The French Connection

A Publication of the

Foundation

for Landscape Studies

A Journal of Place Volume ıx | Number ıı | Spring 2014

Essays: The French Connection: Innovations in Landscape Design in France and America 3 Gary Hilderbrand: “Substantially Complete” or an Open Work for Democracy? Christopher Vernon: Imperializing Washington, D.C. Mary Hawthorne: The Geometry of Emotion: The Gardens of Henri and Achille Duchêne Joseph Disponzio: Designing with Nature: Jean-Marie Morel’s Garden Theory Mary Taverner Holmes: Oudry’s Gardens of Arceuil

Place Maker 15 Paula Deitz: William Christie

Book Reviews 17 Lauren Belfer: Prospect Park: Olmsted and Vaux’s Brooklyn Masterpiece By David P. Colley Elizabeth Eustis: Gardening by the Book By Arete Warren Judith Tankard: Gardens for a Beautiful America By Sam Watters

Exhibition 21 Susan Taylor-Leduc: André Le Nôtre en perspectives, 1613–2013 Château de Versailles, October 22, 2013 to February 23, 2014

Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor 2014 Book and Grant Awards

he first quarter Theory,” Joseph Disponzio In this issue, both Gary of choice for mass political 2014 John Brinckerhoff 2014 David R. Coffin of the eighteenth explores the work of one of Hilderbrand and Christo- rallies and a repository for Jackson Book Prize Winners Publication Grant Winners century saw the these important and too-lit- pher Vernon discuss the memorials and museums. transformation of tle-remembered landscape- later Beaux-Arts transfor- Hilderbrand’s perspective as Jared Farmer Giles Clement the English gar- design theorists. mation and aggrandize- a landscape architect enables Trees in Paradise: “The Planetary Garden,” Tden style. At that time the French eighteenth- ment of Washington’s Mall, him to assess these develop- A California History and Other Writings straight allées and symetri- century designers drew on the core of L’Enfant’s 1791 ments within the context W. W. Norton & Company, University of Pennsylvania cal parterres reflecting the both old and new traditions design. Vernon’s essay, of the Mall as a single public 2013 Press infuence of Louis XIV’s to create rococo landscape “Imperializing Washington, space. royal gardner André Le stages for ancien régime D.C.,” focuses upon the In France, as in America, Francis R. Kowsky Lake Douglas Nôtre were supplanted by a aristocratic pastimes. Many symbolic meanings of the there was a revivalist shift The Best Planned City in the Steward of the Land: native model of naturalistic of the gardens they commis- 1901 McMillan plan for the at the end of the nineteenth World: Olmsted, Vaux, and the The Writings of Nineteenth- landscape design. Known in sioned no longer exist, but Mall, which was designed century. The geometrical Buffalo Park System Century Horticulturalist French as the jardin anglais, those captured by contem- by landscape architect paradigm offered more than University of Massachusetts Thomas Affleck it was adopted on the conti- porary artists live on in the Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., two centuries earlier by Le Press and Library LSU Press nent as an integral feature of imagination. In “Oudry’s architect Charles F. McKim, Nôtre was revalorized. Mary of American Landscape the new spirit of Romanti- Gardens of Arceuil,” Mary and sculptor Augustus Hawthorne takes up this History, 2013 Carol Grove and cism. Tavener Holmes shows how St. Gaudens. Here we learn theme in “The Geometry of Cydney Millstein If England had Alexander the drawings of this garden, that by the time Congress Emotion: The Gardens of Joseph Manca Hare and Hare, Pope, Horace Walpole, and with its rocailles, bosquets, approved the McMillan Henri and Achille Duch- George Washington’s Eye: Landscape Architects Richard Whately to establish grottoes, trellises, terraces, plan, America had begun êne,” her account of a visit Landscape, Architecture, and Library of American its primacy in promoting stairs, and faux-perspective to flex its political muscle to the Chatêau of Sassy in Design at Mount Vernon Landscape History this sea change, in Germany allées, denote the spirit of on an international scale, the Orne region of Lower The Johns Hopkins the new style, which falls pre-Revolutionary France. engaging in foreign exploits Normandy. University Press, 2012 Anna O. Marley into the aesthetic category Ironically, in democratic such as the Spanish-Ameri- Site/Lines is entirely The Artist’s Garden: American of the Picturesque, found America, the gloriously can War. Vernon shows how donor-supported. To con- Karen M’Closkey Impressionism and the its proponents in C. C. L. autocratic landscape style the Mall’s original terminal tinue publishing articles Unearthed: The Landscapes Garden Movement, 1887-1920 Hirschfield and Prince André Le Nôtre created vistas focusing on natural and reviews like these, we of Hargreaves Associates University of Pennsylvania Pückler-Muskau. In France for Louis XIV became the scenery were sacrificed to need gifts from individu- University of Pennsylvania Press the Marquis de Giradin and basis of the 1791 plan for the create an architecturally als like you. We will be very Press, 2013 Jean-Marie Morel also wrote capital of the United States. defined spatial organization. grateful for your tax- Thaïsa Way treatises expounding its Ignoring Thomas Jeffer- Hilderbrand’s essay, deductible contribution (see Robert A.M. Stern, David Richard Haag, Landscape tenets. In this issue of Site/ son’s more modest notions, “Evolving the Mall: ‘Sub- attached envelope). Fishman, and Jacob Tilove Architect: From Modern Space Lines, in an article entitled George Washington’s urban stantially Complete’ or an Paradise Planned: The Garden to Urban Ecological Design “Designing with Nature: planner, Pierre L’Enfant, Open Work for Democracy?” With good green wishes, Suburb and the Modern City University of Washington Jean-Marie Morel’s Garden took Versailles, with its continues the story up to the The Monacelli Press, 2013 Press long axes and allées, as his present. The Mall is the site model – a paradigm that he Jack Williams tempered by incorporating Easy On, Easy Off On the Cover: existing topography and the Elizabeth Barlow Rogers University of Virginia Press Andrew Ellicott’s 1792 revision of scenic attributes of the site. President L’Enfant’s plan of 1791-1792 for the “Federal City,” later Washington City, District of Columbia.

2 The French Connection: Innovations in Landscape Design in France and America

Evolving the National Mall: “Substantially Complete” been transformed into our national midway – a lively con- Partial Rebuild or an Open Work for Democracy? sumer circus of great proportions, with the icons of democ- The nation’s front yard was partially rebuilt in 2012, six years eople across the globe identify Washington’s National racy captured in the extended view. after the National Park Service (NPS) launched its reha- Mall with American democracy. When images of From the steps of the Capitol – where we inaugurate our bilitation plan for the Mall and its monumental core. Two Capitol Hill or the south front of the White House elected Executive every four years before the most command- significant projects came to completion that year: the repair drift across broadcast screens or land in schoolchil- ing urban landscape vista anywhere – the Mall’s long axis of the upper one-third of the Mall’s eastern half, near the U.S. dren’s history books, they carry meanings and mes- ranges toward the horizon and recalls the narrative of the Capitol, and the reworking of the Lincoln Reflecting Pool at Psages about Washington’s influence on political, economic, nation’s post-colonial, westward expansion. Two miles away, the Mall’s western end. Three more ambitious projects have and social conditions around the world. Ideally, they describe where the Lincoln Memorial resolutely intercepts the axis, advanced beyond the stage of national design competitions: spaces from which the government hears and responds to the another metaphor looms in marble: Daniel Chester French’s the renewal of Union Square; a reimagined Sylvan Grove and voice of the people. The Mall is an active and evolving physi- colossal likeness of Abraham Lincoln, conjuring the nation’s Sylvan Theater alongside the Washington Monument; and cal embodiment of our republic – one begun more than two emancipation from slavery and its horrendous struggle to revisions to areas around Constitution Gardens. These efforts hundred years ago by a democratic country that wanted to remain whole. Lincoln gazes pensively toward the once- promise more transformative change, should we ever see demonstrate its unity through the organization of its newly divided Congress, contemplating our grave triumph over another Congress willing to uphold its obligation to protect founded capital city. that weighty national chapter of disunity and human strife and advance this great legacy. Our legislators need to heed But today’s Mall is not the one that the French architect (although, of course, he’d observe another kind of division this call. Fortunately, the dedicated agency professionals who and engineer Charles Pierre L’Enfant envisioned in his work today in the Capitol). We permit these and other narratives work for them and some of the leading designers in the coun- with President George Washington and future president to exist in juxtaposition – thereby acknowledging open and try are positioning the work so that it will be able to move Thomas Jefferson; nor the one that evolved under Robert multiple interpretations of our history through the Mall’s forward when funding – whether by legislative appropriation Mills, the architect of the Washington Monument; nor even imagery and associations. or private philanthropy – becomes available. the one envisioned by landscape architect Andrew Jackson A profound question Downing in the mid-nineteenth century. It is instead the undergirds the NPS plans: radically reconceived Mall of Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. How do we ensure that, as and members of the 1902 Senate Park Commission: heavily the Mall changes, it con- influenced by European sources and largely executed during tinues to represent both the 1930s. Today, eighty years later, more change is under way. a coherent national iden- Given this history, we must question the declaration by Con- tity and the overlapping gress in 2003 that the Mall is a “substantially completed work constructs put forth by a of civic art” and ask how much stasis we should accept, or how pluralistic society – espe- much change we could embrace. cially as both these things For Americans, the Mall is our preeminent public land- continue to be altered by scape, the symbolic front yard of our collective ethos and, at the course of history? Each times, our collective pathos – a site of unity and contention transformative project adds both. Many redemptive moments of protest and passage have to or modifies the Mall’s originated or culminated on this plot of land. Who doesn’t narrative hold on our shared identify the Mall with the 1963 March on Washington, for rituals and national causes. instance, or the 1987 assembly of the AIDS Memorial Quilt? The two recent pilot Before the U.S. Department of Energy moved its annual Solar projects on the Mall – the Decathlon to a site well off the Mall, that vast arrangement of rebuilding of its tapis vert student-built projects used to make it seem as if the Mall had and the Lincoln Reflecting Pool – have brought about

The Mall at night, with the Lincoln Memorial, Washington Monument, and United States Capitol illumi- nated. 3 real change without significantly altering the Mall’s features. first half of the nineteenth century. Eventually it became the broad diagonals and localized grids harking back to Ver- Both projects have been shaped by a central aim of contem- home of Washington’s first major train station and various sailles and other French Classical gardens is centered on the porary design: increasing performance in things we value, government facilities. Following plans by Robert Mills and, Capitol. It is a plan as impressively systematic and balanced as while reducing strains on resources. In simple terms, they later, those of Andrew Jackson Downing, its grounds were Le Nôtre’s Cartesian-inspired gardens; in the urban context, allow us to keep the Mall as the world knows it, while eas- developed as a series of horticultural gardens surrounding it produced abundant special streets and squares that could ing our collective conscience about the environmental costs the Smithsonian Institution. carry meaningful identities. L’Enfant’s plan thus afforded, for that water and lawn incur. Today, many landscape profes- Downing aspired to elevate horticultural matters to a place Washington and for the nation, a way to construe a perma- sionals, resource managers, and citizens aim to reduce water of prominence in the new republic. He saw his plantations as nent honor roll for the former colonies, the founders, and consumption and adapt or eliminate turf; lawns are both more than embellishments for L’Enfant’s allegorical street the dignitaries who deserved lasting homage in a city that costly and demanding. The aim of projects like the Mall turf plan. Instead, he proposed arrangements of trees that would honored memory as one of its organizing conceits. renovation is to enable lawns to thrive under stresses – three represent the landscape of the republic in all its botanical But if L’Enfant’s plan depicted the Mall and the President’s thousand events are permitted for the Mall each year – with- diversity – a kind of inventory of North American species and Park as settings for the White House and other government out depleting our water supplies or causing nutrient imbal- associations, organized along complex, curvilinear geom- institutions, the Mall itself displayed somewhat uncharac- ances by drenching soils with nitrogen fertilizer. As for the etries that contrasted with L’Enfant’s rectilinear frame. He teristic asymmetry and an open contour toward the Potomac Reflecting Pool, though purists would see it as an extrava- imagined a privileged place for natural science and scenic marshes. The 1902 McMillan proposal, on the other hand, gance in this time of necessary water conservation, this con- beauty at the heart of the nation’s evolving identity. under Olmsted Jr.’s and Charles Follen McKim’s guidance, sideration must be balanced against the indelible image of Although Downing did not live to see it, his landscape projected a more literal reading of the geometries and com- the Lincoln Memorial that it fixes in perpetuity. Admittedly, matured over half a century. But by 1900 another vision of partments of the French royal estate – effectively depicting a it holds a lot of water – almost 7 million gallons. Before the democracy was gaining ground. Downing’s attempt to posi- grand federal garden with as much equilibrium and balanced renovation, leaks and constant refilling used up to six times tion a naturalistic American landscape as a national para- closure as its designers could wrestle out of the Mall’s further that each year, from potable sources. But by recasting the digm, emulating the eighteenth-century Picturesque, would reaches and irregular estuary edge. In contrast to Downing’s fountain’s structure and linking the supply and outlet system soon give way to breathtaking simplicity and monumentality. taxonomic order and lively rhythm of spaces, this plan put to the tidal basin’s hydrological cycle, the project is expected forward a more static, predictable compositional structure – a to save thirty-two million gallons of water annually. In round Radical Change, Continued Evolution picture of symmetry. numbers, these two projects, which were both well executed, The Senate Park Commission’s McMillan Plan, published The McMillan Plan remains one of history’s most impres- cost $50 million. Important symbols, big investments. in 1902, reconceived the Mall as the centerpiece of a vastly sive acts of emulation in city planning: one imagines a worn enlarged “monumental core.” The magisterial ambition of map of Versailles lying on the drafting table, very near the Origins this proposal – doubling the Mall’s size, capturing extensive plan’s engravers. But this garden association was more than L’Enfant, no stranger to symbolism, organized his 1791 plan tidelands, clearing run-down for Washington around streets named for colonies and a neighborhoods, upending studied, geometrical “balance of power” inspired by the newly Downing’s arboretum – ratified U.S. Constitution. The Mall, in contrast, didn’t carry never fails to amaze. As many a detailed allegorical program and wasn’t oriented towards have noted, the McMillan monumentality; that would come much later. It was depicted plan shares with L’Enfant’s simply as a wide avenue, flanked by an extensive, park-like project common roots in precinct designated by President Washington as Reservations seventeenth-century France. No. 1 and 2 – the President’s Park and the Mall, respectively – L’Enfant’s scheme built upon essentially, the new government’s first public parks. For the hierarchical, geometric L’Enfant, turf held no special importance, and water was nei- platting of the French royal ther a precious commodity nor an honorific statement. His gardens conceived by Louis plan to drain the land to ease construction and utilize the XIV’s landscape designer Washington Canal for transport gave his Mall a pragmatic André Le Nôtre. Washing- bent. ton’s striking scaffold of Because the new city developed slowly in decades of economic and political turmoil – it had only three thousand residents in 1800 – L’Enfant’s Mall languished during the

Plan of the Senate Park Commis- sion, known as the McMillan Plan, 4 1901–1902. mere plan resemblance; Anti-war protesters on the Mall, late portions captured the scale 1960s. and feel of royal horticul- tural grounds. Today, on about the war’s relevance among the larger population; afternoons when the crowds eventually this pressure, along with the war’s own degener- have diminished, the long ating course, fuelled the public’s misgivings and hastened elm allées along the Lincoln its end. Maya Lin’s Vietnam Memorial, completed on the Reflecting Pool, with their Mall’s northeast quadrant in 1982, sublimely honors the war’s simple, understated edging almost unfathomable casualties but also reflects soberly and stair detailing, remind on our shared anxieties around the war’s nebulous aims. me of the languid, unhurried The memorial and debate about its abstract formal language character of more remote further defined the Mall as the place where we perpetu- reaches of two Le Nôtre mas- ally grapple with not only the costs of war but also how we terpieces, Parc de Sceaux and honor those costs in peacetime. Drawing the Washington Parc de Saint-Cloud, near and Lincoln memorials into its own gravitational field, Lin’s Paris. In quiet moments, powerful angular cut into the earth remains as strong as any one finds a beautifully scaled gesture or any narrative in the monumental core. garden experience in the Since that time, the Mall has endured as the place of wit- middle of the city. Yet this ness for many of our cultural tensions, including struggles same space has hosted hun- over abortion rights and women’s rights; expressions of iden- dreds of thousands of people, tity politics, such as the Million Man March or gatherings of registering their collective the Promise Keepers; and occasional political apostasy. The passions or celebrating some Tea Party, organized around libertarian discord in the GOP kind of civic unity. during the first year of the Obama administration, held its Generally, the overscaled grandeur captured in the McMil- The Mall will change again when the National Museum of first big rally on the Mall in 2009 and has organized extrava- lan Plan was somewhat diminished in its implementation – African American History and Culture debuts in 2015, on per- gant gatherings there since. Today, through social media, though it was no small act. Under Olmsted Jr.’s direction, haps the last available building site for this kind of program. organizers can instantly fire up fellow dissidents around the the great tapis vert and gridded elms created impressive And what about a memorial or an institution dedicated to specifics of time, place, weather, political talking points, or uniformity on the eastern end of the Mall, interrupted only women’s history? That question is coming. diversion tactics and escape routes, as required. Twitter helps by the mishap of the Smithsonian’s prior construction – a get the word out. But organized protest needs spectators, and significant disruption and note of imperfection in the new Evolving Through the Voice of the People the Mall has become our sacred ground for that. plan’s overarching symmetry. Had Olmsted been able to move During the period of my own adolescence and early adult Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. knew that the Mall could act as the castle, I suspect he would have. His great green axis has years, the Civil Rights movement cemented Washington’s a site for registering dissent. Coxey’s Army, which protested seen few rivals in modern times. And after eighty years, this place as a city in which enlightened dissent matters deeply. post-recession economic conditions and rampant unemploy- is the Mall we still live with. Until we change it. Dr. Martin Luther King’s legions marched peaceably to the ment among American workers, landed here in 1894 and A more recent significant development on the Mall, which Mall, commanded the world’s attention, and catalyzed the returned again in 1914. But in his drive for spatial coherence was not without controversy, was the construction of the long struggle toward equality for all people. Soon after, a rest- and formal equilibrium, Olmsted could not have imagined World War II Memorial, dedicated in 2004. This new addition less generation chose the site to register its discontent over that the Mall would become hallowed ground for free speech. to the Mall’s collection of monuments combines nostalgic, the conflict in Vietnam. The war protesters of the late 1960s Nor could Downing have predicted the embrace of axial triumphal imagery – eagles, laurel wreaths, gold stars – and came to Washington in anger and didn’t shrink from con- grandeur, or anticipate that his naturalized botanical motives elaborate military narratives with an exaggerated and stream- frontation. They attracted retaliation by the district’s police, would be replaced with the abstract order of a gridded single- lined language. Arguments promoting it as an allegorical the FBI, and supporters of the war. When these events flashed species plantation of elms. Neither designer could imagine bridge between the Washington and Lincoln Monuments met across the nightly news, they propelled broader dissention that the Mall’s carrying capacity would be tested again and with approbation. For many, though, the memorial’s dramatic again by the addition of new causes, monuments, and institu- scenography interrupted the exquisite coherence among the tions, all competing for space and challenging the coherence Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln sites and overwhelmed of a cumulative legacy for the Mall. the pensive calm of the Lincoln Reflecting Pool.

5 Here is where we have the chance, in the coming years, to future, hopeful about the restored republic. He looks guard- Imperializing Washington, D.C. advance the open narrative that supports the people’s voice edly toward the western horizon – where Lincoln’s memorial fter its 1898 victory in the Spanish-American War, on the Mall. The National Park Service has designated Union would soon be realized. Twelve years after Grant’s statue was the United States unexpectedly found itself in Square, where L’Enfant’s Pennsylvania and Maryland Avenues erected, his gaze would connect directly with Lincoln’s across possession of an empire. The climate of patriotic intersect with the Capitol grounds, as a site that could host the Mall’s long axis. Herein lies another of those beautiful, fervor, at once frenetic and jubilant, galvanized organized (and permitted) “free speech” events without tram- meaningful tensions that have auspiciously accrued on the interest in improving Washington’s urban fab- pling the more delicate, rebuilt turf panels and the Lincoln Mall – cumulative testimony to our capacity to give voice to Aric to reflect its new imperial status. In 1901, Senator James Reflecting Pool. Union Square will be redesigned to provide the deeply moving themes that animate our people and their McMillan convened the United States Senate Park Commis- sturdier infrastructure support and more comprehensive causes. sion to orchestrate the task, appointing Chicago architect surveillance for events of all kinds. Daniel Hudson Burnham its chairman. Burnham was joined Rebuilding Union Square as a broad paved plaza will mean An Open Work and the People’s Right to the City by a fellow architect, Charles F. McKim – like Burnham, a eradicating a prior generation’s studied revision to the Mall, So the Mall’s history is built and rebuilt upon visions that are champion of neoclassical architecture; landscape architect however. The Capitol Reflecting Pool, completed in 1979 after modestly changed or radically revised. Whether they involve Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. (the senior Olmsted’s retirement a Mall rehabilitation plan by Skidmore Owings & Merrill freighted allegories and symbols or abstractions and reduc- and failing health precluded his participation); and sculptor with important guidance by landscape architect Dan Kiley, tive simplicity, we need to accept that they are potentially Augustus St. Gaudens. Burnham was awarded his prestigious will be removed or redesigned. But many – though surely not transient. Their meanings will change. And if, in our time, post largely owing to his famous managerial success with the all – support this action because SOM’s overscaled reflecting some come into disfavor, we cannot simply wave them off and construction of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition. Actu- pool awkwardly disrupted linkages between the Capitol start again – though there is plenty of evidence that we are ally, the commission’s formation amounted to a reunion of Grounds and the Mall itself. guilty of that. sorts: all of its members had contributed to the Chicago fair. Future protest movements will be giving up something For this author, the potential success of both the current Now the coterie was charged with the restoration and expan- more significant. Once they are directed away from the generation of changes and the next crucially rests on see- sion of Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s 1791 foundational plan for newly fortified historic areas, activist events will no longer ing the Mall as an open, evolving work – not a stable, fixed the national capital. have Lincoln’s redeeming, iconic presence as backdrop. The scene with established meanings, but a dynamic, responsive Far removed from the iconic urban landscape with appealing mythology of Lincoln presiding and tacitly endors- landscape that can accept revision when the time is right which we are familiar today, Washington then registered ing modern-day demands for parity or justice will be lost and when arguments for change build appropriate thrust not L’Enfant’s plan but the romantic, picturesque vision with the change in location. But the new site is visible from and momentum. We have begun to revive the Mall’s infra- of pioneering American landscape gardener Andrew Jack- the west front of the Capitol and adjacent to L’Enfant’s broad- structure, again, this time investing massively in water and son Downing. At President Millard Fillmore’s direction, est street, Pennsylvania Avenue, connecting directly with turf to ensure that it can continue to host ritual and everyday Downing had prepared a revisionist “Plan Showing Proposed the White House. If we accept that organized protest needs to events. We have identified important places where the Mall Method of Laying Out the Public Grounds at Washington” in 1851. be controlled – something not everyone can concede – there could change more radically – again. Whether we do this Significant aspects of Downing’s plan were implemented is wisdom in the choice. work in the name of historic preservation – because we are through time and by 1901, instead of L’Enfant’s open vistas If Lincoln’s gaze is relinquished in this trade-off, there is saving things and sustaining our heritage – or call it design (west from the Capitol and south from the White House), another poignant witness that could help guard and defend and see it as agency in an ongoing national narrative, we need Washington’s public grounds remained adorned with a sylvan the cause of free speech in a newly configured Union Square. to hold fast to an elastic view of democracy and its expres- mantle of meandering groves, camouflaging the original Henry Merwin Schrady’s arresting monument to America’s sion. If democracy’s project for Washington includes, as in plan’s spatial clarity. As Burnham was now charged with eighteenth president, General Ulysses S. Grant, commands Henri LeFebvre’s formulation, the people’s right to the city – our restoring L’Enfant’s original scheme, an overview of the the head of the square and will remain forever in place. The collective power to transform the capital and reciprocally Frenchman’s design enables one to better discern the extent Capitol Reflecting Pool practically neutralized this great work transform ourselves – then we can be fixed in our dedication and scope of the commission’s revisions to it. of public sculpture, the Mall’s largest. Reconfiguring the pool to the search, but not exactly fixed in the answers. This is L’Enfant’s layout is conventionally categorized as a will return Shrady’s impressive construction to its rightful how we will keep Washington, D.C., the world’s reference city Baroque plan, derived from André Le Nôtre’s royal gardens stature. The equestrian Grant, flanked by charged cavalry of democracy, vital and relevant to our nation and to people at Versailles (1661) – a somewhat pedestrian view apparently and artillery groupings on his left and right, is himself everywhere around the world. And it’s how we will keep the held by the commission itself. L’Enfant’s design, however, dignified and calm astride his mount. Though history has Mall as our own evolving, working front yard. was far from a simple, mechanistic exercise in geometric reflected unevenly on his presidency, upon his death in 1885, – Gary R. Hilderbrand abstraction. In fact, it encapsulated a nuanced response to many Americans associated him with the country’s reunion. the future capital’s physical site. Although it seems almost In Schrady’s depiction, the General appears to be casing the unimaginable today, in the late-eighteenth century the locale was distinguished for its picturesque beauty. As described by Washington, D.C., architect and architectural historian

