Bard of the SOIL

Speak to landscape architect Thomas Woltz about outdoor spaces and you will be caught up in a joyful avalanche of history and literature, art and science, aesthetics and ecology. Is it any wonder he oversees some of the most visionary projects in the world?

- MARK ROZZO

One morning last fall, Thomas Woltz followed a winding trail through the woods to a clearing about 650 yards down the hill from Monticello, the Palladio-inspired house that Thomas Jefferson—Founding Father, president, architect, and polymath—built on a mountaintop outside Charlottesville, Virginia, the centerpiece of a 5,000-acre plantation. This was archetypal American woodland, with leaves drifting down and a cardinal darting from one branch to another, the kind of place cherished by weekend hikers, saunterers, and scouts. But there was another element in the mix, which, thanks to Woltz’s recent interventions, is now impossible to overlook. This clearing happens to be the site of the Burial Ground for Enslaved People at Monticello. It is where more than 40 enslaved persons, from among the more than 400 who lived and worked at the plantation during Jefferson’s lifetime, are buried, their graves largely unadorned.