Horticultural
Collections
Monticello's
gardens and grounds were nourished generously by a society of
Virginian, American, African, and international gardeners and
botanists, who forwarded Jefferson countless seeds, bulbs, and
grafting wood.
As sites for tours and workshops, the gardens themselves are a significant part of the museum's collections. Specific landscape elements either recreated or existing since Jefferson's time include (among others):
- the roundabout flower walk and twenty oval flower beds
- the grove (eighteen acres of ornamental forest expressing, in many ways, Jefferson's vision of the ideal American garden)
- the vegetable garden terrace and the garden pavilion
- Jefferson's "Ha-Ha" (an 18th-century cattle-guard ditch)
- and the north orchard (a replanting of 125 specimen cider apple trees based on interpretive research)
- the vineyards
- the nursery
The Foundation's Department of Gardens and Grounds and its Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants research, collect, cultivate (in Monticello's gardens and surrounding nurseries), and distribute hundred of plants that have either a direct connection to Jefferson and Monticello or to the historic gardens of North America.
For more information on the Gardens, Grounds, and Plants of Monticello, see the Related Links at the upper right of this page.