Thomas Jefferson championed vegetable cuisine, plant experimentation, and sustainable agriculture. The 4th annual Heritage Harvest Festival, hosted by the Thomas Jefferson Foundation in partnership with Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, celebrates Jefferson’s legacy in a fun, affordable, family-oriented, educational event promoting gardening, sustainability, local food and the preservation of heritage plants.

The 2010 Heritage Harvest Festival will be held on Saturday, September 11, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Monticello: on the West Lawn, in the vegetable garden, and in the new LEEDS-certified Visitor Center. The new venue will showcase the restored gardens more vividly, and feature the wealth of Monticello’s interpretation programs in not just gardening, but also natural history, foodways, and the roles of the entire plantation community.

Participants will continue to enjoy the traditional tastings, workshops, hands-on demonstrations, interpretative walks, and a variety of garden tours and exhibits. Experts, including Master Gardeners, come from around the country to share knowledge and volunteer their time to run the festival. Local food, sustainable farming, and a heightened interest in the flavor and diversity of traditional fruits and vegetables have captured the imagination of gardeners and consumers throughout the United States. The Festival addresses this trend with tasting workshops, lectures, and seed-saving demonstrations, as well as a Marketplace with displays and sales of fruits and vegetables, food and plants.  Cooking demonstrations by some of Charlottesville’s most revered chefs will be another popular component of the 2010 Festival.

At the heart of the Heritage Harvest Festival are educational programs on seed-saving, botanical medicine, heirloom varieties, sustainable agriculture, compost production, organic gardening, integrated pest management, edible landscaping, regional cookery, and other aspects of sustainable living. Monticello’s Visitor Center will provide an ideal setting for more formal “premium” lectures and workshops. Rosalind Creasy, the mother of the edible landscaping movement, Patti Moreno, the “garden girl” of sustainable urban living, and Sharon Astyk, author of the Jefferson-inspired book A Nation of Farmers, are among the renowned speakers for this year’s Festival. Interpretive tours of the restored Monticello garden, plus specialty tours on seed-saving, natural history, and native plants, will take place every hour. Monticello’s restored kitchen will also come alive with cooking programs highlighting the Jefferson and African-American legacy in food.

Southern Exposure Seed Exchange and organizations such as the Piedmont Environmental Council collaborate to offer festival goers samples in the “Buy Fresh, Buy Local” tasting tent. These exhibits provide a focal point for festival participants to meet farmers, educators, and non-profits at the center of the local food movement. The Master Gardener Tent will also include a full day of programming, in addition to popular demonstrations, exhibits, and activities for children. Food vendors will offer a full range of delicious meals and snacks, from doughnuts to barbecue to crepes.

Monticello will also host the eighth biennial Historic Plants Symposium on September 10, piggybacking with the Heritage Harvest Festival the next day. A terrific lineup of speakers will examine the theme of “Come to Table: Cooking with Historic Plants.” These include food historians such as Will Weaver, New Englander Sandy Oliver, and Hoppin’ John Taylor from Charleston, South Carolina. The Preview Night will also feature Rosalind Creasy, the pioneering author of The Complete Book of Edible Lanscaping and Rosalind Creasy’s Recipes from the Garden, will share her vast knowledge of cooking and gardens during a discussion of new ideas in preparing seasonal fruits and vegetables. Following the discussion, enjoy a specially prepared dinner including fresh, locally grown ingredients.

The Heritage Harvest Festival is a grassroots, volunteer-oriented event with serious educational goals. Please join us for a meaningful and fun day celebrating sustainable living and the good things that come from the earth.

Tickets for all events are available for purchase here>>