By author Peter Hatch, former director of gardens and grounds for the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello, 1977-2012.
Thomas Jefferson was a devoted gardener. “The greatest service which can be rendered any country,” he said “is to add a useful plant to its culture.” Jefferson’s life-long home, Monticello, became a laboratory in which he experimented with more than 350 varieties of vegetables and 170 varieties of fruit. The 1,000-foot-long vegetable garden he developed included a rich sampling of then-unusual warm season crops like tomatoes, okra, eggplants, peanuts and peppers. Jefferson used gardening ideas and traditions from France, England, Spain, West Africa, the Mediterranean, and Creole culture to inspire a revolutionary vegetable cuisine in his Monticello kitchen. And he documented his gardening endeavors in a nearly 60-year garden diary.
Peter Hatch worked painstakingly to research those documents and restore this amazing garden. Today we enjoy a Monticello vegetable garden that grows the same plants cultivated by Jefferson. Learn more about the most accurate American garden restoration ever undertaken and tangible evidence of Jefferson’s genius and impact that continues to the present day. Hear from Peter about the process of re-creating this garden and the lessons we can all take away from Thomas Jefferson’s revolutionary garden at Monticello.
A graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill in English literature and Sandhills Community College’s Landscape Gardening program, Peter served as the Director of Gardens and Grounds at Monticello for 35 years. His most recent book, ‘A Rich Spot of Earth’: Thomas Jefferson’s Revolutionary Garden at Monticello (Yale University Press) covers the Monticello vegetable garden of Jefferson’s retirement years.
Peter also wrote The Gardens of Monticello, served as editor of Thomas Jefferson's Flower Garden at Monticello (University Press of Virginia), and has written numerous articles, and lectured in 35 states on Jefferson and the history of garden plants. His scholarly study of early American pomology, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of Monticello, Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Horticulture, was published by the University Press of Virginia in 1999.
Peter served as the President of the Southern Garden History Society from 1998-2000. In 2004 he received the Thomas Roland Medal from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, “for exceptional skill in horticulture.” In 2010 he was named an Honorary Member of The Garden Club of Virginia, and he has served as an informal consultant and source of plants for Michelle Obama’s White House Kitchen Garden. In 2011 he received The Garden Club of America’s Medal in Historic Preservation; he was the first horticulturist to receive the award. Presently, Mr. Hatch gardens and works as an independent scholar at his new home on Lickinghole Creek in Albemarle County, Virginia.
Peter will be available to sign copies of his book after the lecture.
Thursday, April 18, 7-9pm
Location: Doris Duke Center
Participant limit: 100
Fee: $23; Gardens members $18
Call 919-668-1707 to register.