“I believe it’s impossible to understand the making of America without looking at the founding fathers as farmers and gardeners.”

Interview with the author by Amy
Garden Rant
April 9, 2011

Excerpt:

It was in Bartram’s letters that I first realized a remarkable connection to the founding fathers, for he was a good friend of Benjamin Franklin. As I read on through letters, diaries and other manuscripts, I came across a visit of the delegates of the Constitutional Convention in 1787 to Bartram’s garden and an invoice to George Washington, who had ordered hundreds of trees and shrubs for his garden at Mount Vernon, as well as accounts that James Madison and Thomas Jefferson had visited. As I read on, I realized that America s first four presidents – Washington, Adams, Jefferson and Madison – had used nature, though in different ways, in their fight for America.

AMY: It’s amazing to think that they had time for gardening or even farming. I mean, there was a revolution going on!

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