Oz

Volume 8 Article 8

1-1-1986

The American Garden: Two Divergent Paths

Patrick Mooney

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Recommended Citation Mooney, Patrick (1986) "The American Garden: Two Divergent Paths," Oz: Vol. 8. https://doi.org/10.4148/ 2378-5853.1116

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Patrick Mooney

It is not yet possible to say overly elaborate formalism and that there is any such thing geometry of previous garden styles. as an American garden in the sense in which one can speak The English do not have the sense of of an Italian, French, Dutch or order which created the French style, English Garden. 1 neither are they given to obvious ex­ tremes. For this reason the great English While we may disagree with this gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth statement, it must be admitted that century appear as a succession of parts America has not given rise to vernacular which although they are entities in styles of landscape design which are as themselves, are not unified into a whole. distinctively original as its vernacular building styles. Since colonial times The predominant concept of the land­ American gardens have been adapta­ scape movement was the effect of in­ tions of European models. As recently vocation of emotions by association as May 1985 that a "magazine of with qualities of nature. The gardens creative living,'' House and Garden, became three-dimensional pictures in offered its readers the opportunity to which paths led first to one perspective plan the flower garden of their dreams and then to another and another, each by ordering "English Garden Design of which was intended to create a dif­ adapted for the United States. " 2 ferent emotion in the heart of the beholder. In its own way, the landscape The act of imitation expresses admira­ garden was as formalized as the earlier tion for the model and an unquestion­ garden styles it replaced. It was ing acceptance of the philosophy and governed by a common aesthetic aesthetics which gave rise to that pro­ vocabulary understood by designer and totype. For a new art form to develop Earliest large formal garden in America; Governor's gardens, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1723. viewer. The rules were set by men of both the aesthetics and underlying and philosophical movement ignited by Although garden historians of the taste and exercised by these same men. philosophy of existing forms must be re­ the essays of such men as Pope, eighteenth century have frequently In the final analysis, taste and not nature jected. This essay discusses the English Addison and Burke. It was Lord described the English landscape move­ was the arbitrator. garden and its transfer to America. It Shaftesbury, who first compared the ment as a taste revolution, it was in fact also examines the work of the Danish­ beauties of nature to that of the formal an evolutionary process which had its Gradually, however, the understood American landscape architect Jens garden of the day. philosophical roots in the art and language of the landscape movement Jensen and shows how his rejection of literature of seventeenth century ceased to be spoken and the style European ideas led him to develop The Wilderness itself, as repre­ Europe. 4 Given the opportunity of hind­ began to die. Garden ornament no distinctly American landscapes. senting Nature more, will be more sight, this evolution can be easily traced longer had an understood association engaging and appear with Mag­ to earlier styles. In its most simplified but degenerated into a gaudy toy. The English landscape movement was nificence beyond the formal interpretation the English landscape The elaborate aesthetic created by 3 28 in the beginning an intellectual, literary Mockery of princely Gardens. garden may be seen as a reaction to the Pope, Kent, and Shenstone became separated from the design practices Like Loudon, he firmly advocated the place resulting from the use of degrees which we extract energy. This may be with which it was associated. Garden use of exotic plant material in a of enclosure appears hardly to have in the form of food, water power, fossil design became an exercise in invention naturalistic style. He was, however, not been enunciated. The visual concept fuel or it may be psychic energy. and novelty without any defined or above using disjointed arabesques of of the garden as a collection of showy Whatever the form the landscape is con­ accepted aesthetic. s flower beds liberally dolloped into the exotic plant material was universally sidered to exist so that we may extract "natural" exotic landscape. Such a style accepted in Europe and widely adopted from it that which we need. In colonial While the industrial revolution and the is difficult to define but there were con­ in America. Thomas Jefferson indesign­ America this necessitated to subduing rise of the middle class provided a sistent design features. The gardenesque ing Monticello borrowed liberally the wilderness, clearing the forests and catalyst for the dethronement of the feature of dotting specimen shrubs from European garden ornament of harnessing the streams. The formal landscape style of gardening, the real about the lawn is evident. Showy or­ the time for his temples and columns, garden which was ubiquitous in the col­ impetus came from the dramatic and namental trees such as Copper Beech or and we know that he read and recom­ onies as well as the grid system of lots sudden increase in the introduction of Camperdown Elm were favored and mended to others the prominent essays and townships established at this time, exotic plants during the latter part of the foundation plantings were obligatory. on garden design being written in are indicative of the need to subdue the nineteenth century. Throughout the The curved line especially in walks or Britian at the time. 7 environment so that the extraction of eighteenth and nineteenth century, drives was also a consistent element energy could occur. plant collectors went out from Europe whether related to the topography or With few exceptions, American colonial to all parts of the world. A continual merely for style. and federal gardens are generally con­ As we have seen the English or natural trickle of plant introductions which had sidered to have been symmetrically for­ style had evolved into the ornamental begun in the Middle Ages gradually The rise of the natural or picturesque mal and free from the naturalistic effects landscape of the plant. The evolution of became a raging torrent as zealous col­ style in America may be in part due to of the English landscape movement un­ an American identity together with the lectors sent back specimens from a reaction against the previous rigidly til the time of Jefferson's Monticello at emulation of all things English allowed around the globe. This increase in in­ formal style. Whereas in England this the end of the 18th century.6 this gardenesque style to be troductions was coupled with improved change in taste resulted from a glorifica­ transplanted to America under the in­ methods of transport, propagation, tion of nature which sprang originally In America colonists were surrounded fluence of Downing's writings. culture and especially hybridization. from the writing of Jean Jacques by virgin forests. This wilderness con­ Rousseau, in America it carried political tained the very real natural dangers of Although Downing died only eleven One result of these new introductions overtones. Many considered the everyday life: Indians, wild animals, rag­ years after the publication of his was the development of a new garden­ geometric or formal style to be ing rivers, impenetrable thickets and treatise on landscape gardening his esque or eclectic style of landscape in characteristic of autocratic societies. bogs. By removing the wilderness and impact on public imagination was which the plant was the dominant ele­ Downing expressed the view that in a replacing it with the very defined natural such that he continued to mold public ment. This style was advocated in country which lacked an hereditary order of the formal garden the colonist taste in the rebuilding which occurred England by J.C. Loudon in his Ar­ wealthy class, in which "the rights of was creating for himself the garden as after the Civil War.IO boretum et Fruticetum Britannicum and man are held to be equal" that such a refuge which symbolized his control in America by Andrew Jackson Down­ gardens were unlikely to be built.6 over his environment. Downings acknowledged successor ing. In his book A Treatise on the Theory was the great American landscape and Practice of Landscape Gardening With the rise of the gardenesque style, J.B . Jackson has theorized that the Architect Frederic Law Olmstead Sr. Adapted to North America published in the garden had lost its associations American attitude is essentially that of Olmstead's principles as exemp­ 1841, Downing persuasively expounds with the evocation of emotions. The an engineer.9 By this he means that we lified in his major parks include the gardenesque principles of Loudon. idea of the garden as a special exterior regard the landscape as a place from the preservation and use of natural 29 ' '' li•.~;r '. \)

