A Gardener’s Farewell: Thomas Jefferson’s Final Requests for Monticello
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
February 8, 1809
Dearest reader,
On this day, Thomas Jefferson—soon to retire from the presidency—was counting the days until he could return to Monticello (“MontiCHELLo”), ready to once again lose himself in a tangle of tulips, hyacinths, and sweet amaryllis.
Jefferson’s lively correspondence with his favorite nurseryman, Bernard McMahon of Philadelphia, reveals that, beneath the stately veneer of America’s third president, there always beat the green and hopeful heart of a gardener.
From his letters, a portrait emerges:
“Early in the next year I shall ask [for] some cuttings of your gooseberries and [I'll also] send a pretty copious list for...the best kinds of garden seeds and flowers.
I shall be at home early in March [and plan to] very much devote myself to my garden…
I have the tulips you sent to me in great perfection, also the hyacinths, tuberoses, amaryllis, and artichokes.”
Even after seasons of politics and statesmanship, Jefferson confided that, “though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”
It is easy to see, in his request to McMahon for “Chili strawberry, Hudson strawberry, some fine gooseberry plants, Crown imperials, lilium convallarium, Auricula, sea kale, and one gallon of Leadman’s dwarf peas,” the eager longing for new botanical wonders to fill his beds.
His letter reads like the shopping list of any enthusiast itching to sow and grow after a too-long winter.
Jefferson and McMahon’s friendship was sown in the soil of curiosity and innovation. McMahon, author of the influential American Gardener’s Calendar, sent new varieties east and west, providing guidance that would, quite literally, shape the flowering borders and orchards of Monticello. Their steady correspondence—thirty-seven letters strong—brims with advice, plant swaps, and Jefferson’s signature blend of wit and sincere gratitude.
Yet, with all the gravitas of founding a nation, what delighted Jefferson most was the promise of the next season’s bloom.
Is it not wonderfully humbling that even those tasked with writing history would rather be writing to their nurseryman about gooseberries and peas?
How many of today’s gardeners feel the same anticipation for a package of seeds as Jefferson did in 1809?
Dear reader, as you plot and plan your own plantings, do you find yourself longing for the unfamiliar, the extraordinary, the graceful new arrival?
And might you—like Jefferson—recognize in every fresh shoot and fragrant blossom the ever-renewing joy of being, always, a young gardener at heart?