6 Don Alexander Hawkins, the land was a mosaic of “hilly and them, he valorized America’s natural world. terminus of the north-south axis. In the new plan, L’Enfant’s level, wet and dry, forested and cultivated, rocky and fertile.” After undertaking considerable historical analysis (includ- open, expansive Grand Boulevard metamorphosed into a spa- Many period accounts extolled the unusual natural beauty ing a European study tour, with an obligatory call at Ver- tial corridor, a tapis vert. It was to be defined and accentuated, of the area, and L’Enfant was especially aware of its grandeur sailles), the Senate Park Commission officially presented its as the Columbian Exposition’s Court of Honor had been, with and variety. After experiencing the site firsthand, the archi- revision of L’Enfant’s design – also known as the McMillan neoclassical public edifices and flanking tree plantations, tect praised its suitability, adding, “Nature had done much plan, after the commission’s Congressional sponsor – in becoming an extended, linear courtyard of sorts. Eventually, for it, and with the aid of art it will become the wonder of 1902. Most fundamentally, the new layout underscored the with the McMillan plan’s incremental implementation, the the world.” In L’Enfant’s urban vision for the new American commission’s premise that imperial aspirations, rather than original references to the surrounding wider landscape were capital, the natural world would be artfully accentuated, not architectural allusions to republican Rome, should mani- sacrificed to Federal monumentalism. subsumed. fest the nation’s character. Despite its mandate to restore The McMillan plan’s spatially transformative monumen- When conceptualizing his layout, L’Enfant sought to rec- L’Enfant’s foundational layout, the commission had made tality can be seen as symbolically underscoring the passing oncile a geometric template with the site’s undulating topog- significant departures from it, most prominently in its of America’s frontier, which Frederick Jackson Turner had raphy. The architect first positioned government edifices and proposal to disassemble L’Enfant’s sophisticated landscape famously declared closed at, aptly enough, the Chicago Fair. monuments on elevated sites or public squares “command- optics. Eschewing his axial landscape foci, the commission Its scale and scope anticipated not just a national audi- ing,” as he put it, “the most extensive prospects.” These were instead closed L’Enfant’s vistas, replacing their landscape ence but an international one, as well. Seeing through what then linked with diagonal boulevards, enabling not only termini with built objects. A memorial to Abraham Lincoln – he believed to be the design’s imperial façade, critic Lewis physical communication but also, again in L’Enfant’s words, envisioned, predictably, as a Greco-Roman temple – was now Mumford registered the gravity of its symbolism. In Sticks “reciprocity of sight.” Having established these reference to anchor the western end of and Stones: A Study of American Architecture and Civilization, points or anchors, he overlaid them with an irregular street View of the Mall, circa 1910, with the the east-west axis. Similarly, written shortly after the Lincoln Memorial’s 1922 completion, grid, configuring it so that the orthogonals and the diago- newly opened National Museum of a pantheon accommodat- he mused that “the America that Lincoln was bred in, the nals converged at the squares. At the epicentre of L’Enfant’s Natural History in the foreground and ing statues of illustrious homespun and humane and humorous America that he plan lay a rotated T-shaped parkland of sorts, its form the the United States Capitol at its eastern national figures – later wished to preserve, has nothing in common with the sedu- outcome of two interlocking axes – one north-south and the terminus in the background. Courtesy realized as the Thomas Jef- lously classic monument that was erected to his memory. other east-west. Crucially, he awarded landscape foci to both of the Library of Congress, Prints and ferson Memorial – usurped Who lives in that shrine, I wonder – Lincoln, or the men who armatures of his cross-axial composition, fixing its align- Photographs Division. the Potomac as the southern conceived it; the leader who beheld the mournful victory of ment in response to landforms and potential views. From the the Civil War, or the genera- hilltop Congress House (today the Capitol), L’Enfant projected tion that took pleasure in an axial Grand Boulevard (today the Mall), leading the eye the mean triumph of the westward down the greensward, past a diminutive equestrian Spanish-American exploit, statue of George Washington (not a monumental obelisk, as and placed the imperial later realized) and across the Potomac to rest on the more standard in the Philippines distant wilderness. The north-south cross axis began at and the Caribbean?” the elevated President’s House (today the White House) and Although the McMillan extended south some seven miles to terminate with an aque- plan is generally esteemed ous prospect, the convergence of the Potomac River with its by historians today, it was eastern branch (today the Anacostia River). not implemented without Although aesthetically indebted to the Picturesque, protest, and fundamental to this scenographic landscape appropriation was symboli- the dissent was the fact that cally potent. In the late eighteenth century, the continental the plan’s regular geometry interior, evoked by the natural scenery and aqueous vistas in and spatial formality would L’Enfant’s plan, was perceived as a pristine, superabundant, require the destruction of and seemingly limitless frontier that beckoned the fledgling thousands of majestic trees. democracy to expand westward. By awarding landscape The commission conceded pre-eminence in his cross-axial strategy, L’Enfant recog- that some of the Mall’s park- nized that he must not sacrifice vistas to the architectural lands – carefully configured configuration of his plan. In preserving and accentuating to emulate the natural world – had been highly

7 developed according to the landscape art of the day, but it The Geometry of Emotion: tive and constantly evolving. It encompassed a diversity of nevertheless viewed them as archaic relics. Burnham and his The Gardens of Henri and Achille Duchêne styles, including what came to be known as the jardin mixte, colleagues had underestimated the degree to which the public o the extent that most people outside, or even as exemplified by the gardens at Blenheim Palace. Blenheim’s valued Washington’s urban forest, and opposition to their inside, France have any awareness of the landscape original gardens had been formal, but during the eighteenth plan ensued. architects Achille Duchêne and his father, Henri, century the fourth Duke of Marlborough hired Lancelot Most visibly and famously, the Evening Star, one of the it is mainly as the restorers, in the early part of the (Capability) Brown, the foremost proponent of the “jardin capital’s newspapers, lampooned the commissioners in a twentieth century, of the French formal gardens anglais,” or landscape garden, to redesign the grounds. Brown front-page cartoon drawing entitled Group of Le Nôtre–McKim Tcreated by André Le Nôtre at Vaux-le-Vicomte more than went about systematically eliminating the very allées and Tree-Butchers and Nature-Butchers. The image’s extended cap- two hundred years before. Despite the fact that the two men parterres nearest the house that had been at the heart of the tion explains: “[The group is] represented as on their way were the country’s preeminent landscape architects from formal garden, replacing them with the style Russell Page with axes to make a ‘clean-sweep,’ as they proclaim, of all the around 1880 to 1947, with Achille alone creating or restoring later uncharitably characterized as “facile compositions of grand old trees on the Mall. They are costumed in architec- more than six thousand formal gardens in Europe and the grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes.” At tural straight lines. Architect McKim heads the party. He Americas, some scholars the turn of the twentieth century, however, is blowing a big horn – his own. He also has a big head.” In and critics have persisted in in another swing of the pendulum, the ninth the sketch’s background are men bearing a great number of glossing over their contri- Duke decided that the gardens closest to the tubbed trees, their canopies sheared into cubes, to replace bution. The younger, more palace should mirror its stately architecture, those that would be cut down. Although the commission’s famous Duchêne has been and so brought in Achille Duchêne, who rel- chair was identified in neither title nor caption, the cartoon particularly slighted – often egated evidence of Brown’s earlier contribu- included an axe-wielding Burnham, observed by a terrorised dismissed as a rote gardener tions to the property’s outer reaches without and soon-to-be homeless bear cub. to aristocrats and million- altogether eliminating them. The protest was not simply an aesthetic clash or a reaction aires, a mere appropriator Achille, like his father, is said to have been to the horror of “butchering” nature. The outcry had more of the style of Le Nôtre (who brilliant and charming, and he possessed fundamental, albeit implicit, political and symbolic dimen- was, of course, an appropria- a voracious energy and curiosity. He was sions. Landscapes configured with regular, geometric layouts, tor himself). the author of two books with the historian especially on an expansive urban scale, were associated As the French garden Marcel Fouquier, Des divers styles de jardins with European autocracies. This is implicit in the cartoon historian Michel Baridon and De l’art des jardins du XVe au XXe siècle. described above, with its reference to Le Nôtre, King Louis points out, this is simply not His own revealing collection of drawings, Les XIV’s landscape gardener (curiously, the cartoonist, Clifford fair. While it’s true that the jardins de l’avenir, testifies to an unexpectedly Berryman, seemed to feel that Le Nôtre needed no introduc- Duchênes were passionate whimsical, sometimes Deco-ish side and also tion) and its inclusion of potted topiaries, used in the French about reviving the precisely to a prescient instinct: he foresaw the decline royal gardens. In contrast, Picturesque landscapes – both laid-out, mathematical “gar- of the private garden and the rise of “edu- naturally-occurring and designed – came to be seen in the den of reason,” or jardin à cational,” urban public parks that incorpo- nineteenth century as emblematic of the New World’s wilder- la française, they weren’t just Achille Duchêne rate sports. (One droll illustration from the ness and, in turn, American democracy. The desire to convey copycats. It seems more likely book depicts a swimming pool resembling a more republican message may well have underpinned that their present obscurity stems from the ease with which Versailles’s Bassin d’Apollon, with a tiered diving board the Downing’s decision to revise L’Enfant’s layout. Similarly, their aesthetic can be politically linked to the right-wing height of the Tour Eiffel and a Busby Berkeley arrangement of Downing’s predecessor Robert Mills had deliberately posi- French nationalism that arose following the establishment of tiny, bathing-suited figures flapping in the water and swing- tioned the Washington Monument off-axis, motivated by a the Third Republic, and especially during the Dreyfus Affair. ing from a flying trapeze high above.) picturesque landscape aesthetic. This was an optical effect the “We have exhausted the pleasures of insanity and the attrac- Unlike Le Nôtre, Achille was not descended from a long commissioners dismantled. tions of disorder,” declared the arch-nationalist Maurice line of royal paysagistes. Henri was born in Lyon in 1841, the As the furor enveloping the McMillan plan suggests, the Barrès, who in 1910 commissioned Achille Duchêne to design son of a notary, and came to Paris to study engineering at American and democratic connotations of the Picturesque a garden tout classique for him. “At Versailles, at Chantilly . . . the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, where he remained relevant to U.S. citizens in the twentieth century’s Le Nôtre expressed and perfected our best national qualities developed a passion for architecture. He was recruited by the opening decade. Nonetheless, the Senate Park Commission, of order and clarity. Look at these gardens, study them, and municipality of Paris, under Jean-Charles Alphand, during with its imperial agenda, turned a deaf ear to protest, and you will understand what French intelligence is and you will the city’s revamping by Baron Haussmann, and his work on Washington as we know it today is largely the outcome of its feel it develop in you.” plan. – Christopher Vernon And yet the Duchêne oeuvre, though always anchored in the classical tradition, was both thoughtfully innova-