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]ens Jensen's plan of the meadow and lake for the Henry Ford Estate, Dearbom, Michigan. scenery, the avoidance of all formal whatever its form , is a collection materials. In 1888, he planted his with their careful siting and low horizon­ design except in the immediate vicinity of showy~ · ' ornamental'' plants. "American Garden" in Washington tal lines. Jensen's design also attempted of the building, the use of mature Park. This consisted chiefly of native to draw its artistic direction from the trees and shrubs, and the locating While this idea has found wide accep­ perennial wild flowers which he natural landscape of the region. of open lawns and meadows in central tance, there have been some designers gathered himself from the surrounding areas. While Olmstead certainly who marched to a different drummer. region. Although the garden no longer Just as Wright was rebelling against the understood landscape design as func­ Perhaps the prototype of such men is exists it was an immediate success both Beaux Arts style of the eastern archi­ tional place making he is considered Jens Jensen. When Jensen and his future horticulturally and with the public. It tects, Jensen was at odds with the to have extended Downing's principles wife Anne Marie arrived in America was not, however, until 1900 when eastern landscape architects who were in America. from their native Denmark in 1884, the Jensen set out on his own that he began designing formal gardens around New ideas of Downing and Olmstead were designing the prairie landscapes on York, Philadelphia and Boston. Like In time the gardenesque style of already achieving wide acceptance. It which his reputation rests. Downing, but emphatically more so, landscape as advocated by Downing was a period of intense development of Jensen considered formal gardens to be was widely adopted in America and parks and private estates. The Jensens About this same time his friend, Frank the outmoded manifestations of political in many ways persists today. Certainly settled in Chicago where Jens found Lloyd Wright, was designing his prairie absolutism. The natural landscape of the there can be no question that many work with the Chicago West Park Com­ houses in the suburbs of Chicago. Both rolling wooded prairie of Illinois sym­ designers and the public in general mission. He began almost immediately men were responding artistically to the bolized for him the freedom and oppor­ 30 subscribe to the notion that a garden, to experiment with native plant region. Wright's houses fit the landscape tunity of the New World. It was therefore a more appropriate source of scape styles. There are ·many people inspiration for American designed land­ who work and design with native plants scapes than the ornamental gardens of and many others who design landscapes Europe. It was this rejection of European using a wealth of exotic plant material traditions on essentially ideological in a variety of styles. The later approach grounds that led Jensen to develop new reflects the nature of the preserit day American forms of landscape design. society. When ·the French, Dutch, Italian and English garden styles Also in 1900 the magazine Country Life developed, they were the art gardens of in America was founded. In an early a limited cognoscenti who could be issue, Wilhelm Miller, a horticulture bound by a single design aesthetic. In professor at the University of Illinois, our increasingly diverse and stratified contributed an article entitled An society it is unlikely that any single American Idea in Landscape Art garden aesthetic could be widely in which he advocated the use of native adopted or that the discussion of design plants in natural planting wherever philosophy or garden design could ever possible. In time Miller became the capture the public imagination as was recognized spokesman for the "prairie formerly the case. We live in an age style" of landscape architecture. His which will be remembered for its ideas, which gained a wide audience for technology, its environmental indif­ a period of over twenty years, were ference, its ideologies but not for its art, subscribed to by Jensen although Jensen its philosophy, or its gardens. may have originated his own ideas independently. 