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

(Paperback)

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Description

The New York Times bestseller - a unique portrait of the founding fathers, exploring how their passion for gardens and nature influenced the birth of the American nation. A follow-up to Andrea Wulf's award-winning and 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. Through a series of vignettes spanning the Declaration of Independence to the death of Adams and Jefferson exactly fifty years to the day afterwards, these stories that weave the political, the personal and the botanical and are in turns funny, fascinating and moving. The Founding Gardeners shows that it is impossible to understand these visionary men and the American nation without considering their love of gardening.

Reviews

EXCELLENT... Wulf writes enthrallingly. Wonderfully illuminating and readable * Daily Telegraph *
ENGROSSING... excellent ... fascinating... a timely and passionate book * Guardian *
SUPERB...this book will fascinate anyone interested in gardening, agriculture or American history. * Mail on Sunday *
WONDERFULLY ENGAGING... Her knack for description is marvelous * Times Literary Supplement *
A GREAT ACHIEVEMENT... Excellent [and] riveting * Country Life *

Author Bio

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 and reviewed for The Sunday Times, the Financial Times, The Garden, The Architects' Journal and the TLS.