8 the new squares and promenades made an impression. Ernest With civilization, utilitarian gardens gradually gave way to may have shuddered at the barbaric tyranny of the Versailles Sanson, an architect who worked in the baroque style of Man- ornamental ones: gardens over the natural world, but the ordinary contempo- sart and whose designs Henri greatly admired, offered him rary garden stroller might be inclined to experience more The squares of plantings, of vegetables or medicinal an introduction to society. Henri quickly rose to become a complicated emotions, of the sort that stripped-down spaces plants, became parquets, then parterres, with geometric designer of private gardens for the aristocracy, convincing his informed by geometry now summon forth. Witness the stark compartmentalization at first and later the most refined clients of the aesthetic merits of the jardin à la française, which geometry of the National September 11 Memorial pools, broderies. The squares, planted with fruit trees or orchards, was completely out of fashion at the time. designed by Michael Arad. Surrounded by sentinels of identi- became quincunxes, then groves; the squares of water Achille, who was born in 1866, began working with cal swamp white oaks, they offer windows to contemplation that served for irrigation or as fishponds became mirrors, his father at a young age, and the two men worked closely of the deepest sort. (“Reflecting Absence” was the title of his basins, and canals. together until Henri’s death in 1902. Whatever Achille may original design.) The memorial’s landscape architect, Peter have lacked in generations of inherited horticultural intelli- The art of the garden lagged behind that of architecture, Walker, cites as a turning point in his own professional gence, he made up for in scholarship and social connections; Duchêne argues, because châteaux were fortresses: “life was evolution his discovery of “the flat plane” during his first he formed a significant, lifelong friendship with, among oth- lived on the inside.” It was only after the “thick walls of the visit, in the nineteen-seventies, to the gardens at Vaux-le- ers, Ernest de Ganay, one of the foremost historians of French donjon and the towers” began to be relieved by mullioned Vicomte – which is to say, Achille Duchêne’s reinterpretation gardens. And, not irrelevantly, in 1892 he married Gabrielle windows that the idea of the garden could truly develop. He of Le Nôtre’s vision of the gardens. Lafourcade, the daughter of Jean Lafourcade, the chief gar- continues, “With the installation of a window, opening onto Among the many memorable photographs included in Le dener of the City of Paris. the arid esplanades of the fortified castle, came the need to Style Duchêne are shots of the original, unadorned parterres All of which is to say that the work of Achille Duchêne, on look out at something: the art of the garden was created.” created for the commensurately barren, medieval Langeais closer inspection, is far more complex than that of a fusty, It is this hunger of the eye for something beautiful and castle; views of the spare gardens of Nordkirchen, Champs, repressed imitator. His drawings can feel by turns dreamily pleasurable to behold at a distance, through a window, pref- Courances, Avrilly, Bourlémont, and Le Tremblay; and images fanciful and uniquely modern – even pre-postmodern – erably from above, that appears to have resonated with the of the father-and-son restorations of Vaux-le-Vicomte (proj- in their spare elegance and conscious blending of stylistic Duchênes, as evidenced by Le Style Duchêne, an exceptional ects dating to 1901 and 1924, respectively). And I experienced elements. In his actual garden creations, he sought perfect collection of their own photographs of their creations, taken a pleasurable surprise of recognition when I came upon an balance and harmony. “The soul of the garden is its empty from particular vantage points at different times of day. They aerial view of the more modest but perfectly balanced garden space,” the duc d’Harcourt wrote. “The greatest beauty is used photography to perfect their creations – Achille didn’t of Château de Sassy, which I had visited last fall. inseparable from the greatest austerity.” This suggests an hesitate to scratch out landscape mistakes on the glass nega- The château, situated in Saint-Christophe-le-Jajolet, in the ideal that Achille, having inherited his father’s disdain for tive – as well as to document them (wisely, it turns out, since Orne, is an hour’s drive west of the village where I planned to the style mou, or “soft style,” was forever striving to achieve. so many of their original designs have either disappeared or be staying during a trip to France last October. Eager to see Sometimes, he was gently chided for it. In a letter concerning been altered). These photographs immediately bring to mind a garden designed by Achille Duchêne, I had written to the the restoration at Blenheim, the Duke of Marlborough wrote, Atget’s photographs of Versailles, some of which were taken owner before leaving New York, and she had kindly invited “With that tinge of melancholy in your temperament, you are around the same time, and though different in execution and me to stop by one afternoon during my time in Normandy. inclined to be sombre and therefore severe. . . . M. Duchêne is intent, they share a kindred melancholy in their evocation of The day of my visit was chilly, with shifting, moody clouds faultless but he must remember to be human.” vast, silent spaces populated not by humans but by exquisitely stalking the sky. The soothing drive along A88 was curiously In his writings, Duchêne displays an easy grasp of the tra- groomed trees and shrubbery or by oversized, half-naked reminiscent of the expansive feeling of Wyoming. I passed jectory of garden design, piecing together important connect- statues of gods and goddesses from antiquity, who, in their field after field of beautiful, barren plowed earth that now ing elements and offering insight into his own sensibility: impossible marmoreal perfection, seem to have nothing in and again offered sun-dotted groves of orange and green and common with humans at all. brown trees off in the distance; church steeples poked up and In the beginning, in Egypt, in Greece, in Italy and in The standard distinction made between the jardin à la chimney smoke rose. France, all gardens were of regular form, which is to say francaise and the jardin anglais is that the French garden is I was a little early for my appointment, so I drove on to geometric. They answered first material desires rather an expression of man’s subjugation of nature, in contrast to Argentan to check my email at McDonald’s, one of the few than aesthetic ones. . . . The primitive gardens were merely the less formulaic, more “natural” English garden. But the venues in France that offer both free Wi-Fi and clean toilets. A vegetable gardens or simple gardens, divided into squares Duchêne photographs, like those of Atget, suggest something short while later, I turned off onto the departmental road that in order to facilitate planting: it was the rational side that different. The despotic Louis XIV might have been infuriated led to the village of Saint-Christophe-le-Jajolet (population engendered the form. Trees, planted in alignment, were by the sight of a dandelion that had had the nerve to sprout 235), which I never found; it seemed not to exist. I happened to grouped in separate squares in order to avoid harming, by in the gazon of one of his parterres, and Mme. de Sevigné pass by a parked taxi idling in the middle of an adjacent road, their shade, the plantings that were done in sections, in and turned around to ask for directions. “Tout droit!” a cheer- forms enclosed by fences of wood or greenery. There was ful blonde behind the wheel instructed (this is the universal most often a square or rectangle of water for irrigation, or directive in France, I’ve noticed), pointing the way up a hill a fountain in the style of the period. behind us. 9 I drove up the road, passing a cluster of Vaux-le-Vicomte, Grand Parterre, he dropped the leaflet to houses, until there suddenly loomed before as restored by Henri and Achille his knee and directed his me the sight of a classical French château, Duchêne in 1901 and 1924, gaze toward me. “Lancelot perched on a hill, high above a large horse respectively. Brown, the most famous pasture dotted with a random assortment gardener in the English of trees. There was no sign of a garden. I style, became known as Opportunity – no, Capability – continued along the road, now an allée, which because he was forever saying, ‘There is always a lot of capa- curved broadly around the pasture. At the top bility for improvement.’ At the same time, I would say that he of the hill before me were two pretty, slate- was the greatest destroyer of the French garden that the world roofed pavilions flanking the driveway – the has ever known. But it is always a question of the prevailing only remaining structures on the property mode – the nineteenth century was a romantic century. In that date from the original Chateau d’If, built England, you had Byron, Shelley; in France, Lamartine, Vic- in the seventeenth century. tor Hugo. On parle de coeur, pas d’esprit. We are speaking of the Construction of the central building of heart, not the mind.” what is now Château de Sassy was begun in He resumed reading from the pamphlet, “ ‘The setting of 1760. The first duc d’Audiffret-Pasquier, the Sassy, with its trapezium-shaped, Italian-style terraces, shows distinguished great-nephew and adopted how natural variations in height – due to the convergence of son of Étienne-Denis Pasquier – a moderate the Orne valley, and its tributary the Baize, with the hills of who held several important positions in the the Norman bocage – can be mastered.’ French government before and after the French Revolution jacket over a scarf and sweater; there was a pocket square in “O.K. So you see, at the end there is ‘Horticultural – bought the château in 1850, converting the study in its east his jacket and a gold signet ring on the smallest finger of his Aspects’? Donc, je vous explique. We have a full-time gardener, wing into a library to house the thirty thousand books he had left hand. As I followed him through a side entrance into the who unfortunately is not here today. There is also a buried inherited from Étienne-Denis. (One of the pavilions is filled château, I caught a quick glimpse of the garden below; my sprinkler system for watering the plantings of yews and box- with records from the latter’s tenure overseeing the Cham- first impression was that I had spied an exotic bird, deep in woods during the dry season. These plants grow slowly and ber of Peers.) In the early twentieth century, the second duc the forest. The French garden is intended to be private and live a long time. So it’s not a lot of work to maintain a French d’Audiffret added on to the château’s west wing and, around viewed only by invitation; for this reason hedges and trees garden, since, once planted, the vegetation doesn’t require 1925, commissioned Duchêne – at the time, the landscape had been planted to conceal it. pruning very often. Once a year is sufficient. architect most in demand in France among those who could Identifying himself as “just the manager” of the château, “The gardener just maintains what already exists,” he afford him – to make the existing garden, a simplepotager , Panafieu led me through a side entrance into a reception added, after a moment’s thought. “He doesn’t do anything into a formal one. room lined in oak boiserie and shelves of leather-bound new. Vous comprenez?” As I passed through the pavilions, the car’s tires loudly books with spines in gold lettering. Only afterward did I And if the boxwood dies? crunching on the thickly laid white gravel, the shuttered, notice that, when I had offered him my notebook to write his “You just replace it! It’s only maintenance; it’s not cre- handsome château came into view. Except for a few workmen name in, he had included the fact that he was also “le gendre de ation!” repairing the stables on the other side of the west wing, the la duchesse d’Audiffret-Pasquier” – the son-in-law of the duch- A short while later, we donned Wellies and crunched our place seemed deserted. But as I got out of the car, a window ess. The duchess herself then soon entered the room, in a way across the wet gravel of the parking area toward a long on the ground floor suddenly flew open and a middle-aged simple wool skirt and sweater, smiling amiably and offering stairway leading to the three terraces that fell away steeply woman stood staring at me with a look of seventeenth-cen- her hand. behind the château. At the first level, we were greeted by a tury horror. The grounds were now closed to visitors, and she I sat down on a tan leather sofa; patterns in the Persian row of pretty blue hydrangeas, still in bloom. Strolling across had obviously not been told that I had made special arrange- carpet at my feet reminded me of the volutes of a parterre. the lawn of the terrace, I looked up at the château and noticed ments. As I was attempting to explain, a silver-haired man Panafieu handed me a leaflet and began reading aloud: “ ‘For- black security gates drawn across the central double doors appeared behind the woman and called out “J’arrive!” mal gardens, which originated during the reign of Louis XIV, and also a bottle of Evian on a windowsill on the second A tall, attractive, and affable man in his early seventies transform the landscape into a balanced and controlled work floor – a funny, humanizing sight. The cliff-like appearance strode up to me, introduced himself as Jean de Panafieu, and of art, symbolizing a total domination over nature. . . . Unlike of the rough, black stone of the terrace wall felt a little instructed me where to repark my car, out of sight. He wore the landscaped garden . . . formal gardens appeal more to menacing as I looked upward. But when I turned to face the slightly scuffed wingtips, wool trousers, and a worn tweed reason than to emotion. Flowers, though not proscribed, are garden head on, with its white-sand pathways, elaborate not a necessary feature.’ boxwood parterres de broderie – planted in sand from Mouen “So you see, English gardens speak to emotion, French gardens speak to reason,” he declared matter-of-factly, as

