We start from the ground up, by seeking, through this plan and an allied comprehensive land use planning effort beginning in May 2025, to elevate the impact of our landscapes, connecting the preservation and education strands of our mission.
“There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me,” Thomas Jefferson wrote to his daughter Martha in 1790. Monticello is tasked with reflecting and communicating that interest in all that grew and grows here.
Monticello conserves and stewards some three thousand acres, 2,200 of them originally held by Jefferson and his family. The historic mountaintop represents less than two percent of these holdings, yet it is currently the only part of the site on which we deeply engage visitors. We seek, over the period of this plan, more fully to connect the natural, built, and historical landscapes of the Jefferson era to our scholarly, educational, and visitor programs. In the process, we seek to become a catalyst for regional land conservation by practicing sustainable aesthetic, interpretive, ecological, and economic goals.
Monticello staff speak often about the power of place, which our guests experience daily. "Climb the Mountain” challenges us to extend that power to more of our places, including Jefferson’s birthplace at Shadwell plantation, the large quarter farm at Tufton, and the ancient roads and waterways essential to the plantation's function as an economic enterprise.
Jefferson’s meticulous recordkeeping, coupled with the tireless work of our archaeology, restoration, gardens and grounds, and buildings departments, offers the unique opportunity to interpret historic landscapes in ways that are both authentic and affecting. By increasing opportunities for visitors to discover how the land was used, and changed, during Jefferson’s time, we will responsibly expand access to this historic landscape, and with it, the range of stories we are able to share. Deeper interpretive ties to our landscape will allow us to tell densely local stories of love, labor, loss, and perseverance, as well as broad national stories of political economy, ecology, and sustainability.