29 of 52 in my 2011 book blogging challenge.
Founding Gardeners is an interesting look at the gardening efforts of George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. They were all intensely interested both in their own private gardens and in the development of a new agriculture for a new republic.
Jefferson in particular stands out in this story. At least, he does to me. He believed that a strong American agriculture was the key to the survival of the new country. He was keenly interested in an American way of gardening with American plants. This interest played into nearly everything he did as president. It certainly influenced the biggies like the Louisiana Purchase and the Lewis and Clark expedition. He believed both vast tracts of land and the discovery of native plants were vitally important to the development of a strong and stable country.
Jefferson appears to have been obsessively interested in the subject of home grown food production and the way in which that gardening defined America, but he was not alone in this. The other founding fathers devoted themselves to developing their gardens with the same ferocity that they devoted themselves to developing their country. In fact, the two seemed to have been interwoven with their ideas about farming influencing their ideas about politics at nearly every stage of their careers.
I found all of that very interesting, but I also found interesting the reminder Wulf gives us that these guys didn’t always get along. We tend to revere them as the wise fathers of our nation as if they were a unified force. They were anything but. Wulf tells us that one of the nastiest political campaigns in history was the presidential race between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.
The political divides we see today really do go back to the very start. Our first few presidents never did agree with one another on the very points we still argue most heatedly — How big should the federal government be? How far do the rights of individual state governments extend?
Some debates are eternal.
What the founding fathers did agree on, however, was that America could not survive without healthy gardens. This makes me think I need to plant some tomatoes tomorrow. It seems like the patriotic thing to do.
