Within a few days I shall bury myself in the groves of Monticello and become a mere spectator to passing events.
-- Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1809
In 1806, Jefferson drew a sketch of Monticello Mountain, labeling eighteen acres on the northwestern side as the "grove." He envisioned a ground where "the canvas at large must be Grove, of the largest trees trimmed very high, so as to give it the appearance of open ground." Jefferson intended the Grove to be an ornamental forest with the undergrowth removed, the trees pruned and thinned, and the woodland "broken by clumps of thicket, as the open grounds of the English are broken by clumps of trees." The effect would be an English garden carved out of the Virginia wilderness.
Read about our 2022-2023 Grove revitalization project »
The Grove at Monticello
Monticello's "Upper Grove," at the western end of the Winding Flower Walk, is accessible to anyone with a ticket.
In many ways, the Grove represented Jefferson's ideal American landscape, where "gardens may be made without expense. We have only to cut out the superabundant plants." He said that "under the constant, beaming, almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium." The mature, deciduous forest was to be further refined with new vistas, glades, hardy perennial flowers, and a ground cover of turf. He also sketched a plan for thickets of shrubs arranged in a spiral pattern to suggest an informal labyrinth. Furthermore, Jefferson hoped "to procure a Buck-elk, to be, as it were, monarch of the wood," and suggested stumps should be left "where they might be picturesque."
The Contemplative Site in Monticello's Grove
Located in the Monticello Grove along the route of a road once used by free and enslaved laborers.
Although it is uncertain how much of the Grove was actively maintained during Jefferson's lifetime, after Monticello was sold in 1831, its new owner, Dr. James Barkley, “cut down the grove, and ploughed up the yard to the very edge of the lawn and planted it in corn.”
The Grove was missing from the Mountaintop until a project to recreate it started in 1977. The existing forest was cleared and thinned; young trees, shrubs, and herbaceous flowers were planted; and vistas, glades, and thickets were created. In 2022, new native forest trees were planted below the West Lawn to replace trees that had been lost over the decades. While young, in time the trees will mature to recreate Jefferson’s shaded grove.