The American Garden: Two Divergent Paths

Oz Volume 8 Article 8 1-1-1986 The American Garden: Two Divergent Paths Patrick Mooney Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/oz This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Mooney, Patrick (1986) "The American Garden: Two Divergent Paths," Oz: Vol. 8. https://doi.org/10.4148/ 2378-5853.1116 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Oz by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The American Garden: Two Divergent Paths 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 '. \) / ./ 0 0 0 : 0 0 0 : o oo 0 0 ) 0 0 ]ens Jensen's plan of the meadow and lake for the Henry Ford Estate, Dearbom, Michigan.

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