11 NOTES: Jensen's early work was very much in 1. Clifford, Derek. A History of Garden Design. Frederick A. Praeger, New York, 1963, p . 204. the style of Andrew Jackson Downing. 2. House and Garden. May 1985. p. 232. Slowly and throughout a long career he Jens Jensen " meadows" show skill in the manipulation of light and shade, space and volume. 3. Gothein, M.L. , A History of Garden Art, j.M. began to distinguish himself. He ac­ leader and that an artist's message tained very few introduced plants. Like Dent and Son, Toronto, London, Vol. 2, p. 279. quired a great knowledge of native plant grew in importance as he comprehended the proponents of the English landscape 4. Hussey, Christopher. The Picturesque, Frank materials which was most unusual in his the world in which he lived . movement, Jensen understood the Cass and Co., Ltd., London, 1967. Chapters Two, Three and Four. day, and he developed great skill in garden as a place designed to evoke 5. Gothein, M.L .. op. cit. , Vol. 2, p. 289. manipulation of space. Jensen is The site planning for The Clearing emotional response in the viewer. He 6. Downing, Andrew j. A Treatise on tbe Theory and perhaps most remembered for his evolved slowly through a number of designed the landscape as a series of Practice of Landscape Gardening. Theopratus, meadows. These were designed to create revisions. Stephen Christy tells us that spaces which varied in character and Rhode Island. N .Y., 1977. an il!usion of distance and space and created spatial experience as one mov­ 7. Berswanger, W.L. The Temple in the Garden: Thomas jefferson's Vision of the Monticello simultaneously control views and direct The Clearing merely sets the stage ed through them. In this sense he Landscape in British and American Gardens in movement. As his career progressed he for the experience which Jensen harkened back to the original pro­ the 18th Century. Maccubbin, R.P .. and Martin, drew his inspiration increasingly from believed essential to everyone. It ponents of the landscape movement P. ed. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, nature, becoming less and less in­ is in this sense a very nearly before its evolution into the garden of Williamsburg, Virginia, 1984, p. 173. fluenced by his predecessors. undesigned landscape and yet it the plant. His art sprang from a deep' 8. Cummings, A.L. Eighteenth-Century New England Garden Design: The Pictorial Evidence is the most highly designed of all understanding and love of plant materi;;tl in British and American Gardens in the 18th Cen­ In 1934, after Anne Marie's death, if one considers the aim of design and he so revered the natural landscape tury. op. city .. p. 130. Jensen closed his practice and moved is not to impose a solution but to that he effaced his own designs. If a 9. jackson, j.B. A Puritan Looks at Scenery in to Ellison Bay, Wisconsin, where he multiply infinitely the possible visitor felt that the landscape had been Discovering the Vernacular Landscape. Yale founded a school known as The number of solutionsY untouched by man this was to Jensen University Press. N ew Haven, London. 1984, p. 63 . 13 Clearing. The Clearing was a settle­ the highest compliment. 10. Gothein, M.L. , op. city., Vol. 2, p. 427. ment placed in an open space of forest. It may be said of Jensen that he 11. Christy, S.F. The Growth of an Artist: ]ens Jensen It was also a symbolic place where managed to achieve a ·distinctly Although Jensen may be considered to and Landscape Architecture. Occasional Paper the mind could be clear of trivia, American garden which might not be have developed a new American land­ No. 5, School of Natural Resources, University and where the student could come to considered a garden in the European scape design, his work is largely of Wisconsin, p. 3. 12. Ibid, p. 67. know his or herself through an elemen­ sense. This is partly due to the fact that unknown today. Consequently there is 13. Eaton. L.K. Landscape Artist in America: The Life tal understanding of nature. Jensen it was a landscape rather than a place little hope that others will follow his lead and Work of ]ens jensen, University of Chicago of horticulture and partly because it con- in seek\ng to develop vernacular land- Press, Chicago, London. 1964, p . 89. felt that the artist was a spiritual 31