Monticello | Charlottesville, Virginia

One cannot overstress the international garden history importance of Monticello, a World Heritage site. Apropos of that significance, the Society’s unbroken Monticello ties stretch back to early days. An early SGHS member and a former Old Salem gardener and interpreter, Peggy Cornett became Monticello’s assistant director of gardens and grounds in 1983. Now, a forty-two-year veteran serving as curator of plants, she was director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants from 1992 to 2009. During her long Monticello tenure (receiving numerous honors along the way), she became Magnolia assistant editor in 1987 and editor in 1992. Readers will know it is a job she still holds, thus assuring that Society members know about Monticello’s continuing garden-related activities. 

Along with Peggy Cornett’s SGHS-Monticello ties, the Society also established another long-time relationship through Peter Hatch, who served terms as a SGHS director and as president from 1998-2000. Prior to retiring in 2012 with the title Director of Gardens and Grounds Emeritus, Hatch not only helped to establish programs such the Historic Landscape Institute, but he also wrote several highly regarded books, including most recently the award-winning A Rich Spot of Earth: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello. Having been mentored at Old Salem by Flora Ann Bynum, however, both Peggy Cornett and Peter Hatch have arguably gotten no more heart-warming recognition than each receiving the Society’s highest honor, the Flora Ann Bynum Medal.

Many readers will know the basic story of Thomas Jefferson’s landscape design and gardening efforts, beginning with his earliest plant-related notes jotted while living at nearby Shadwell. Although he was frequently away from Virginia, gardens and things that grew from the soil remained keenly important to Jefferson. Paralleling Jefferson’s life, Monticello’s story is one of change and redefinition regarding grounds as well as structures. Visitors initially note the careful shaping of a mountain-top terrain for emplacing Jefferson’s famed homeplace. Here, primarily enslaved hands and draft animals would have carefully cleared and shaped the land into a broad plateau, the dwelling being set on the east end. Then, to the south, the ground sloped to a string of mulberry trees, shading over a “center of work and domestic life for… free whites, free blacks, indentured servants, and enslaved people…” all this encompassing “dwellings, workshops, and storehouses,” per Monticello’s website.*

The two areas present the modern observer a seemingly paradoxical juxtaposition of uses that was common to antebellum plantations, this being especially evident after an aging Jefferson’s second presidential term. Thus, ca. 1808 the west yard would become a grass lawn surrounded by a “winding walk” and featuring a great variety of flowers (tulips, Sweet William, and cockscomb are but a very few favorites) growing in individual oval beds and borders. This place for refreshing strolls, however, is but a stone’s throw from the clamorously busy Mulberry Row. One strains to cite a comparable post-bellum and twentieth-century pleasure ground experience, except perhaps for the intrusive modern-day sounds of gas-powered mowers and two-cycle string trimmers.

Also, during the period 1807 to 1809 enslaved workers carved out a 1080’ by 80’ plateau below Mulberry Row for vegetable gardening, Jefferson’s great passion. Its restoration, along with rebuilding an 1812 brick pavilion and installing an orchard and a vineyard downhill, began with 1970s research and proposals by architectural historian Bill Beiswanger. This was supported by archaeological investigations led by Bill Kelso, while in late 1970s a new superintendent of gardens and grounds, Peter Hatch, began plant studies. In addition, landscape architect Rudy Favretti oversaw reconstruction of the stone terrace supporting wall. The result encompasses twenty-four square plots capable of extensive vegetable production and arranged to complement harvest times spanning the growing season. English peas were a great favorite, yet at various times Jefferson grew well over two-hundred vegetable varieties. 

Society members saw this in detail during the 1987 Charlottesville annual meeting, the first SGHS Virginia gathering and a resounding tour de force. Full immersion in the Jefferson landscape story came via presentations and tours given/led by the previously mentioned Beiswanger, Cornett (then Newcomb), Favretti, Hatch, and Kelso, plus other authorities such as Allan Brown, Will Rieley, and senior Monticello historian Cinder Stanton. 

Speakers also examined the Garden Club of Virginia’s (GCV) place in rediscovering Jefferson’s garden world. Their work began after the newly formed Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation’s 1923 purchase of Monticello from the nephew of Uriah P. Levy, a high-ranking naval officer now acclaimed for acquiring the property in 1834 and protecting it from looming deterioration. While credit goes to GCV for projects like early tree care, their presence is perhaps best seen in the restored winding walk flower garden. (Here again, as at Stratford Hall, Morley Jeffers Williams’ archaeological talents helped to guide their work.)**

There is, of course, even more to landscape restoration at Monticello, such as bringing back the eighteen-acre “grove,” showcasing various trees loved by Jefferson, along with replanting correct tree species along original roads. For such work, and all the efforts cited above, Monticello clearly stands in the top tier of southern garden restorations.

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*On Mulberry Row, see: https://www.monticello.org/slavery/the-plantation/organization-of-the-monticello-plantation/mulberry-row/

**For a flower garden video, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icSXYZNYnLY

Monticello’s website includes excellent landscape and garden coverage including many podcasts: https://www.monticello.org/house-gardens/