Monticello Gardens & Life On Mulberry Row

I took a lot of pictures so with some of them I decided to put into collages.  I'm sure the Monticello Gardens are even more beautiful in the summer, but here is a look at them in the fall. I think that you could almost call them the backbone flowers as they survived the heat of the summer and are still blooming!

In this collage you will also see Jefferson's greenhouse that was right next to his library.  He test grew seeds from all over the world.

The pink spiked celosia in the bottom right hand corner are the ones I bought.

The photo on the left hand corner is what I believed called red cypress vine.  I already have those thanks to a neighbor who brought back seeds from Florida.  The hummingbirds love them!  Each flower has 4-5 seeds in the pod so I will have quite a few of those seeds!  The Josephs coat is the bottom right hand photo, and I loved those so I bought some of those too.

Here is hubby sitting where a huge gigantic tree used to be

You can tell it must have been a monster of a tree!

Now this was interesting. The sign told us how back in those days they used to go fishing and would bring back quite a few fish.  Now if any of you like to fish like I do, you know that there are good fishing days, and bad ones!  So when they did catch the fish they would bring them back and put them into this pond until they were ready to be on the menu!

I have this vine although mine did not do quite as well.  I bought it at the farmers market earlier this year. I should say that I only bought one so mine does not look as thick as the ones shown.  I believe they call it a Hyacinth bean vine, but I'm not sure.

 

Look at the view! 

 

Now I think this is what is called an Italian squash which I had so many of last year!

 

Using what nature provides

 

Love the pole idea for the tomatoes

Some red okra, yum, love okra!

The vineyards along with fruit trees lower down

Not sure what the pots were used for

Corkscrew something! Can't remember the name

Tons of lavender

One of the gift shop areas alongside the garden

What a view!

This little gazebo was built to look upon the beautiful view and gardens

As you can see there are rows and rows of veggies

If you click on this photo you can read about Life on Mulberry Row.  Jefferson was not fond of slavery, but he did have slaves.  He inherited them when he received the land.  Of course Jefferson also hired people to teach his slaves various trades.  Jefferson was very good to all of his people, and later on gave a lot of them their freedom.

This man was skilled in making nails

This man made baskets

They had just cut down a young sapling that morning.  When we spoke with him (he was so informative of everything too) he had peeled the bark off, sliced it into layers, and the next time we came around he had already made a couple of baskets!!

Another good view of how far the gardens go

This man made the buckets

This man said he would have been the special tradesman back in those days.  He would teach a special few how to make casings for windows, and all the other different decorative work that was done at the plantation.

Just a few of the seeds that I purchased along with a postcard

Oh, how I would have loved to have seen the leaves with these colors!

One thing that was pointed out to us is that  the vegetables and fruits grown at Monticello are shared with the workers of Monticello.  I thought that was pretty nice.
All in all this was a very interesting trip with a lot of history.  I hope that you enjoyed it!