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Thomas Jefferson's garden legacy
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Thomas Jefferson recorded Virginia
bluebells in 1766
Happy Birthday TJ! As one of the colonial nation’s first gardeners (most of them were in agriculture one way or another) Thomas Jefferson dutifully left his observations in the Garden Calendar which puts most gardeners notes to shame. His records cover the years of 1766 to 1824 and include details starting on the first page, April 16, 1766 , “a bluish colored, funnel, formed flower in low grounds in bloom.” Virginia bluebells, no doubt, and they are right on schedule two hundred forty three years later.
Keeping a garden journal is a necessity for those of us prone to forgetting what we put where. It’s a record of beautiful sightings (a yellow-rumped warbler migrating through), late springs and first harvests. Thomas Jefferson held a neighborly competition on the first bowl of peas. On April 30, 1815 he recorded, “Mr. Divers has a dish of peas.” and on May 4 he observed, “peas at Mr. Divers sown in early January.”
Like everything, the record keeping can be complicated with forms, statistics and lots of gridlines, or it can be a simple spiral bound notebook. Consistency is the real success of a garden diary. Seeds of Change provides an on-line version also available as a hard copy, Homestead Harvest also offers a free down-loadable version.
Mr. Jefferson’s beloved University of Virginia is also the home to Blandy Experimental Farm home of the State Arboretum of Virginia. They are hosting a lecture on Thursday April 16 CSI: How Plants Help Solve Crimes. Dr. Steve Carroll will be presenting and in a preview he noted the Charles Lindberg kidnapping case which included matching wood fragments from a handmade ladder that were traced to a mill and included matching the cycles of the mill saw used to cut it.
“We are so sophisticated now that on a molecular level it’s possible to determine if endangered plants have been poached from wetlands,” he noted.
That dirt in your pants cuff is evidence of a day hard spent. For others it’s enough to send them to jail. The lecture at 10 a.m. costs $6 for Friends of the State Arboretum members and $8 non-members. Reservations are encouraged: 540.837.1758 Ex. 0.
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