In this episode of Grandma's Silver, Allie Kochinsky sits down with Peggy Cornett, longtime Curator of Plants at Monticello, former director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for Historic Plants, and author of Thomas Jefferson's Flowers, to explore gardens as living records of history.
Together, they discuss how historic landscapes preserve stories of daily life, seasonal rhythms, beauty, labor, and cultural exchange. Drawing on more than four decades of preserving Thomas Jefferson's botanical legacy, Peggy shares what the flowers cultivated at Monticello reveal about Jefferson's botanical interests, his international network of plant exchanges, and the many people, including enslaved gardeners and laborers, whose knowledge and work shaped the landscape.
The detective work behind restoring historic gardens is also explored, along with how historians reconstruct landscapes from letters, archaeological evidence, and plant records, and why heirloom plants can serve as a form of living inheritance.
In this episode, they discuss:
The inspiration behind Thomas Jefferson's Flowers
How gardens function as living historical documents
Jefferson's passion for flowers and botanical exchange
The people whose labor sustained Monticello's gardens
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