confronting, the ugly aspects of that life-- both epitomized in Monticello and in this article-- fed the fantasies of the confederates and is at the root of the very worst of America.
No educated person could read an article about Jefferson's horticultural contribution and not understand that slaves did the heavy lifting at Monticello.
However, it is just not true to go from these facts into claims that "Jefferson was a poor scientist" or that "It sure is easy to have a big vegetable garden when you have an army of slaves." Neither idea is true.
If slave ownership made horticulture easy, then why weren't there other horticulturists as successful as Jefferson? Lots of people had more money and more slaves. What he did was NOT easy.
Jefferson's impact on American science and technology was huge.
The principal reason that America became the world's most important manufacturing power during the 19th century is that during the 18th century Jefferson observed technology breakthroughs in France, and he commissioned Eli Whitney to develop similar technology here.
Whitney (and his son) went on to create the mass-production techniques now called "the American system." They followed Jefferson's blueprint for a technological future that has ramifications today.
If Jefferson had devoted more effort to making money and less effort to science in general - horticulture in particular - his life would have been more comfortable, and he would have been in a better position to free his slaves.
Jefferson served as president of the American Philosophical Society - which is like being president of the National Academy of Sciences today.
I did not say that anyone could have built Monticello, or that Jefferson's horticultural work was commonplace. He exercised considerable ingenuity in both, and also maintaining his own ease and comfort, which was the chief principle guiding the design of Monticello. But he did it all with slaves. The fact that he did interesting and creative things with slave labor does not excuse it. Nor does his knowledge of his own hypocrisy. He had the means to live without slaves, but he did not have the means to live in luxury without them. Whatever qualms Jefferson had about the imprisonment of his fellow humans, they were not strong enough to overcome his love of gazing out on his manicured gardens from his study window.
Of course Jefferson was a product of his time and, more importantly, of his place. But the fact that this champion of liberty could not see beyond his time and place when so many of his fellow revolutionaries could is an indelible stain on his character and his place in history.
Yes, he did it all with slaves. This is a fact we must never forget.
But it is just not true that he was an amateurish or superficial naturalist. His book "Notes on the State of Virginia" was a masterpiece of many fields, including naturalism. His advocacy of the Lewis & Clarke expedition was as significant then as NASA is today. HIs contribution to horticulture is dramatic.
But the thing that stands out most historically is the role he played in creating a uniquely American form of technology - an Americanized approach to the Industrial Revolution that went on to conquer the world and to lift the standard of living of all people everywhere.
There is nothing remotely mediocre about the scientific impact he had on the century that followed his life. The fact that such work could be done by someone who was such a bonehead in other aspects of his life makes the history lesson more compelling, not less compelling.
I sometimes worry that the way we view slavery downplays the fact that we have invented more subtle ways to exploit people today. Slavery needs to be seen as one of many ways the powerful exploit the powerless.
I am not a big fan of Henry Ford - the guy was a beast in many ways - but many of his accomplishments are positive. He gets a lot of credit for establishing soybean farming in America. He recognized that it could boost farm income while enriching the soil, and he was completely correct.
Credit where credit is due, I guess.
Jefferson was a slave owner, at a time when most of the civilized world was rejecting slavery as barbaric. He may have been less brutal than most, but in the end it was slavery all the same, regardless of how Monticello docents try to sugar coat it. The hypocrisy of slave owners like Jefferson fighting a war of liberation was not lost on contemporaries. In 1775 Samuel Johnson asked "How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of Negroes?" Jefferson's own hand-wringing over slavery hardly forgives him. His fantasies of an agrarian utopia inhabited by gentlemen farmers hinged on slavery, and in the end he preferred those fantasies-- which grew and festered into the disease that was the confederacy-- to the lives of the human beings he owned.