By Pat Dray
The Garden Spot
Pat Dray
As we celebrate the founding of our great nation this month, we also reflect upon the farming traditions of our Founding Fathers.
George Washington, who many call “The Father of our Nation” was not just a bold leader during the Revolutionary War and our first president, but also a farmer. Mount Vernon, his 50,000-acre farm in Virginia, used a variety of innovative techniques such as crop rotation, livestock breeding and fertilization. Washington oversaw the design and planting of the farm, including what he called his “botanick garden” where he grew many different types of plants from all over the world.
Our second president, John Adams, was also a farmer. According to Corliss Knapp Engle in John Adams, Farmer and Gardener, Adams wrote a recipe for compost in 1771 that many of today’s organic gardeners would be delighted to use. It included seaweed, kitchen scraps and animal waste. Adams and his wife, Abigail, planted many ornamentals at their farm in Quincy, Massachusetts, some of which still exist.
In 1786, Adams was living in London when he called upon our third president, Thomas Jefferson, to assist in negotiations with the Barbary States of North Africa. Adams and Jefferson traveled outside of London to see some of the great estates.
With his farm, Monticello, in mind, Jefferson was fascinated by new style of gardening developed by landscape artists such as Lancelot “Capability” Brown. Brown was an early proponent of creating a more natural landscape, and he manipulated lakes, hills and roadways, planted groves of trees and included “follies” or “haha’s” in the landscape to create a sense of surprise and to contain livestock.
This naturalistic style appealed to Jefferson as it was more sustainable and required fewer regular maintenance expenditures. Monticello, built over a period 40 years, included the Monticello Grove, an ornamental forest, a fruit garden with over 170 varieties of fruit, and a vegetable garden with over 330 types of vegetables.
As we take time to with friends and family to celebrate graduations, weddings and fireworks, let’s reflect upon the three first presidents and key framers of the Declaration of Independence, and also think about them as “founding farmers.”
I suspect these three men would look at todays “farm to table” movement and congratulate the independent farmers, with their small-scale, self-sufficient farms. So don’t forget to go to the farmers market at High Plains Community Center of Thursdays and enjoy the local bounty.
To quote Washington’s letter to Dr. James Anderson from April 7, 1797, “I am once more seated under my own Vine and Fig-tree, and hope to spend the remainder of my days…in peaceful retirement, making political pursuits yield to the more rational amusement of cultivating the earth.”
Somehow, that seems especially pertinent in these uncertain times.
Pat Dray is a past president of the Garden Club of Orange and a master gardener.