About us

The Jefferson Demonstration Garden, located at the University of Virginia's Hereford Residential College, is the pilot project of a larger effort to establish the Thomas Jefferson Botanical Garden and Education Center (TJBG) at UVa. The JDG is a small-scale, Jefferson-focused teaching garden that will introduce the UVa and local communities to the goals of the larger vision and will provide an opportunity to assess whether the University would benefit from an on-grounds botanical garden. The project will require students to envision a direct connection between Hereford Residential College and the Academical Village, wherein students appropriate Jefferson’s shared-learning approach in order to re-envision what it means to reside in an academic community. Building upon Jefferson’s plans to install a botanical garden at the University, the JDG will focus on “objects of use” and will boast a plant collection based on Jefferson’s writings. Plants historically used for the production of food, medicine, textiles, dyestuffs, etc., will be included. The design, installation, and maintenance of the Jefferson Demonstration Garden, beginning in the spring semester of 2011, will be a collaboration between students from Hereford College and the School of Architecture.