Thursday, March 28, 2024
46.6 F
Kilmarnock

Best-selling author to explore the nation’s founding gardeners

New York Times best-selling author Andrea Wulf will present “Founding Gardeners: The Revolutionary Generation, Nature and the Shaping of the American Nation” at 2 p.m. April 23 at Historic Christ Church & Museum, 420 Christ Church Road, Weems.

Wulf’s lecture will conclude a four-part series that explores “Virginia’s Gardens: Past and Present.”

According to publicity chairman Marilyn Hedges, Wulf will investigate the lives of the founding fathers and how their attitudes to plants, gardens, nature and agriculture shaped the American nation.

George  Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison regarded themselves foremost as farmers and plantsmen and for them gardening, agriculture and botany were elemental passions, as deeply ingrained in their characters as their belief in liberty for the nation they were creating. In a retelling of the creation of America, the award-winning historian Wulf will show how plants, politics and personalities intertwined.

Wulf is the author of five acclaimed books, said Hedges. The Brother Gardeners won the American Horticultural Society 2010 Book Award and her books  Founding Gardeners and The Invention of Nature were on the New York Times Best Seller List. She has written for many newspapers.

In 2014 she co-presented a four-part BBC TV garden series and she appears regularly on radio.

The Invention of Nature won the Royal Society Science Book Prize 2016, the  Costa Biography Award 2015 and the Royal Geographical Ness Award 2016 in the United Kingdom, as well as the inaugural James Wright Award for Nature Writing 2016 (Nature Conservancy) and Los Angeles Times Book Prize 2016 in the U.S.

It was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize 2015 and was shortlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non–Fiction 2016. It has recently been longlisted for the Cundill Prize for Historical Literature 2016 and was chosen as one of the 10 Best Books of 2015 in the New York Times.

Wulf has lectured widely to large audiences at the Royal Geographical Society and Royal Society in London, the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia, Monticello and the New York Public Library, said Hedges.

In addition to an illustrated slideshow, the event will include a book signing and wine and cheese reception with Wulf. Tickets are $35 and may be purchased at https://christchurch1735.ticketleap.com/2017-sunday-lecture-series/ or at the Historic Christ Church & Museum office.

Proceeds benefit preservation and education programs at Christ Church (1735), a National Historic Landmark.

Rappahannock Record Staff
Rappahannock Record Staffhttp://www.rrecord.com
From the Rappahannock Record news team

Follow us on Social Media

Your Local Weather

Kilmarnock
heavy intensity rain
46.6 ° F
47.8 °
45.7 °
97 %
1mph
100 %
Thu
47 °
Fri
57 °
Sat
62 °
Sun
68 °
Mon
58 °