"Illuminating and engrossing. . . . The reader relives the first decades of the Republic not only through her eloquent and revelatory prose but through the words of the statesmen themselves."--
The New York Times Book Review "Anecdotes . . . shimmer through Andrea Wulf's fine story of how gardening and farming shaped the thinking of Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and James Madison. . . . Luxurious and sharp-witted." --
San Francisco Chronicle "[A] lively and deeply researched history. . . . Wulf ingeniously connects . . . highbrow political philosophy to the founders' personal passion for horticulture." --
The Washington Post Book World "A timely and passionate book, with resonances beyond today's legion of new gardeners. . . . Wulf traces the birth of the modern environmental movement back beyond Thoreau and Muir to the founding fathers' passion for nature and plants." --
The Guardian "Andrea Wulf shows in her eloquently written and very beguiling
Founding Gardeners that the garden, the natural world and the shape of a new nation were, for the men who launched the United States, parts of a whole. . . . She is a writer of considerable grace and breadth of vision, and
Founding Gardeners is an excellent portrait of the early years of the federal republic. It will delight the general reader." --
The Plain Dealer "A highly enjoyable and thought-provoking book. Wulf combines a sure knowledge of garden history and 18th-centry politics with a keen eye for domestic detail and evocative description. By focusing the grand narrative of early America on four individuals, she writes the best kind of popular history." --
The Irish Times "It is certain that Wulf has wonderfully illuminated an often overlooked and very important aspect of the founders' lives, providing new reasons to be inspired by them. . . . Delightful, enlightened reading."
--NashvilleScene.com
"Wonderfully engaging. . . . Breaks new ground." --
The Times Literary Supplement (London)
"Fresh and bountiful. . . . Wulf's delectable anecdotal approach . . . reveals each founder's personality and perpective, while her dynamic analysis results in a paradigm-altering vision of how 'the balance of nature' underlies our founding principles." --
Booklist (starred review)
"Wulf offers a delightful new perspective on the men we usually associate more with politics than with plants." --
Publishers Weekly