America's Destiny: Gardening and Liberty

           After reading Andrea Wulf’s assessment of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, and their work in Europe after the War for Independence, we see that much like Washington, their love for their new nation was tied in many ways to their passion for gardening. As we discussed last week, that seems strange to a 21^st century audience, but Ms. Wulf demonstrates that gardening and the love of the outdoors was at the forefront of these two great minds.

            It struck me after this week’s reading how little we know of our Founders and what they thought. John Adams was a simple man, but passionate in his love for the new United States. I found it interesting that not only did he despise “the old enemy” because of his political views and what he perceived as injustice, once he visited England, his dislike grew to encompass even the physical place of London. Ms. Wulf addresses this when she writes of his dislike of cities and their “putrid Streets.” With Adams’ dislike of cities, of court, and of all the things that he found himself involved in for the “zeal of [his] heart, for [his] country,” it seems that there would never have been a possibility for reconciliation with England. Adams is a farmer, a very simple one at that, and his attitude toward Great Britain is perhaps a typical response by the simple American farmer. But it is not a sentiment shared only by simple farmers, as Ms. Wulf demonstrates by her discourse on Jefferson.

            While Adams was simple, Thomas Jefferson was not. While he enjoyed the land, it was less a thing of pure utility, or a way to relax, but more an interest in beauty as demonstrated by his apparent mishap in designing his home on a hill, hardly the best place for his horticultural and agricultural goals. Ms. Wulf demonstrates in passage after passage Jefferson’s love of beauty, and his idealization of liberty. His interest in the gardens of England were not only motivated by his love of their physical beauty, but also of their meaning, particularly in his fascination with the gardens of the Whigs, a political party who had taken to using their gardens as a sort of protest against absolute monarchic rule. This resonated with Jefferson, and he would take the ideas back home with him.

            Perhaps the most interesting thing to me in this week’s reading was when Ms. Wulf writes about the realization that many of the English gardens that Adams and Jefferson had come to admire were filled with American plants. While they were struggling to find political solutions to problems between the United States and Great Britain, it was almost as if American ideas, very subtle, had begun to creep into the Old World.

            This chapter was enlightening. I have never truly considered many of the things this book suggests. The idea that has stuck with me the most is this idea that the Revolution and independence were destined to happen. Toward the end of the chapter, an observation is made about the lack of attention the English had to their gardens, and perhaps that was more insightful than it initially appeared. It seems almost metaphorical for British colonialism. Perhaps the British, especially the politicians in London, and the king, were so far out of touch with their colonies, that the American colonies, and eventually all British colonies, were destined for independence. Perhaps the love that Adams and Jefferson had for nature, for the outdoors, was symbolic of the love they had for liberty, for freedom. The industrial nation that was Great Britain was maybe just too much at odds with that.