10 that matched the brickwork of the château above – and on the plant, in the way that dancing is hard on a ballerina’s Designing with Nature: Jean-Marie Morel’s Landscape Theory pleasingly simple orangerie at the far end, I was filled with feet. Except for a few remaining red geraniums in urns, he ecological approach to landscape design so com- what I can only call a sense of feng shui à la française. As we which found an echo in the berries of the Irish yews flanking mon today can be traced to early twentieth-century descended, each level brought a new element of the garden the orangerie, there were no flowers. And, except for the swan, studies of plant ecology and their subsequent into closer view: from the second terrace, the boxwood ara- there were no birds. When I reached the orangerie (now a tool- application to landscape design, a development that besques and meticulously clipped buis boules and buis cubiques shed), I turned around to contemplate the terraces; they were culminated in Ian McHarg’s seminal Design with were delightful in their perfection, as were the hedges of majestic and beautiful from a distance, just as the garden had TNature in 1968. Yet it detracts nothing from the importance laurel that edged the garden. been only a few minutes earlier, from the vantage point of the of McHarg’s contributions and those of his predecessors It was only when we reached the ground level of the garden terraces. Perspective is everything, I thought to myself. Still, I to note that the process-oriented theory of designing land- that I began to experience a feeling of slight unease. As we found myself longing for the luxurious “infinity” offered by a scapes with natural systems in mind was foreshadowed in the crossed a narrow moat, a solitary swan swam up to us, seem- vast expanse. picturesque-garden literature of the 1770s – in particular, in ingly eager for company, or perhaps just food. As we made our way back to the château, Panafieu drew his the work of the French landscape designer Jean-Marie Morel “We have one swan and one duck,” Panafieu said. “When- fingers along the terrace wall’s black face, locating a protru- (1728–1810). ever another bird comes to visit, one or the other gets horribly sion. “A chicken bone,” he said, “to train the ivy. Nowadays, Morel was the most influential landscape designer in jealous.” I wondered if the swan ever went anywhere or just they are made of plastic, of course.” Returning to my car, France in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. spent his days alone, gliding along the water, contemplating I found a xerox of a delicate drawing of the design of the J. C. Loudon praised him as the “Kent of France,” but his style the garden as he pondered the meaning of his existence. garden lying on the driver’s seat, with a legend specifying is more akin to that of Capability Brown, which is to say he As we walked through the garden itself, I asked Panafieu the placement of specific trees and shrubs: L’if fastigié, Althéa, designed gardens in the natural, picturesque, or as commonly if children played there, thinking how delightful they would Fleurs annuelles (Géraniums). called, English-garden style. find its mazelike configurations. He said no, that it was a Once back in New York, I called up Sassy on Google Maps His most famous gardens are Malmaison and Ermenon- garden merely to be looked at; the children might damage the and zoomed in from the satellite view to compare it with ville, but his output included over fifty landscapes. Morel plantings. I noticed sad, bald the drawing I’d been given. The garden looked like a coffret worked for a Who’s Who of the French aristocracy and Terrace view of Achille Duchêne’s patches in the boxwood, due from Ladurée, a perfect match for its tiny dollhouse château, bourgeoisie. Before the Revolution, his principal patron was garden at Château de Sassy, October, to a blight that had hit a few and very nearly a perfect match for the drawing. From this Louis-François de Bourbon, prince de Conti; in the years 2013. years ago. Pruning is hard shifting height, I could also see, extending from the front leading to the First Empire, Napoléon headed his client list. of the château, the thrill- Indeed, during the Consulate, Directory, and early empire, ing, soothing expanse I had Morel was the de facto designer of the Napoleonic circle. been missing: two thousand Sadly, few of his gardens survive, and those that do have been acres of adjoining forest. severely compromised. Then I looked at a view of Morel’s most enduring work, therefore, is his Théorie des Vaux-le-Vicomte, marvel- jardins (1776; 2nd edition, 1802). In it he forges a theory of gar- ing at the beautiful designs dening that is best characterized as a synthesis of the laws of it carved into the earth. nature and the metaphysics of empirical aesthetic sensibility. I thought of the simple In less abstract terms, he takes a natural-systems approach to squares of acreage and of the landscape design. crop-irrigation circles that Knowledge of the specific needs of particular plants (how I love to gaze down at every much soil, water, or sun they require) is independent of an time I fly from New York to understanding of the interconnectivity of natural systems. Colorado, where my ances- For example, knowing that a particular tree requires a certain tors settled two years before amount of water does not presuppose an understanding and Achille Duchêne was born. appreciation of the global water cycle. But Morel’s theory And then I looked at the underscores that the requirements of individual plants, the squares cut into the earth in manner in which landscapes are formed, and the ways in lower Manhattan. Geometry which plants are distributed across landscapes are all related is history, and sometimes it can touch us to the core. – Mary Hawthorne

