Product Description

Noted plantsman Peter Loewer profiles Thomas Jefferson as gardener and landscape architect, focusing on the gardens at Monticello, with descriptions of the annuals, perennials, trees, shrubs, and vines that Jefferson grew. Insights on each plant from Jefferson, the writers he admired, and those who admired him are combined with Loewer's unique perspective, gardening hints, and stunning line drawings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186953 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 272 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Author of more than 20 books, from Thoreau's Garden to Solving Deer Problems, Loewer is vice president of the Botanical Gardens at Asheville, North Carolina. He here celebrates the gardens at Monticello, as designed by the nation's first president-cum-landscape-architect. After three brief chapters on Jefferson as a "Planter and Landscape Architect," on Monticello's layout and gorgeous flora, and on "The Importance of Seeds in America," Loewer offers sections of Annuals and Perennials (including "The Fanciful Cockscomb" and "The Sensitive Plant") Shrubs, Trees and Vines. With more than 70 entries, each with a fine line drawing, a foreword from Peggy Cornett (who is director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Monticello) and a bibliography, readers won't have to make the trip in order to reproduce, or at least approximate, that major American garden's splendors.
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About the Author
Peter Loewer is vice president of the Botanical Gardens at Asheville, North Carolina, and author of several highly acclaimed gardening books, including The Winter Garden (0811724794), Thoreau's Garden (0811729486), and The Wild Gardener (0811719251). Loewer's botanical drawings are included in the permanent collection of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.

Customer Reviews

A can't-put-it-down garden book ... really!
Unquestionably the most interesting garden book I have read in a long, long time, Loewer's Jefferson's Garden is a delight. I can't remember the last garden book I have eagerly read cover to cover. Thomas Jefferson was an inveterate collector of plants and when one embarks on Loewer's virtual tour of the framer's grounds there is a surprise around every corner.

Did you know that Columbus carried seeds when he invaded this hemisphere -- or that the Spanish government decreed that all ships bound for the Indies do the same? The first white settlers in Pennsylvania found wild peaches, almost certainly planted by Native Americans who obtained seeds from the Spanish a hundred years earlier. The seed business was in full swing on this continent in 1760 and less than a hundred years later came the first mail-order seedsman. Loewer offers an easy flow from Linnaean and common nomenclature through bits of plant history to cultivation instructions and soil requirements, all interleaved with Jefferson's plant experiments and garden design.