The Founding Gardeners : How the Revolutionary Generation Created an American Eden

'A history book for gardeners; a gardening book for historians'. A follow-up to the award-winning Andrea Wulf's critically acclaimed history of British gardening, this is the story of how George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison's passion for nature, plants, agriculture and gardens shaped the birth of America. In the aftermath of the Declaration of Independence and the revolutionary war, these four men turned to America's landscape and plants, and their own stunning grounds, to make the republic truly independent. The self-sufficient farmer became the footsoldier of the young nation and the embodiment of liberty; nature was a unifying force, giving the thirteen states a national identity that still resonates today, the embodiment of a nation that had freed itself from the shackles of tyranny. And their shared love of flowers, plants and botany brought them together when political rivalries threatened to splinter them. Through a series of vignettes spanning the Declaration of Independence to the death of Adams and Jefferson exactly 50 years to the day afterwards - stories that weave the political, the personal and the botanical and are in turns funny, fascinating and moving - "The Founding Gardeners" shows is that it is impossible to understand these visionary men and the American nation without considering their love of gardening.

Andrea Wulf trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art and is the co-author (with Emma Gieben-Gamal) of This Other Eden and The Brother Gardeners, which was longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Award. She has written for The Sunday Times, the Financial Times, The Garden, The Architects' Journal, and regularly reviews for several newspapers, including the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement.