Grove

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.  

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."