When Jefferson became president in 1801, Poplar Forest was a 4,500-acre plantation with at least 60 enslaved men, women, and children living and working on the property. In August 1806, he visited Poplar Forest to help his bricklayer, Hugh Chisolm, complete the intricate octagonal foundation. By the end of his presidency in 1809, he was finally able to stay in his nearly complete house there for the first time, and he spent his remaining years perfecting his Bedford County retreat. To arrange the space around it, he had enslaved laborers build a 61-acre curtilage, the enclosed land immediately surrounding a dwelling house. Within that curtilage, he set aside a 10-acre fenced yard surrounding the retreat house that contained carefully designed pleasure grounds with plantings of ornamental trees, shrubs, and flowers.