Notes on the State of Virginia

"Jefferson does this really interesting thing. Monticello is a garden that celebrates the American landscape, which becomes incredibly important after the War of Independence when the Americans, who don’t have the poetry and castles of the Old World, are desperately trying to be able to demonstrate that things are better in the New World. And landscape becomes a way of doing that, because the towering trees and vastness of the continent are genuinely more spectacular. So what Jefferson does is put his garden on a mountain top which overlooks 60 miles of Virginia but he doesn’t just create a sublime garden but also incorporates, right at the garden’s centre, a vegetable garden that’s 1,000 feet long and has the best view in the whole garden. So he combines the beauty and the utilitarian, which I think really marks the difference between the English and American garden. The English is more manicured with pretty shrubbery and with the kitchen garden hidden away behind walls. And, because the garden’s on a mountain, the approach to it is important too. Imagine you’re coming to Monticello from Washington in the 18th century. For three or four days you’re riding through the Virginia forest, the roads are awful, you have to ford rivers, it’s really tough. Finally you arrive at Jefferson’s gate, expecting a straight driveway leading up to a mansion, but what does he do? He leads you up on winding roads, taking far longer than it should take, and when people complain he tells them that it’s the rule of the wilderness. He’s one of the very first Americans to do that, not to see the forest merely as a hindrance to settling: unlike the colonialists, who just get rid of the forest because they want to have their fields there. So for me Monticello is a celebration of the new America; this young, strong, bountiful nation that’s at ease with its own environment. In his writings, Jefferson himself is very explicit about the importance of the American landscape in terms of patriotism. So, for example, he says to the American painter John Trumble: come and paint this landscape before a bungling European does it. And, you know, when Jefferson goes on a garden tour of England, the first thing he realises is that they’re full of imported American trees."