Thomas Jefferson's Poplar Forest

JEFFERSON: PIONEER IN AMERICAN LANDSCAPE DESIGN
Poplar Forest Newsletter, Spring 2004

Jefferson was America’s first native-born architect, but he was equally significant as an American pioneer in the design of landscapes in the era before landscape architecture was recognized as a profession. The emerging understanding of Jefferson’s design for the grounds at Poplar Forest reveals his sophisticated manipulation of landform, perspective, materials and historical memory to create a unique setting for retreat. The landscape Jefferson created blended ideas from antiquity and contemporary Europe, modified by American climate, soils and plants. According to historian Gary Wills, “the whole site is Jefferson’s last dramatic marriage of classical art with the American wilderness.”

Adapted from an original watercolor by Diane Johnson

The current theory of Jefferson's landscape design is illustrated above.

Within a 61-acre curtilage laid out in 1813, Jefferson oversaw the creation of pleasure grounds in which the process was as satisfying to him as the results. He directed the formation of earthen mounds and lawns planted with groves, thickets and larger groupings of “trees of use and ornament,” borders and oval beds of shrubs, flowers and kitchen gardens. The purely ornamental elements of the landscape clustered closest to the house within an encircling road. Beyond the road, flowerbeds and tree clumps gave way to kitchen gardens and orchards.

Jefferson combined his love of design with his love of gardening. He said he enjoyed “such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, and instead of one harvest a continued one through the year.” Describing the allure of gardening for Jefferson, Barbara Heath, director of archaeology and landscapes, says, “Gardening, which he regarded as a fine art alongside sculpture and music, appealed to his intellect, his scientific curiosity, his desire to benefit others by the introduction of valuable new species, and, ultimately, his optimism. Gardening,” she continues, “engaged his creativity and challenged his skills.”

Jefferson thought the planting of flowers more suited to the elderly than the planting of trees. “The labours of the year, in that line, are repaid within the year, and death, which will be at my door, shall find me unembarrassed in long lived undertakings,” Jefferson wrote in an 1803 letter. Yet his optimism was so great when creating his villa retreat, that at Poplar Forest he continued his youthful focus on tree planting. While flowers figured prominently in Jefferson’s retirement gardening at Monticello, they were not mentioned in his planting directions for Poplar Forest until 1816. For the most part, he followed his creed: “But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.”

Today, through painstaking restoration the architectural half of Jefferson’s design has been taking shape again as Jefferson designed and knew it. The other half of the equation— his masterful manipulation of the natural features of his retreat environment – is not yet apparent to the eye, but our understanding of it is beginning to emerge through research.

Throughout Jefferson’s retirement, the gardens and grounds of Poplar Forest were a work in progress. Slaves excavated a 200-foot long sunken lawn behind the house, using the backfill to create two mounds flanking the house. In 1813, Jefferson directed his slaves to prepare for constructing the wing of service rooms by removing soil. Shortly afterward, Jefferson redesigned the shape of the sunken lawn. Originally rectangular, the lawn was enlarged by cutting the east bank at an angle to the house, a change that mirrored the new asymmetry of the house. Heath theorizes that Jefferson also intended to angle the west bank to introduce forced perspective into the landscape.

The wing construction and lawn alteration generated several thousand cubic feet of soil. Recent excavations suggest that some of the displaced soil may have been deposited southeast of the house to form a terrace. Why this terrace was created remains a mystery that the archaeology team hopes to solve through continued excavations in that area. Evidence of Jefferson-era building rubble and artifacts emerging from under the terrace fill suggests that earlier structures were removed and covered over as this area was incorporated into the ornamental grounds.

Today, Jefferson’s pleasure grounds at Poplar Forest are essentially barren of his plantings and are missing structuring elements like roads and fences that defined his use of space. The image above blends what we know so far with what we now can only theorize. As we learn more from archaeology we can use computers to evolve that image – bringing our view of Jefferson’s design into sharper focus. Continuing archaeology is critical to understanding this integral part of Jefferson’s design – and to bringing it back to life through restoration.