Visiting Ash Lawn Highland
Mr Chiots and I took the opportunity to visit Ash Lawn Highland when were in Charlottesville, Va. It’s right down the road from Monticello, so we spent the morning at Monticello, went in to Charlottesville for lunch and headed out to Ash Lawn Highland in the afternoon. Ash Lawn Highland is the home of James Monroe, the 5th president of the U.S. It’s much more understated than Monticello and almost seems more real. Perhaps it’s because it is less commercialized and not as busy. During our visit, there were only 10 of us touring the home and gardens. Since the tours are smaller, more involved and much more informative. You feel less like you are in a cattle drive and more like you’re a guest.
One of the things I really loved about Ash Lawn Highland was, of course, the vegetable garden. It’s much much smaller than the one at Monticello, and therefore much more real. It’s quite beautiful, definitely something that would be attainable to the average home gardener. The gardens are much more in the cottage garden style, which is what I love. The white picket fences and flower borders around the vegetable garden were stunningly simple.
Right outside the kitchen, there was a small herb garden, a fairly traditional thing. It was filled with all kinds of herbs from sage to basil and I even spotted some ‘Egyptian Walking’ Onions, which may have been given to them by Thomas Jefferson (I’ve read he grew them at Monticello). They also have some fig trees by the house, which most likely came from Thomas Jefferson as well.
There was a barn and even a few cows, chickens and peacocks on the property. It certainly helped make the gardens seem more like they would have been back when Monroe was in residence.
The house itself was very traditional and rather small, only 3 small rooms originally; a parlor, a dining room, and a bedroom. It did have another 2 rooms added later on. A front few rooms were added in the years after they sold the property. It couldn’t be more different than Monticello, in look, size, and layout.
The slave cottages were located around a courtyard behind the house. They mentioned on the tour that even Thomas Jefferson talked about how better slave quarters couldn’t be found than the ones at Ash Lawn Highland, and I think he’s right, they were very beautiful. So nice, in fact that the Monroe’s converted a few of them to guest quarters since the main house was so small.
This style of buildings is what I really love; wooden siding painted a crisp white, stone chimneys, brick walkways, white picket fences, bountiful flower gardens and big trees. I dream of someday having a little cottage house like this on a few acres with a nice kitchen garden surrounded with a white picket fence, and of course a few chickens and maybe even a goat running around the yard. This is my dream house and gardens, which is probably why I liked it so much.
If you even find yourself at Monticello, I’d highly recommend taking an extra hour or so to make the trip over to Ash Lawn Highland, I do not think you’ll regret it.
What style/color of house do you like the most?
Share this:
Quote of the Day: M.F.K. Fisher
“The smell of good bread baking,
like the sound of lightly flowing water,
is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight”
— M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating
We’ve certainly been enjoying a lot of freshly baked ciabatta bread, made with freshly ground flour. I think this is my favorite kind of bread, great any way you want to eat it crusty on the outside, chewy on the inside – MMMMMM.
What’s your favorite kind of bread?
Share this:
Bringing Monticello Home
I’ve been wanting to get a terracotta cloche for quite a while now. I don’t know why I like them so much, I think they’re quite beautiful in the garden and useful for blanching and protecting plants. They’re not readily available here in the U.S. so they’re difficult to find. While searching on-line I saw that they were available for purchase at Monticello and I had every intention of buying one.
I’d saved up some money, but when I was standing in the gift shop looking at the $125 price tag I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I’m a very frugal person, so spending that much money on one item to sit in the garden seemed ridiculous, no matter how much I love them. Especially given the fact that our gardens are surrounded by huge trees that frequently drop branches. My luck I’d take it home, put it in the garden and we’d get a summer storm that would knock a big branch out of a tree right on top of it.
Instead of buying a cloche, I settled on purchasing a few plants. They’re a much better purchase anyways, I’ll be able to propagate them for gifts or for additional plants. It’s also a great way to have a little piece of Monticello at home. Most of the plants I bought will be houseplants during the winter and outdoor potted plants during the summer. What varieties of plants did I purchase?
A dwarf weeping lantana, a buttery yellow one just like the one seen in this flower bed. It is not a hardy plant, so I’ll be overwintering it in the house. I’ve overwintered regular lantana in the house successfully so this shouldn’t be a problem.
I also purchased a fig tree of the variety ‘Brunswick’ which is only hardy to a zone 6b. I may be able to wrap it and successfully overwinter it outside, but I think I’ll put it in the basement this winter. I’ll take starts next spring and then try overwintering it outside when I have more than one plant. I have a ‘Hardy Chicago’ fig that I successfully overwintered in the basement this past year. It’s quite large now after only one summer of good growth, perhaps next year I’ll get a few figs from it.
I also purchased two small variegated lemon trees (one for my mom) and a key lime tree, which will become a houseplants in the winter and spend their summers outside on the back porch. I’ve been wanting to get a nice potted citrus for a while and they were well priced at Monticello. Let’s hope they survive and I’ll be harvesting fresh citrus in a few years!
