America's New Garden

America's New Garden

"Our seventeen states compose a great and growing nation," Jefferson wrote with pride, "their children are as the leaves of the trees, which the winds are spreading over the forest."

     The two term President Thomas Jefferson was an avid gardner and Enlightenment enthusiast who pounced on his chance to discover the west and the magnificent items that would come along with the on going discovery. Following his purchase of Louisiana territory that covered a whole of of today's midwest. Jefferson would be forever enticed with the opportunity to explore the new territory that extended to the pacific. Andrea Wulf does takes the readers through the initial struggles of conjuring up a plan to explore the west and the sources to supply and make it happen. She explains the two opposing sides of the political spectrum with the republicans in support of Jeffersons efforts at an expedition in the name of science but according to Wulf would also be the beginning of a distinctly American glorification of the wilderness. The Federalists were on the other end of the spectrum as they made statements that bashed the expedition and in a way down play the Jefferson and Republicans to a level of overly excited kids.

     Jefferson would end up getting his expedition and hired Meriwether Lewis to carry out a very detailed mission that Jefferson had in mind. Wulf makes the connection of the exebition goals between Jefferson and his background obvious to the reader when she states, "These instructions had been shaped by Jefferson's own experiences: a lifelong study of natural history books and botanical inquiry, surveying, compiling records of Native American vocabulary, and his meticulous meteorological diary" (Wulf, 156). Wulf believes that  Lewis was able to pick up on one particular goal of Jeffersons dealing with his  passion for botanical inquiry and gardening in general and would therefore seem to make sopecial attempts to go above and beyond in his discoveries in these areas.

     Wulf goes on to explain Lewis and Clark's exhibition detailing there reactions to America's landscape and the animals, plants, etc. collected and sent back to Jefferson. According to Wulf, "The horticultural world was electrified. The plants that lewis and Clark discovered would line fields as hedges, add fruits to the American orchards and bring new shapes and color to flowerbeds" (Wulf, 169). This chapter seems to highlight the importance of Jeffersons passion for gardens and how that correlated into his efforts to expand west. Jefferson used these newly discovered plants in his own garden as America seemed to have just started unraveling it's own garden in the great wilderness to the west, that would define America's patriotism.