11 to broader environmental mechanisms. More than any of his cal level (though few claimed it as such), they were operating mechanisms of the natural world was relevant to the creation fellow garden theorists, Morel placed his theory of garden in the realm of empirical sensationalist philosophy, creating of landscapes. In this he stood apart. design within the dynamic framework of the natural world gardens that moved the soul through the manipulation of Morel secured his scientific knowledge from the most and its interrelated processes. natural features such as earth, rock, water, and vegetation. authoritative sources of the day. To be sure, Newton still Morel’s work was published in an era that saw the prolif- On a more practical level, they gave prescriptions for the reigned supreme in the eighteenth century, and Morel’s eration of theoretical texts on the new picturesque style of creation of gardens that emulated natural scenery. Although Théorie is filled with Newtonian tropes, such as “action and gardening. The English can rightfully claim authorship of they all proscribed the Le Nôtre-type landscape, they did not reaction” and the “refrangibility” of light. His main sources, the style itself during the first third of the eighteenth necessarily agree on what the new landscape should look like. however, were closer to home – in particular, the great century, with Charles Bridgeman and William Kent being Nonetheless, with the exception of Louis Carrogis de Car- eighteenth-century natural scientist Georges-Louis Leclerc, two of its better-known early practitioners. But the theory montelle, whose Jardin de Monceau appeared in 1779, all these comte de Buffon. Buffon lorded over French natural history of the new style was not formulated – or at least not writ- theorists agreed to varying degrees that artifice should be from his seat as intendant (director) of the Jardin des Plantes – ten down and published – until the 1770s, when in quick subordinate to nature in the creation of gardens. the most important center of scientific research in France, if succession, a slew of picturesque gardening texts appeared. Like his contemporaries, Morel raised gardening to the not all Europe. While not as historically important as Newton The Englishman Thomas Whately was the first to enter the ranks of the liberal arts and wholly accepted the aims and or Linnaeus, he was the undisputed head of French science, theoretical debate with his Observations on Modern Gardening objectives of the new garden theory. He read Whately and fol- and his monumental, forty-four-volume Histoire naturelle (1770), which went through lowed the Englishman’s lead in writing his ranks second only to Diderot and D’Alembert’s Encyclopédie two editions almost imme- own book; Duschene’s works and Watelet’s among the most influential publishing ventures of the diately and was translated Essai also featured in Morel’s Théorie. And as Enlightenment. into French and German the he worked with Girardin in the creation of Unlike Newton, whose breakthroughs dealt with math- following year. The French, Ermenonville, it is probable that the two men ematics and physics, Buffon studied the biological and earth who could never fully accept influenced each other. It can be argued that sciences: the workings, mechanisms, and products of the English dominance over this Morel’s book was better organized, more syn- natural world. Morel mined Buffon for the applicability of new art form, were quick thetic, and more cogently argued than those these discoveries to the development of a theory of land- to outpace their rivals in the of his contemporaries, but these reasons scape design. From Buffon, Morel learned to see the world publication frenzy, begin- are not sufficient to account for its unique as a dynamic system of interrelated processes, governed by ning with Claude-Henri and prescient contribution. Rather, Morel’s discernible laws; these laws determined the look and compo- Watelet’s Essai sur les jardins importance – indeed, his achievement – was sition of one’s natural surroundings. It was the work of men of 1774, and followed by to have charted a theory of gardening that, such as Buffon that made possible Morel’s systems approach Antoine-Nicolas Duchesne’s while beholden to the new aesthetics, was to garden theory. Considérations sur le jardinage unique in incorporating an understanding To better understand Morel’s method, one can compare his and Sur la Formation des of the processes of nature in garden design. discussion of landforms with that of his closest rival, Thomas jardins, both of 1775, Morel’s Alone among his contemporaries, Morel Whately. Whately’s chapter “Ground” employs a vocabulary Théorie des jardins of 1776, argued that to create landscapes that emulate lifted from painting theory: “The shape of ground must be and René de Girardin’s De natural scenery, one must recognize that either a convex, a concave, or a plane. . . . By combinations la Composition des paysages landscapes are the result of natural pro- of these are formed all the irregularities of which ground is of 1777. To these texts can cesses and governed by natural laws. Only in capable.” In contrast, Morel’s chapter “Du Terrein”[sic] begins be added countless prose Jean-Marie Morel (1728-1810). adhering to these laws could success be achieved in landscape not with a static description of landscape based on pictorial works, poems, epistles, and Courtesy of Bibliothèque municipale design. composition, but instead with a discussion of natural pro- the like, all dealing with the de Lyon. During the era that stretched from the Scientific Revolu- cesses. He posits that water, in its physical state of rain (and “new taste in gardening.” tion of the seventeenth century through the Enlightenment the accumulation of rain into rivers, torrents, etc.), is the The common thread in these works was the rejection of the eighteenth, our understanding of the natural world was major determinant in modeling land. Thus, leaving aside of anything resembling André Le Nôtre’s style. That is to utterly transformed. These crucial years of scientific discov- catastrophic events – volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and so say, their authors all professed a “more natural” manner of ery revealed a world of interdependent systems in continual on – the landscape we experience is the result of the actions modeling land, one that eschewed major and minor axes, transformation, governed and regulated by natural laws. of water. regular geometries, and clipped vegetation. On a metaphysi- Morel was not a scientist – he trained as a geographical engi- neer and architect – but he was aware enough of the intellec- tual currents of his era to recognize that understanding the

12 Morel extends his dis- Iillustration of the correspondence Pierre-François Fontaine noted in his diary that when Morel cussion to place rain in a between salient (outward pointing) was summoned to Malmaison by Joséphine, he examined broader context, recogniz- and reentrant (inward pointing) the work already executed and was displeased that trees had ing that it is part of a global angles in mountain valleys, an obser- not been planted according to their natural associations and water cycle – the “perpetual vation first made by Louis Bourguet in physical attributes. Here Morel was following the lead of circulation” of water vapor, the early 18th century. Diagram from Duchesne, who had noted how some plants live in association clouds, moisture, and rain. Jean-Louis Dupain-Triel, Recherches and distribute themselves in groupings. At the close of this key chap- géographiques (Paris, 1791). The use of the words “distribution” and “association” ter on landforms, he sup- comes tantalizingly close to a reasoned articulation of plant plies the lesson: that the form of land is not haphazard, but ecology and ecological zonation. As environmentally pre- the result of “action and reaction of certain agents.” It is sub- scient as Morel may seem, however, he is strictly transferring ject to natural laws, and the natural forms we see are result his observations of the natural world into a theory of garden of physical processes. Duchesne is the only one of Morel’s design, one founded on the belief that only by “seconding” contemporaries to broach the subject in similar terms, and (a word he picks up from Buffon) nature can gardening fully Morel’s discussion is more elaborate, nuanced, and complete. achieve the ranks of the liberal arts. Continuing his discussion of water’s role in shaping While it cannot be said that there was any ecologically landscapes, Morel acquaints his readers with the principles driven reasoning behind Morel’s theory – other than a per- of river hydrodynamics and river-valley geomorphology: haps-implicit belief that if it looked natural, it was environ- rivers are born in mountains and grow in size as they leave mentally sound – he nonetheless broke new ground. As noted, the region of their birth; their meanders depend on the size although Duchesne preceded him in introducing environ- and volume of the river’s flow and on the substrate of the mental science into picturesque-garden theory, Morel went riverbed; their speed is inversely proportional to the valley much further. He was the only garden theorist to digest the width, which increases in the downhill direction. He does vast amounts of new knowledge of the natural world available not neglect to mention a recent geologic finding: mountain in the eighteenth century and incorporate it into his think- valleys zig and zag in equal or “corresponding” measure in ing. Indeed, he was so keen on showing his learning that even the horizontal plane. (“In their frequent and abrupt changes, those favorably disposed toward his Théorie des jardins – they [valleys] form salient and re-entering angles that almost J.-F. de La Harpe, for example, who wrote a laudatory review always correspond with one another.”) This bit of natural are more variable, because they are formed by the drown- in the Mercure – objected to the use of scientific jargon history was discovered by Louis Bourguet in the first third of ing of a depression; the resulting island has the shape of the and technical terms, such as réfrangibilité, fermentation, se the eighteenth century and picked up by Buffon, who called it elevated portion of land, whatever that shape may be. The bifurquent, and loix de Physics. La Harpe, however, did recog- “the key to the theory of the earth.” Morel lifted this observa- lesson to be drawn here is that the physical appearance of nize the importance of Morel’s work, and especially praised tion from Buffon without attribution. islands is the result of the natural mechanisms that create the discussion of water. The fact that Morel gives water and its role in the forma- them. The would-be garden designer must understand these Morel’s use of scientific and technical vocabulary was not, tion of landscape such lengthy attention betrays his interest mechanisms when considering whether and how to include in fact, misplaced erudition, but an important sign of the new in landscape character, one of the central tenets of pictur- islands in a garden. Morel is the only author of the eighteenth territory into which he had ventured. Any new theory would esque gardening. He underscores that landscape character is century to address this topic. need its own critical vocabulary, and Morel’s use of terms dictated by landscape structure, which only nature can create. Elsewhere Morel comments on the distribution of vegeta- from geology, physics, hydrology, and biology arose organi- The designer can therefore enhance a site’s character, but he tion in mountains. In a passage derivative of Rousseau, he cally from the need to nudge garden theory in a new direc- can never create it anew or change its fundamental proper- notes how mountains conjure “all climates and all seasons” tion. The vocabulary to which La Harpe objected only under- ties; rather, his task is to work in accordance with the gen- simultaneously, by which he means that in a mountain- scores the novelty of Morel’s approach, which recognized erative operations of nature that created the site in the first ous area, both climate and vegetation vary with altitude. He picturesque gardening not only as an art but a science. As the place. speaks too of emergent vegetation in untended, mountainous first review of Morel’s book in the July 1776 issue of Affiches, One of the earth-science lessons that Morel teaches con- fields, where trees, shrubs, and grasses distribute themselves annonces et avis divers concluded: “Nous avons des Jardins, & cerns river islands and lake islands. They differ in appear- according to nature’s laws. un Art mêmes des jardins; mais nous n’en avions pas la sci- ance, he explains, because they are created by different Closely observing the natural world, Morel did not fail to ence; c’est cette science dont on peut regarder M. M. comme hydrodynamic processes. River islands are generally tapered remark on the “associations” of neighboring plants. Architect le créateur.” [We have gardens and even an art of gardens, but at both ends in conformance with the currents that encircle we haven’t had the science; it is of this science that we can and sculpt them. Their lozenge shapes, more or less invari- consider M. M[orel] the creator.] – Joseph Disponzio ant, are dictated by the river’s flow. Lake islands, in contrast, 13 Oudry’s Gardens of Arceuil in Paris, one of the most beautiful eighteenth-century hôtels he seems to have had a special regard for his work in this “ e paints landscapes which, by the force of poetry, remaining in France today. (It is now part of the Archives medium. According to his biographer and contemporary, acquire a supernatural air.” Although these words Nationales.) He reimagined the gardens that ranged up and Abbé Gougenot, “In a way he was more attracted to his draw- were written by the Goncourt brothers in the down both banks of the river at Arceuil in the spirit of the ings than to his paintings. He grouped them in portfolios nineteenth century to describe the landscapes of rocaille, with bosquets, grottoes, trellises, terraces, stairs, and of more than fifty pieces, of such variety that their owner Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721), they could be faux-perspective allées, until they rivaled on a smaller scale would have an example of all the genres he had practiced. Happlied as aptly to the landscape drawings of his contempo- the royal gardens of Saint-Cloud or Meudon. He considered them as an estate that he accumulated for the rary, Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755). Seduced by the poetry The fame of the gardens was soon well established, and benefit of his family; very few of them were to be had during of Watteau and by the light and shade of another Franco- their proximity to Paris ensured that many artists and writ- his lifetime.” None of them were in any public sales before his Fleming, Nicolas Largillière (1656–1746), Oudry went on to ers visited. Voltaire spent much time there in the 1730s as death, and he maintained a portfolio for each of his children produce his own supernatural art. He is the hero of this tale a guest of the Guise, and wrote Zäire along the banks of the with drawn examples of each genre that he practiced: land- of lost gardens. river. Even after the prince’s death, in 1739, many artists – scape, still-life, animals, portraits, book illustrations, and The village of Arcueil is located in the valley of the Bièvre, among them Charles-Joseph Natoire (1700–1777) and François genre scenes. less than four miles from Paris. There is not much left to see Boucher (1703–1770) – made their way to the site with chalk Oudry began to visit Arcueil as early as 1740; he was there in the village these days: a remnant of the Roman aqueduct, and paper, allowing us tantalizing glimpses of long-ago glory. so often that some have suggested he kept a home nearby, perhaps; two solid houses from the old estate. But once upon But by far the most prolific and systematic of these artists although there is no evidence of this – except for his deter- a time, in the early eighteenth century, it was home to one was Oudry. His scores of black-and-white chalk drawings on mined examination of every crook and cranny of the prince of the finest châteaux in France, with gardens so lovely and blue paper, including views of nearly the entire estate, count de Guise’s enchanted estate, even as it was beginning to go to complex that artists and writers made pilgrimages to study among the masterpieces of eighteenth-century graphic art. seed. He made as many as one hundred drawings at Arcueil, and draw and write in them. Oudry was a favorite of Louis XV, who was obsessed with of which some fifty are known today. It seems possible that Françoise de Brancas, princesse d’Harcourt, had bought hunting. The king much admired the painter’s facility in the drawings were a commission from the prince, based on the property in 1681. She proceeded to restore the old château, depicting the royal hunts, dogs, horses, and prey. Today the systematic way Oudry recorded all the topographical enlarge the gardens, and add fountains fed by the aqueduct. Oudry is best known as a still-life and animal painter, but aspects of the parkland, but the family never owned them. But it was not until after Anne-Marie-Joseph de Lorraine, those dry terms do little to describe the beauty and focus of They stayed with Oudry himself. All were made on blue paper prince de Guise, inherited the property in 1715 that it reached his determined examination of nature, be it the king’s favor- (now often faded to gray), in black chalk with white high- its full glory. As the eighteenth-century observer Piganiol de ite dachshund, a pile of just-caught fish, a furious hyena, or lighting. All are roughly the same size and date from around la Force remarked, “Anne-Marie-Joseph de Lorraine […]avoit à a haunting landscape. He was a master of chiaroscuro, color, 1744 to 1747. Sketched out on-site and then completed in the Arcueil une maison de plaisance qui a de grandes beauties.” and texture, and the subtlety with which he could describe studio, they are very finished sheets, works of art in their The prince appears to have had a grand vision from the the shades of white, silver, and start. His domain – which at its biggest was about thirty cream in a painting such as acres – was roughly rectangular, running east to west. The his famous White Duck (still pretty little river Bièvre cut it north to south down the missing after its theft from middle, and a section of the aqueduct crossed one corner. He Houghton Hall in 1992) is restored and added to the old château and orangery, and cre- magical. ated other grand structures, including a stable and entrance Oudry was also an pavilions. For these projects, he employed either Germain immensely prolific draughts- Boffrand (1667–1754), one of the most celebrated architects of man, his surviving sheets the time, or possibly a member of Boffrand’s studio. numbering in the thousands; Boffrand, who had a house in the nearby town of Cachan, is best known to us as the architect of the Hôtel de Soubise

