Thomas Jefferson was an avid gardener
The doorbell rang last night and who was standing there in the cold but our friend Lee holding a platter of cookies and a bundle of seed packets tied with a festive bow. But not just any seed packets. These were all from the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Monticello.
Thomas Jefferson’s gardens are suddenly in vogue again. Some of the vegetable varieties from Monticello, his home in Charlottesvill, Virginia, have been selected for Michelle Obama’s new White House kitchen garden. Among the packets Lee selected for us is the Yellow Arikara bean, names for the Dakota Arikara tribe Lewis and Clark encountered on their famous expedition. According to the seed pakage, these beans were among the more significant horticultural finds that Lewis and Clark made. The dried beans helped feed the expedition during the particularly rough winter of 1805.
Also in the collection Lee gave us is the Whippoorwill Cowpea, known to Jefferson as a fine eating field pea as well as an improver of soil fertility. This is a bush variety with short runners and purple flowers that is resistant to drought and heat–just the thing for our nasty summers here in the District of Columbia.
Lee selected three flower varieties: Pincushion Flower (scabiosa atropurpurea); Rose Tree Mallow (lavatera thuringiaca); and Pentapetes (pentapetes phoenicia). Jefferson apparently planted all three. The Pincushion Flower–or sweet Scabious–resembles frilled satin pincushions “studded with white-headed pins,” according to the seed packet.
I’m not much of a flower guy. My range usually goes only as far as zinnia, sunflower, marigold and cosmos. But I am happy to plant flowers that come with so much history, and help preserve the work of one of our great agriculturist presidents.
We are engaging the concerns of a hungry planet--slowly--right here in our kitchen garden in the District of Columbia, about a mile from the White House.
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