Thomas Jefferson’s Beloved Monticello

The gracious home designed and built by Founding Father and Renaissance Man Thomas Jefferson is just a hop and a skip over the Blue Ridge Mountains from us.  I always enjoy a visit to this lovely home and its magnificent grounds. Among the many interests of this brilliant man, Jefferson was also impassioned about gardening.

The ongoing efforts to preserve his legacy are a rich investment in this vital part of our heritage.  I’ve long been fascinated with colonial America, partly inspired by research into my ancestors.  This far gone time doesn’t seem so distant here in Virginia where much of that history took place and many of these amazingly gifted early Americans made their homes.

“Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.”~ Thomas Jefferson

“Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God.” ~ Thomas Jefferson

Monticello is owned and operated by The Thomas Jefferson Foundation.  To quote from their site, “Monticello is the autobiographical masterpiece of Thomas Jefferson—designed and redesigned and built and rebuilt for more than forty years—and its gardens were a botanic showpiece, a source of food, and an experimental laboratory of ornamental and useful plants from around the world.”~

For more on Monticello and the work of the foundation click here.