by Andrea Wulf
James Madison dressed, as usual, in black (Illustration credit bm3.5)
Mount Vernon as seen from the bowling green, with Washington, his wife, Martha, and guests in the foreground. The small buildings to the left of the mansion are the servants’ hall and the gardener’s house. The shrubs and trees leading from the gardener’s house away from the mansion mark the beginning of the shrubberies, screening the walls of the gardens behind. (Illustration credit bm3.6)
Mount Vernon’s east front, with the Potomac and the groves next to the house. Washington enjoyed sitting on his piazza overlooking the river. (Illustration credit bm3.7)
Magnolia tripetala. Umbrella magnolia was adored for its enormous leaves and flowers—it was native to the Carolinas. (Illustration credit bm3.8)
Chionanthus virginicus. With its delicate white tassels that flower in May, the fringe tree is one of the most stunning native American shrubs and small trees. (Illustration credit bm3.9)
Designed by Samuel Vaughan, the State House garden was also planted with native species only. During the Constitutional Convention, many of the delegates used it as an escape from the stifling heat in the East Room. (Illustration credit bm3.10)
A romantic early twentieth-century depiction of John Bartram and George Washington at Bartram’s Garden. (Illustration credit bm3.11)
John and William Bartram discovered the Franklinia alatamaha in Georgia in 1765. William later named it after their family friend Benjamin Franklin. (Illustration credit bm3.12)
This painting of the Hudson River belonged to George Washington and was one of the many depictions of American landscapes that he collected. (Illustration credit bm3.13)
When Jefferson and Madison toured Vermont, they were keen to learn as much as possible about sugar maples in order to reduce America’s dependency on sugar from the British West Indies. (Illustration credit bm3.14)
This is the earliest depiction—painted in 1798—of John Adams’s house in Quincy. (Illustration credit bm3.15)
George Washington (second from right) as a farmer in his fields, with Mount Vernon in the background. (Illustration credit bm3.16)
Pierre L’Enfant’s enormous plan of the City of Washington from 1791, depicting the President’s House and the Capitol connected by an enormous park that was to include an equestrian statue of George Washington (A), a “Grand Cascade” (F), a big “President’s park” (I), and a “Grand Avenue” (H). (Illustration credit bm3.17)
This drawing of the White House garden illustrates Jefferson’s ideas. It shows the garden in its reduced size of around five acres. To the north of the house the garden shows a combination of formal and picturesque elements, including radiating avenues and meandering walks. At the back of the house toward the south was a large square rimmed by a narrow flower border. To the right, added probably by Jefferson, was to be a more secluded and screened area planted and laid out in an irregular design that included serpentine paths, groves, and shrubberies. The captions here read “wood” and “clump,” as well as “chamaerhodendron” or possibly “chamaedaphne,” which were eighteenth-century names for mountain laurel, azalea, and rhododendron. The wings of the house are also drawn with larger square structures midway. (Illustration credit bm3.18)
A view of Washington, D.C., just after the federal government moved there. (Illustration credit bm3.19)
Robinia hispida. The bristly locust was one of the native flowering trees that Jefferson included on his list for the White House garden and that he also planted at Poplar Forest. (Illustration credit bm3.20)
Liriodendron tulipifera. The stately tulip poplar was a common tree in all thirteen states and planted by Washington, Jefferson, and Madison in their pleasure grounds. (Illustration credit bm3.21)
John Bartram had regularly dispatched Kalmia angustifolia to England, where it was popular in the Georgian shrubberies. Jefferson ordered it in January 1786 from Bartram’s son for his friends in Paris, and Washington also included it in his large plant order for Mount Vernon in March 1792. (Illustration credit bm3.22)
Harpers Ferry or the Great Falls of the Potomac. Jefferson described the Potomac’s passage through the Blue Ridge Mountains as “one of the most stupendous scenes in nature.” This painting by George Beck was owned by George Washington. (Illustration credit bm3.23)
Thomas Jefferson’s Natural Bridge in Virginia. Jefferson called the Natural Bridge “the most sublime of Nature’s works” in his Notes on the State of Virginia. (Illustration credit bm3.24)
Monticello’s West Lawn, with flowerbeds and trees in the background. To each side of the house is a service wing with roof terraces. (Illustration credit bm3.25)
The approach up to the mountain to Monticello, with Charlottesville in the valley. (Illustration credit bm3.26)
William Thornton’s watercolor of Montpelier in 1802, with suggestions on how to improve the grounds. The landscaping was not executed until around 1810. The mansion is depicted without the two wings that were built only in 1809, and the temple to the left (built over the icehouse) was constructed only in 1810. (Illustration credit bm3.27)
A computer rendition of Montpelier at the time of Madison’s retirement, showing the house with the two new wings and the new lawn at the back. To the right is a conjectural view of the model slave village, with its six neat buildings, and to the left of the mansion, hidden by the trees and latticework screen, Dolley’s detached kitchen. Not included here are the horseshoe-shaped garden and the ha-ha at the back of the lawn. (Illustration credit bm3.28)
ALSO BY ANDREA WULF
The Brother Gardeners:
Botany Empire and the Birth of an Obsession
This Other Eden:
Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History
(with Emma Gieben-Gamal)