Elizabeth Hatcher Sadler

“ O, those were happy days!"
"There is a fulness of time when men should go, and not occupy too long the ground to which others have a right to advance," he had said, but the establishment of the University of Virginia saved his old age from the tragedy of unemployment, and kept him active to the last. His insistence that botany be made a part of the regular course constitutes perhaps his last step forward in scientific progress, and the situation there, the lawn, the gardens back of the professors' houses, and the serpentine wall, show the gardener in him at work to the end. ”

“ Jefferson joined horticultural societies at home and abroad, cultivated the friendship of scientists, cherished his Hepburn garden book after the manner of garden lovers today, and was often consulted as an authority. He was constantly exchanging roots and plants and cuttings. No day was too busy for him to be sending them abroad by messenger or mail, for he literally scattered seed broadcast throughout the country. ”

“ How sublime to look down in the workhouse of nature, to see her clouds, hail, snow, rain, thunder, all fabricated at out feet, and the glorious sun rising as out of the distant water, just gilding the tops of the mountain, and giving life to all nature! ”

“ There was no son at Monticello, but the first grandson at an early age was bundled off to Philadelphia to attend lectures in botany, astronomy and anatomy, for "botany was ranked by the head of the family as the most valuable of the sciences"; and the celebrated Dr. Benjamin A. Barton, the author of the first American textbook on the subject, was chosen as instructor, because, as Mr. Jefferson explained, he had the chastest style of gardening outside of England. Of England he wrote, "The gardening in that country is the one thing in which it excels all the earth." ”

“ She had chosen Thomas Jefferson, and after much feasting they drove in modest manner, behind a single pair of ponies, in the snow to Monticello, there to live, he records, in "unchequered happiness."
Farming then became his profession; but Thomas Jefferson, the farmer, with his constant study of seed, soils and crops and improved machinery, often the product of his own hand, is another story.
Married two years or more, a little daughter running around the house, and another due in a month or so, he is found, according to his custom, in his kitchen garden, in the spring, a busy man. ”

“ His "Notes on Virginia" contain the first real study of the flora of the state, and the wide results obtained by botanists from plants and seed brought back by the Lewis and Clark expedition, due in a large degree to Thomas Jefferson, whose spirit animated the whole undertaking, are recognized as his major contribution to the science.
"No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth," he once said, "and no culture to that of the garden." ”

“ Plantings at Monticello in those days were no mean affair, and it will be observed that the master took some of his learning into the garden with him.
Sowing-time came for early peas and marrowfats in early March, and the end of the month generally found them well above ground. In the middle of the month (1774) Jefferson sowed and marked, "by sticking numbered sticks in the ground," Anglia de Terra, set down as garlic, radishes de Postoria, Cochleana, de Pisa, horseradish and peppergrass, and made ready for larger ventures. ”

“ The final vegetable garden on the southwest side of the hill, a terraced quadrangle, was not completed until the time of Jefferson's presidency.
That same March day a young orchard was set out. Twenty-four apple trees and nineteen cherry trees were put in from the mountain plan; almonds, both sweet and bitter, were planted, some with smooth and some with heavy rind; apricots, 198 cherries from Italy, and 15,000 olive slips. ”

“ T. Jefferson Coolidge and supposed to have been painted in the fall of 1825 or the spring preceding the death of Mr. Jefferson, shows two rectangular plots spread out directly in front of the house, with others at right angles extending at the extreme ends further out into the lawn. Shrubbery and flowers, shown growing broadcast on the lawn, and thick double lines of growing trees at either side of the house, seem to dispose of the idea of a formal garden near the mansion. A chart of Mr. Jefferson's while President bears out the idea of trees at the side of the house. ”

“ He made a trip of three weeks out of his way to get first-hand knowledge in regard to the raising and husking of rice for the benefit of the farmers of South Carolina and Georgia, and came out with a supply of seed, some of which he said he had induced Poggio, a muleteer who passed every week between Vercelli and Genoa, to smuggle out in a sack for him, "it being death," he explained, "to export it in that form." He introduced tulips from Holland into America, and is held responsible today by Albemarle farmers for the Scotch broom, or gorse, which has spread itself over their red-clay hills. ”

“ Your orange trees come on very well as to their looks, but I never saw such little short things in my life. They are now near eighteen months old, and they are not as high (any of them) as my hand is large."
"I am glad the sweet-scented grass got safe, although the pot did not," wrote the president to Ellen. "Dear Grandpapa," again she wrote: "I would have written last post if I had had time, but I am determined to do it, although I have not much to say—unless I talk about the plants. Those in the large box were killed to the roots, but they are coming up all over the box. ”

“ To Madison he wrote: "I promised your gardener some seed, which I put under separate cover."
When the question of the introduction of the study of botany was discussed for the University of Virginia, he was not caught napping. For more than twenty years, as an old man, he wrote his good old friend, Thonin, Superintendent of the Jardin des Plantes at Paris, had regularly sent him a box of seeds of such exotics as would suit the Virginia climate. ”

“ The residence of the real estate of Thomas Jefferson, dec'd., in the county of Albemarle, comprising the mansion house of Monticello and one thousand acres of first rate land, is offered for sale on accommodating terms, and little more is expected than a fair price for the land, not estimating the value of the improvements. ”

“ To Bacon, his overseer for twenty years, he wrote, "If the weather is not open and soft when Davy arrives, put the box of thorns into the cellar, where they may be entirely free from the influence of cold, until the weather becomes soft, when they must be planted in the places of those dead through the whole of the hedges which enclose the two orchards. ”

“ There was a wedding in the family at Monticello, just previous to Jefferson's retirement from the presidency, and he was called on to give his blessing to Anne, the bride, the grandchild of his heart. Later in distress, he wrote her: "What is to become of our flowers? ”

“ Randolph, from a house he had taken on the banks of the Schuylkill, during the time that the feeling in Philadelphia was strongest against the Jeffersonians and dissensions in Washington's cabinet were sharpest. ”

“ Maria was with him, passing the time under the trees. "My house is entirely embosomed in high plane trees," he wrote, "with good grass below, and under them I breakfast, dine, write and receive my company. What would I give that the trees planted at Monticello were full grown!"
There have been many conjectures as to the exact location of the pleasure garden at Monticello, in which Mr. Jefferson was accustomed to walk among his flowers in the early morning, or to what extent he cultivated a formal garden. Mrs. ”