International best-selling author Andrea Wulf will be at Reflection Riding Arboretum and Nature Center on Monday, May 2, for a talk about her book “Founding Gardeners.”
Published to great acclaim in 2011, “Founding Gardeners” examines an overlooked ideology of the American Revolution: the botanical habits of America’s founding fathers. Her research suggests that gardening, agriculture and botany were elemental passions for the revolutionary generation, “as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating.”
She describes how, even as British ships gathered off Staten Island, George Washington wrote his estate manager about the garden at Mount Vernon; how a tour of English gardens renewed Thomas Jefferson’s and John Adams’ faith in their fledgling nation; how a trip to the great botanist John Bartram’s garden helped the delegates of the Constitutional Congress break their deadlock; and why James Madison is the forgotten father of American environmentalism.
Wulf was born in India, moved to Germany as a child and now lives in Britain, where she trained as a design historian at the Royal College of Art. She also is the author of “This Other Eden: Seven Great Gardens and Three Hundred Years of English History,” “The Brother Gardeners,” the story of how Britain became a nation of gardeners; “Chasing Venus: The Race To Measure the Heavens”; and “The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World.”
A reception and book signing will follow her program.
Advance reservations for the fundraiser are $35 for individuals, $60 for couples, with a 20 percent discount for Reflection Riding and Tennessee Aquarium members. Night-of seating will be $45 and $75 (discount also applies). Register at reflectionriding.org/founding-gardeners. Call 423-821-1160 for more information.