Beyond fathering a nation, founding a great university, and leaving a legacy as an architect and inventor, Thomas Jefferson was a forefather of modern organic and sustainable garden movements. In gardens on the grounds of his Monticello estate, he nurtured 170 varieties of fruits, 330 different herbs and vegetables, and an array of flowers, experimenting with seeds and plants discovered during his travels and sent to him from friends abroad.

As the director of gardens and grounds at Monticello for 35 years, Peter J. Hatch brought Jefferson’s horticultural work back to life with a painstaking restoration of the 1,000-foot-long vegetable garden. Hatch looks back at the careful work—Jefferson’s and his own—in a discussion of his award-winning book “A Rich Spot of Earth”: Thomas Jefferson's Revolutionary Garden at Monticello.