We bought these plants only a few days into our trip, so we had to spend a few days traveling with plants. I kept telling Mr Chiots people probably wondered what we were doing. If anyone asked, I was going to say that we always traveled with plants to help clean the air of the hotel room. The funny thing is we actually met a guy at our hotel that was traveling with a HUGE potted dumb cane plant. We mentioned to him that we thought we were the only ones with plants in our room and both got a good laugh.
I love buying or getting starts of plants as souvenirs, so much better to have a plant in the garden than something to dust inside!
Do you ever buy or get starts of plants when you travel?
Here’s a slideshow of the Vegetable Gardens from my visit,
and a slideshow of the House and Ornamental Gardens from my visit.
Share this:
The Vegetable Gardens at Monticello
As promised, I made a slide show for you of my favorite photos of the Monticello vegetable gardens. It sure was hard to pick and choose the ones to add, I have a ton of photos of the gardens. I finally narrowed it down to 36 of my favorites. Click through the photos below with the arrow buttons on the side of the player, if you click on the small icon in the top left hand corner you can view the slide show in full screen (click the button again to exit full screen mode when you’re finished). It takes a while to load since I uploaded larger files, so be patient, it will be worth the wait!
[flashgallery folder=”a_trip_to_Monticello”]
This vegetable garden surely is inspirational. I’d love to have one this big, of course when I can retire and have nothing else to do but garden. Until then, I’ll keep these photos to inspire my future gardening efforts.
What did you like most about the vegetable gardens at Monticello?
Here’s a slideshow of the House and Ornamental Gardens from my visit.
Share this:
Visiting Monticello
Last Monday (August 2) Mr Chiots and I finally found our way to Monticello after wanting to go for years. We were wondering how we’d like it, after going to Longwood Gardens several times, most other gardens pale in comparison. The main part of Monticello I’ve really been wanting to see is the vegetable garden. It’s quite impressive in photos and I must say, it’s equally impressive in person, I was not disappointed. This was one of two asparagus patches, now that’s about the size I need since we love asparagus so much (that’s yours truly in the photo).
We woke up to the perfect day, overcast with temperatures in the low 70’s. Considering the temperatures before and after our trip were in the 90’s we were so lucky. We arrived early, about 15 minutes before it opened (which was at 9am), which turned out to be quite an advantage. We were able to get our tickets right away and head up the path through the woods.
We arrived in the vegetable garden right around 9 am. I’d highly recommend arriving 15-20 minutes before opening and making a beeline for the vegetable garden if that’s what you’re interested in. We had the garden all to ourselves for about 45 minutes. It seems everyone else that arrived when we did toured the house first, then they went to the gardens.
It was very nice to be able to get some great photos of the garden with only one of the gardeners around, he was picking all of the eggplants and peppers that morning. I’ve read the vegetables harvested are distributed to the Monticello employees.
One of the things that I found fascinating about the gardens was the use of natural materials. All trellises and plant supports were built from saplings and twigs. Since they didn’t have Gardner’s Supply back then selling all shapes and sizes of supports, they used with what they had. I have to admit, it makes for a much more beautiful garden. The natural materials blend beautifully into the garden.
This is something I try to do here at Chiot’s Run, I’ve blogged about using twigs for my peas just like they do in the gardens at Monticello. I have plenty of saplings and twigs around since our gardens are surrounded by woods so it’s a very frugal plant support option.
The plants were tagged with large tags, which were easy to read and written in a lovely script. I don’t know if this is how Jefferson tagged them, or if this was done for the benefit of the visitors. They were quite lovely. Something I definitely want to find a way to make and use in my garden. Looks like a project for Mr Chiots to do someday. Here’s a slideshow of the Monticello vegetable gardens if you’d like to see more.
We didn’t just look around the gardens, we also toured the house, and the Behind the Scenes tour, which takes you up into the rotunda and through the second and third floors in the house. You have to have a tour time to go through the main house, and it seemed kind of rushed. It was interesting, but not nearly as interesting to me as the gardens.
The behind the scenes tour was much more laid back and the group was smaller. Our tour guide was very good, and you are also allowed to take photos, which you aren’t on the main house tour. They also have garden tours and plantation tours that are free and you don’t have to get a tour time reservation. We didn’t go on either of these since we were tired and hungry and I’ve read a lot about the gardens and the plantations so I knew all about them.
Tomorrow I’ll post a slideshow of the gardens at Monticello for you to enjoy, I didn’t want this post to get too long! Truly I could blog about this for a week.
I can finally check this garden off my list and work my way down through the other gardens I want to see, like Mt Vernon, Williamsburg, Longwood in summer, and many more.
Any great gardens you’d like to recommend to add to my list?
Here’s a slideshow of the Vegetable Gardens from my visit,
and a slideshow of the House and Ornamental Gardens from my visit.
