Heirlooms for the garden. (Design Notes).(Brief Article)

Avid gardeners have always craved new specimens to ornament their gardens and provide new dishes for their table. Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century letters between friends who shared a common interest in gardening are peppered with fulsome thanks for specimens received, reports on their progress once in the ground, requests for information, advice, or yet more seeds of sought-after plants. One of the most passionate of these correspondents was Thomas Jefferson, who spent much time writing about his vegetable gardens, orchards, vineyards, and the ornamental plants, trees, and shrubs that decorated the landscape of his beloved estate Monticello in Charlottesville, Virginia. His letters covered an enormous variety of horticultural subjects and went to correspondents in Europe, England, and throughout the United States. Before they embarked on their famous journey to the West, Jefferson urged the explorers Lewis and Clark to gather as many unrecorded species of plants on their expedition as they could.

The Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants at Monticello publishes a catalogue of its plant offerings twice a year. This publication, entitled Twinleaf, derives its name from the plant Jeffersonia diphylla, which was named after him in May 1792 at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society. There Benjamin Smith Barton honored Jefferson's knowledge of natural history, stating "the information of this gentleman is equalled by that of few persons in the United-States."

Twinleaf is actually much more than a catalogue. Each issue contains at least two articles that provide fascinating insights into Jefferson's understanding of botany and horticulture. The current issue has a piece about the transatlantic friendship of Jefferson and Adrienne Catherine, comtesse de Noailles de Tesse, in the early 1800s. In 1811 he acknowledged the receipt of seeds she had sent in 1809 of the native Chinese ...