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The Founding Gardeners
How the Revolutionary Generation created the American Eden
- Author: Andrea Wulf
- Category: Non-fiction Current Affairs / Politics
- Publisher: Heinemann (UK) / Knopf (US)
- Pub date: February 2011
- Length: 100,000 words
About The Founding Gardeners
Wulf writes beautifully. Examples of her gift for providing the crucial detail bloom thick in these pages.
- Miranda Seymour, TELEGRAPH
THE FOUNDING GARDENERS tells the story of the Founding Fathers, and of their establishment of a nation, from the unique perspective of their love of gardening, botany and agriculture. Amidst all the turmoil of the Founding Fathers’ lives, this adoration of gardening was a constant that would profoundly influence the making of the nation. At once, it casts new light upon the Founding Fathers as tillers of the earth and as connoisseurs of plants, while at the same time showing how the founding of the American nation was directly influenced by the Founding Fathers’ appreciation of nature, plants, and the environment. Here Andrea Wulf reveals an often overlooked aspect of the revolutionary generation. Whereas many histories of this period concentrate on the Founding Fathers’ public personas and achievements – John Adams’ fierce speeches in Congress; James Madison’s contribution to the drafting of the Constitution; Benjamin Franklin’s diplomatic negotiations with the French – THE FOUNDING GARDENERS uncovers a more private and contemplative side of the Founding Fathers as they wandered amongst their flowerbeds, for example, or broke their own trade embargoes in order to receive new plant shipments.
Based on the Founding Fathers’ letters, notes and diaries, and told with a lightness of touch, THE FOUNDING GARDENERS lies on the historical side of the garden fence.
About the Author
Andrea Wulf was born in India and moved to Germany as a child. She lives in Britain where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art and is now a full-time writer. She is the co-author (with Emma Gieben-Gamal) of THIS OTHER EDEN: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History (Little Brown 2005). In 2008, her book THE BROTHER GARDENERS: Botany, Empire and the Birth of an Obsession (William Heinemann) was published and longlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize 2008. She is currently working on her new book about the American founding fathers which will be published by Knopf in 2011.
She has written for the Wall Street Journal, Sunday Times, Financial Times, The Garden, Kew Magazine, and regularly reviews for several newspapers, including the Guardian, Mail on Sunday and the Times Literary Supplement. She lectures widely to large audiences including the Royal Geographical Society, Royal Society and Chelsea Physic Garden in Britain as well as the Academy of Natural Sciences, the International Center for Jefferson Studies (Monticello) and the U.S. Botanic Garden in the United States. She has also talked at major prestigious literary festivals including the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Hay Literary Festival and Cheltenham Literary Festival. She is a regular contributor to BBC radio and television.