1. Little landscaping had been accomplished during Jefferson’s tenure in the executive mansion, although terraces had been graded above the east and west fronts. Benjamin H. Latrobe’s watercolor drawings show the building before the plantings made during JM’s occupancy (see illustrations in Amy La Follette Jensen, The White House and Its Thirty-Two Families [New York, 1958], opposite p. 13).

2. Most of the plants came from local sources. Alexander Hepburn, Theophilus Holt, and Thomas Main were nurserymen and seed merchants in the capital (Betts, Jefferson’s Garden Book, pp. 319, 353, 419). The Mr. Tayloe mentioned may have been John Tayloe. Samuel Davidson (d. 1810) owned the land which became Lafayette Square. His estate, Evermay, was north of Georgetown (Wilhelmus Bogart Bryan, A History of the National Capital [2 vols.; New York, 1914–16], 1:144, 296, 573; Carol S. Day, ed., Analytical Index to the Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Volumes 31/32–57/59 [Washington, 1978], p. 75).

3. Nicholas King, son of city surveyor Robert King, “followed his father in that job” (Hamlin, Latrobe, p. 260).