Toward a More Perfect Garden

It’s that time of year when backyard gardeners ache to till the earth, planting fruits and veggies they can munch on all summer long. As it turns out, that urge couldn’t be more American. According to Founding Gardeners, a book by Andrea Wulf out this week, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison were almost as obsessed with what to plant as they were with how to govern. During his years at Monticello, Jefferson tried his hand at 170 types of fruits and 330 varieties of herbs and vegetables, including lettuce, peas, spinach, peppers, eggplant, asparagus, and okra. While he brought some of these with him to D.C., Jefferson wasn’t the first White House gardener. That honor goes to John Adams, who plowed and fertilized a parcel of the land in 1800. And any visitor to Mount Vernon knows of Washington’s passion for plants. Besides nurturing his ornamental gardens, he tended grapes, apples, peaches, cherries, and plums. Even Benjamin Franklin got into the spirit of things, arranging for the exchange of seeds and roots between France and America. The founding gardeners were also quite happy to get down and dirty. While in London, Adams once jumped into a mound of fertilizer, declaring proudly that his dung pile at home was better. Now that’s patriotism!

— Joanne Kaufman