Heliotrope.to be sowed in the spring.a delicious flower, but I suspect it must be planted in boxes & kept in the house in the winter. the smell rewards the care.
I returned but three or four days ago from a two months trip to England ... the gardening in that country is the article in which it surpasses all the earth. I mean their pleasure gardening. this indeed went far beyond my ideas.
Gardens. peculiarly worth the attention of an American, because it is the country of all others where the noblest gardens may be made without expence. we have only to cut out the superabundant plants.
I hope you are getting well, towards which great care of yourself is necessary: for however adviseable it is for those in health to expose themselves freely, it is not so for the sick. you will be out in time to begin your garden, & that will tempt you to be out a great deal, than which...
Mr. Madison & myself are so far on the tour we had projected ... we were more pleased however with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the Sugar maple in vast abundance, the Thuya, silver fir, White pine, Pitch pine,...
I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.
to all this I add that it is deemed to read the Latin & Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture, painting, gardening or the other arts.
I remember you seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet height in a pot the fragrance of which (from it’s gummy bud if I recollect rightly) was remarkable peculiarly agreeable to me, and you were so kind as to remark that it required only a green house, and that you would furnish me...
I shall go in a week to Monticello ... my situation there & taste, will lead me to ask for curious & hardy trees, than flowers. of the latter a few of those remarkeable either for beauty or fragrance will be the limits of my wishes.
[England’s] sun-less climate has permitted them to adopt what is certainly a beauty of the very first order in landscape. their canvas is of open ground, variegated with tufts clumps of trees tastily distributed with taste. they need no more of wood than will serve to embrace a lawn or a glade....
I am constantly in my garden or farm, as exclusively employed
out of doors as I was within doors when at Washington, and I find myself infinitely happier in my new mode of life.
I am become sensible of a great advantage your profession has over most others, that, to the close of your life, you can be always doing good to mankind: whereas a retired politician is like a broken down courser, unfit for the turf, and good for little else. I am endeavoring to recover the...
I have recieved safely the extraordinary rattle of the rattle snake, as also the leav foliage of the Alleghaney Martagon. a plant of so much beauty & fragrance will be a valuable addition to our flower gardens.