[England’s] sun-less climate has permitted them to adopt what is certainly a beauty of the very first order in landscape. their canvas is of open ground, variegated with tufts clumps of trees tastily distributed with taste. they need no more of wood than will serve to embrace a lawn or a glade....

Altho’ the times are big with political events, yet I shall say nothing on that or any subject but the innocent ones of botany & friendship.

I remember you seeing in your greenhouse a plant of a couple of feet height in a pot the fragrance of which (from it’s gummy bud if I recollect rightly) was remarkable peculiarly agreeable to me, and you were so kind as to remark that it required only a green house, and that you would furnish me...

I am become more firmly fixt to the glebe. if you visit me as a farmer, it must be as a condisciple: for I am but a learner; an eager one indeed but yet desperate, being too old now to learn a new art. however I am as much delighted & occupied with it as if I was the greatest adept.

I shall go in a week to Monticello ... my situation there & taste, will lead me to ask for curious & hardy trees, than flowers. of the latter a few of those remarkeable either for beauty or fragrance will be the limits of my wishes.

to all this I add that it is deemed to read the Latin & Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture, painting, gardening or the other arts.

Heliotrope.to be sowed in the spring.a delicious flower, but I suspect it must be planted in boxes & kept in the house in the winter. the smell rewards the care.

I returned but three or four days ago from a two months trip to England ... the gardening in that country is the article in which it surpasses all the earth. I mean their pleasure gardening. this indeed went far beyond my ideas.

I hope you are getting well, towards which great care of yourself is necessary: for however adviseable it is for those in health to expose themselves freely, it is not so for the sick. you will be out in time to begin your garden, & that will tempt you to be out a great deal, than which...

Mr. Madison & myself are so far on the tour we had projected ... we were more pleased however with the botanical objects which continually presented themselves. those either unknown or rare in Virginia were the Sugar maple in vast abundance, the Thuya, silver fir, White pine, Pitch pine,...