Every schoolboy knows the story of six-year-old George Washington taking his ‘little hatchet’ to his mother’s prized cherry tree.
Every schoolboy knows the story of six-year-old George Washington taking his ‘little hatchet’ to his mother’s prized cherry tree. Less well known is that in later years he more than made up for this childish piece of vandalism by planting thousands of trees on his estate at Mount Vernon. Gardening became such a passion that even while defending Manhattan against the British in July 1776 Washington found time to work on planting schemes.
It was a passion shared by several of America’s other founding fathers, including the three presidents who followed Washington in office: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In this fascinating and well-researched book Andrea Wulf shows that gardening was not simply a gentlemanly pursuit for these men, but was politically and philosophically bound up with their notions about creating a new country.
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