New American Garden

"...of the fifty-five delegates [to Constitutional Convention 1787] more than half were farmers or came from a planter's background.  For many of them, agriculture, plants and politics were parts of one single endeavor–the creation of a country that was independent, industrious and virtuous, a country that would not succumb to the same corruption, decadence and tyranny that had destroyed ancient republics in Europe."  from Wulf's Founding Gardeners






As Jefferson and so many of his contemporary thinkers knew, we are blessed with this American natural setting. In response to a series of questions posed by a French vice consul in 1780, Jefferson wrote his Notes on the State of Virginia, a book length defense of his state, its natural resources, and how freedom develops like a seed from the ground up through an individual then to community and the nation itself.  As indicated above, Jefferson was not the only founder to know intimately this connection.  Franklin was a great naturalist and close friends with the pioneer American botanist John Bartram, who founded the Philadelphia garden and nursery which became a great source of international seed trade and shared discovery.  Madison was an ardent student of natural history; Adams, a small scale farmer, saw himself, as Washington did, retiring to natural not political fields.

Federalist No. 1

As we look back over time two hundred years later, we might ask how it is that we can now, despite ever mounting distractions, connect not only to the American natural setting, but how to participate in culture at a level that in some small way nears the founders'.  It is an interesting fact that in 1787, as the delegates for the Constitutional Convention gathered  in Philadelphia to re-conceive the framework of the nation's founding documents, both Jefferson (chief proponent of states'  rights) and Adams were living in other countries, France and England.  In their absence the great Federalist's Papers were written by three other founders – Hamilton, Madison and Jay – all staunch supporters of a stronger centralized government.  One of the ways to connect with the founders' dilemma is to consider this very same argument today and apply it to how we perceive our current version of the government.  One of, if not the, chief complaint lodged by a great majority of Americans is that our own government has become too centralized, over-reaching, and yet seemingly remote from average concerns of constituents within the various states; that, in fact, an answer to this

Bartram Garden

would be less dependence on the federal, and more participation at, the state level.  Jefferson, although a great visionary, might not have been able to truly predict these developments, but most certainly with his extended stay in France in mind, it would not have been beyond him to see that power gradually pulled from the common farmer and placed into the hands of merchants, traders, large scale profiteers could corrupt portions of culture itself.  Our contemporary food system is, if nothing else, one way to interpret the old arguments surrounding the Convention.

Another way is to participate in nature, to plant something, and certainly to conserve resources wherever and whenever possible.  Richard Goodman, in his recent book called French Dirt: The Story of a Garden in the South of France, says he loves to "garden for the obvious–but, because of that, no less meaningful–reason: to feel connected to the earth and its moods, to its weather and its seasons, to its eccentricities and surprises. I love to bend and dig and pull and haul.  I am always looking for ways to make myself simpler.  Gardening does that better than anything I know."  The founders might have

John Bartram
Illustration at top by son William Bertram

planted and grown and gardened for any number of reasons – as a pastime, an estate duty, for profit, to feed themselves – but the common sentiment among so many of them had much to do with the same qualities that we might equate with democracy itself – independence, industriousness, and virtue, among many others. Ancestor worship and a cultural love of nature has seemingly gone out of style in contemporary America.  History is quite real and hard much of the time; nature is not always entertaining.  Because of this, today, more than any other time in the country's history, it might be time well worthwhile for everybody to found a garden.

Founding Gardeners

"The other founding fathers shared his belief.  Agriculture and the independent small-scale farmer were, in their eyes, the building blocks of the new nation.  Ploughing, planting and vegetable gardening were more than profitable and enjoyable occupations: they were political acts, bringing freedom and independence."    

The greatest hope for this blog series is that it never becomes just one thing, or at once too many things.  The inspiration comes from a life long interest in history, cooking and the prospect of gardening or even perhaps farming.  Of the first two I can reliably claim experience that I am 

quote above from Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners

somewhat proud of. The third, though, needs more work.  Like any good prospective gardener, I have dabbled in my readings of permaculture, made my attempts at apple trees, blue berry vines, wild strawberries, too-thin carrots, tomatoes, a feeble little wooden fence "to keep out the creatures of the night," and a herb garden that got tunneled by a chipmunk so severely I nearly hired it on the spot to do my harvesting for me when the time came.  This is to point out that history and cooking can 

become serious subjects while, I suspect anyway, gardening will always be my source for humor.  I also hope that it will be a source of coming inspiration as we have recently purchased a house in Madison, WI that has been for the past hand full of years well landscaped and nicely gardened.  A novice about to receive a pro's work is only terrifyingly daunting if the novice thinks he is going to master the art without much care or work; luckily I'm now too old to think that anything undertaken worthwhile will not cause either ulcers or hysteria eventually.  Or, if one is fortunate, the great salve of humor might lubricate the sure to arrive bounty of mistakes.  

Historical thinking might very well be one of the greatest generational absences we face.  To be able to see any given problem and solution in the real world in historical time alleviates far more anxiety than a quick fix of a sitcom or video game.  To think even briefly that generations past – most certainly our founding mothers and fathers of the American Revolution – grew their own food not merely out of the sake of decoration (although this too), but, as Washington would remark about his great upper and lower gardens at Mt. Vernon (kitchen garden pictured above) for the sake of feeding the estate, it forces an interested observer to wonder what a young person today who now spends more time on media than he or she sleeps, might get out of the possibility of planting something and taking care of it.  The relationship between our founding mothers and fathers and nature in general, then, allows us to see through a useful microscope the connection between the notion of democracy and growing things.  If a modern day urbanite needs a reason to commit, this might be as good a one as any.    

We might follow that homegrown fruit and vegetable to our table where we eat.  Little "plates of democracy?"  I don't know, but need to find out.  After Jefferson and Adams's long and very inspiring ride together 

Monticello

viewing the grand gardens of England, Jefferson believed gardens in particular were important for Americans.  "They might have failed to negotiate a trade treaty with Britain and the Barbary States, but they had discovered how Important America had been in the creation of the gardens of the old enemy. Now it was easy for Jefferson to admit that the English garden 'surpasses all the earth' – he 

could wholeheartedly embrace them without feeling unpatriotic because they were populated with American plants and shaped by ideas of liberty."  Very heady stuff.  Yet you wonder if a simple civics course in learning simultaneously the dual texts of the Federalists Papers and a good garden book might not be just enough to help roll culture up the hill a bit faster.