Thomas Jefferson by Tadeusz Kościuszko (1746-1817)
An Uncultivated Legacy:
Jefferson’s Botanical Garden at the University of Virginia
By Lily Fox-Bruguiere 2009
A little over two months before his death in 1826, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to the University of Virginia’s newly appointed Professor of Natural History, John Patton Emmet, providing details for a botanical garden to accompany the fledgling school of Botany. This letter, composed on April 27th, set the wheels in motion for one of Jefferson’s final campaigns as founder and Rector of the University. Jefferson intended the botanical garden to be a significant and integral component of the “Academical Village,” helping to make the University of Virginia a complete educational experience for well-rounded young American men. Not an isolated effort, Jefferson’s plan for a botanical garden at his University was the culmination of his lifelong interest in plants and unending support of botanical study.
Long before any thoughts of creating a botanical garden for the benefit of students at the University of Virginia, Thomas Jefferson himself cultivated a constant and thriving passion for plants. While eager to acquire knowledge in many fields of study from an early age, including botany, much of his time and effort was devoted to a public career in politics. He still managed to find the time to pursue his many philosophical interests, especially after his retirement in 1809. Writing to Dr. Thomas Cooper in 1814, Jefferson stated: "Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider it’s subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man & beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies… no countrygentleman should be without what amuses every step he takes into his fields."
Jefferson’s infatuation with plants and botany ranged from the American natives found around his beloved Monticello in Virginia and in the other newly formed states, to the extensive collections of European natives and exotics that he encountered while serving
as Minister to France from 1784 to 1789.
Botany was a topic often referenced and debated in letters between Jefferson and a growing number of fellow enthusiasts, both amateur and professional. In 1778, soon after Jefferson garnered fame as the author of the Declaration of American Independence, he wrote to the Florentine economist Giovanni Fabbroni, who published on a wide variety of topics including agriculture, botany, and chemistry, “Tho’ much of my time is employed in the councils of America I have yet a little leisure to indulge my fondness for philosophical studies.” Continuing in a humble tone, he told Fabbroni “I wish I could gratify your Botanical taste; but I am acquainted with nothing more than the first principles of that science…” He then went on to assure Fabbroni that he and his friends would do all that they could to acquire American botanical specimens that could not be found in Italy.
The collection and exchange of useful, beautiful, and curious plants had become a nearly requisite pastime for European gentlemen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Such an interest soon caught on in America, especially with gentlemen planters like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Washington and Jefferson, as early leaders of the new nation, also had the future of their country in mind when studying and cultivating plants. Jefferson succinctly stated his opinion regarding the importance of plants around 1800: “The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add an useful plant to its culture.”
During his years abroad while serving as Minister to France from 1784 to 1789, Jefferson diligently worked towards providing this service. In France, Jefferson socialized with people who proved to be nearly as enthusiastic about plants as Jefferson himself, thus forming relationships that increased his own plant knowledge and enabled numerous plant exchanges. One of Jefferson’s French acquaintances, Simon-Charles Boutin, promised Jefferson seeds of dry rice from China.
Jefferson was in search of a type of rice that did not need to be cultivated in wet lowlands, thus improving the stagnant growing conditions in America that were “so fatal to human health and life.”
To that end, Jefferson even went so far as to smuggle some grains of rice out of Italy in his own pockets.
In several notable letters sent to correspondents in America, Jefferson explained the benefits of dry rice, olive trees, and the cork oak, shipping many specimens and seeds of each to America on multiple occasions.
In another one of Jefferson’s many attempts to advance America’s agricultural standards, he sent sainfoin seeds to the South Carolina Society for Promoting Agriculture in 1786.
Jefferson gathered the seeds from this soil-improving legume from his own garden at the Hotel de Langeac in Paris. Thomas Jefferson commenced particularly beneficial relationships with acquaintances made at the Jardin du Roi in Paris. The Jardin du Roi began as a teaching and medicinal garden in 1626, then later came to house the country’s natural history collection under the illustrious directorship of the Comte de Buffon.
While visiting the Jardin du Roi, Jefferson developed a lasting friendship with Andre Thouin. Thouin, head gardener at the time, was later to become the garden’s director in its new incarnation as the French National Garden, the Jardin des Plantes. Jefferson and Thouin exchanged many seeds over the years, especially after Jefferson’s return to Virginia. In 1808, Jefferson’s “old friend” sent him 700 species of exotic seeds that he then shared with nurseryman Bernard McMahon of Philadelphia because he did not have to time to care for them. In thanks, Thouin later received seeds and plants collected on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Jefferson was also delighted to receive an assortment of rice species from Thouin for his persistent effort to ameliorate the swampy conditions for America’s rice growers.
While the majority of Jefferson’s time abroad was spent in and around Paris, he also traveled further afield to southern France, northern Italy, Holland, the Rhine Valley, and England. Just as he advised other Americans traveling in Europe, Jefferson paid particular attention to, among other things, the agriculture and gardens of the various regions, and took copious notes on the subjects. During March and April of 1786 Jefferson resided in London and toured a number of English gardens in his spare time.
Accompanied by John Adams on one such five-day tour of great country estates, Jefferson frequently consulted his copy of Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) and also made opinionated comments of his own on the successes and failures of the gardens’ design and architecture.
Due to his personal interest in plants, it is surprising that Jefferson hardly mentioned any of the diverse plant varieties that he would have encountered on his journeys in England. England at this time was making large strides as the epicenter of international plant trade, its many gardens brimming with the newest and the most enviable acquisitions. Jefferson also visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, which Sir Joseph Banks had recently begun to augment as the world’s premier collection of plants. However, Jefferson’s notes on the visit merely described the “Archimedes’ screw for raising water” and left out any recognition of the many plant species that he must have seen there.
Also, while he visited Oxford with John Adams, Jefferson appears to have made no observations on the town, nor on its veteran botanical garden, which was established in 1621.
Although Jefferson may not have considered himself an authority on botany, he consistently championed the study of the subject and even received recognition for his knowledge in the field. In 1792, natural historian Benjamin Smith Barton read a paper before the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia in which he honored Jefferson by giving the name Jeffersonia to a small genus of plants. Of the two species that make up the genus, Jeffersonia diphylla is a plant native to eastern North America while Jeffersonia dubia is found in Asia. Barton’s stated reason for bestowing this honor on Jefferson was because “In the various departments of this science, but especially in
botany and zoology, the information of this gentleman is equaled by that of few persons in the United-States.”
After serving many trying years as Governor of Virginia, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Vice-President, and for two terms as President of the United States, Jefferson finally retired to “the tranquil pursuits of science” at Monticello. At last, he was able to turn his attention to, among other things, his books, grandchildren, farms, and gardens. Writing from Monticello to Benjamin Smith Barton in 1810, Jefferson claimed “my mind has been so long ingrossed by other objects, that those I loved most have escaped from it, and none more than botany…” While this may have been the case temporarily, Jefferson was soon debating the currently competing systems devised for plant and animal classification with Dr. John Manners in 1814. He concluded this five page letter with a brief summary of his viewpoint: "I adhere to the Linnean because it is sufficient as a groundwork; admits of supplementary insertions, as new productions are discovered, and mainly and still less to find another which shall have the same singular fortune of obtaining the general consent."
Carl Linnaeus, the eighteenth century Swedish botanist, devised the popular system of “artificial” classification and the simple method of binomial nomenclature, both of which made the study of botany accessible to a larger number of interested people.
Lily Fox-Bruguiere worked for the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Monticello. A University of Virginia graduate with an M.A. in Architectural & Landscape History, Lily also worked professionally as a gardener for 15 years, including 9 years at Monticello.