View of the Gardens of Arcueil. Drawing by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, 1744. Courtesy of The Metropolitan 14 Museum of Art. own right, rather than preparation for something else – and nature made it especially picturesque and irresistible. But Place Maker Oudry thought highly of them. Many were exhibited at the then the prince’s son died, in 1747, and the surviving two Salon of 1753. daughters ran into financial trouble. In 1755, they began to Oudry’s interest here was in nature and light: he elimi- sell off the estate in parcels. Today nothing remains – of the nated the extraneous. White highlighting slashes sunlight gardens or the buildings. But thanks to Oudry, a meticulous William Christie over the formal elements of the garden; black chalk renders record of its manifold pleasures survives, scattered through- his story begins with a ten-year-old boy from Buf- dense shade. Sometimes the light is so bright it obliterates out Europe and the United States. And whenever there is a falo, New York, whose grandmother took him to steps; the shade so deep that the bottom of a tree or treillage retrospective of the artist’s work, there is the possibility that a performance of Handel’s Messiah at the city’s is lost entirely. There are very few figures, and those have no these sketches of Arceuil may be reunited, bringing the grace famous Kleinhans Music Hall, designed by Eero sense of story or anecdote. Occasionally another artist (Boilly, and grandeur of the prince’s gardens briefly, miraculously, to and Eliel Saarinen. He was so struck by the beauty perhaps), troubled by the focus on nature, added playful life once more. Tof the harpsichord music that, upon returning home, he put figures on an outing, but those are not from Oudry and have Although not as prolific, Charles-Joseph Natoire and other thumbtacks into the piano felts to reproduce the instrument’s little to do with his intensity. The drawings are riveting in artists visiting Arceuil sketched views of precisely the same sound. William Christie grew up to become a harpsichordist their simplicity, their emptiness, their magical focus. sites that Oudry had, often from the same vantage points. himself, as well as a world-renowned interpreter of Baroque From the drawings, we can make some assumptions about Like Oudry, Natoire, who visited the garden between 1747 and music and the founder and conductor of Les Arts Florissants, the nature of the prince’s gardens, which are firmly in the 1751, worked en plein air, creating drawings of delicate beauty which performs throughout Europe and the United States. style of the Regency. They were designed around the stepped and charm. For the past two summers he has brought his particular, terraces that cascaded down to the water’s edge on both Natoire’s importance for our story is less his recording passionate vision of beauty home again, hosting a series of sides of the river. Some of those terraces were cultivated as of these beautiful gardens, since Oudry had made such a elegant concert performances in his private garden in the kitchen gardens. Others, devoted to decoration or recreation, comprehensive study, but his love of plein air drawing, which Vendée region of France, producing a marriage of nature and included architectural elements: stone stairs, arbors, trel- was certainly inspired by Oudry’s example. In 1751, shortly art that echoes seventeenth-century Versailles. lises, and vases. Several hidden bosquets were ornamented, after his time in Arceuil, Natoire was named director the Harvard-educated, with an advanced degree in music from too, with sculpture, small ponds, and fountains. The grounds Académie de France in Rome. He lived there for the rest of Yale, Christie set out on a visit to France in 1970 after a brief were more formal than those of the emerging ‘picturesque’ his life. During the 1750s and 1760s, he took constant sketch- stint of teaching at Dartmouth. He stayed on in France, seek- gardens, and there were none of the developments that spoke ing trips to Tivoli, Frascati, Valmontone, and Nemi, making ing a new life made possible by his success as a harpsichord- of that style, such as the turf ramps or hedges that would dozens of landscape drawings and falling in love with the ist. In 1975, he left Paris for the Vendée, and in 1979, founded replace the trellis. The Grand Canal created from the Bièvre Italian countryside. In 1756, the French landscape genius-in- Les Arts Florissants, “a catch-all,” as he puts it, for his musical ran straight, rather than winding, and was spanned by several training, Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), joined him to pleasures – staged opera and concert performances of the small bridges. become a pensionnaire at the Académie for five years. There the baroque period that he has made integral to our contempo- On the other hand, it was not the formal garden manner young painter met Hubert Robert, learned outdoor sketching rary life in music. (The name derives from a chamber opera of Le Nôtre either, with vistas protracted to infinity. Arcueil’s under Natoire’s tutelage, and eventually went to live at Villa composed by Marc-Antoine Charpentier in 1685 for the duch- gardens had diagonal allées, intimate views and corners, d’Este in Tivoli. esse de Guise.) and complexity of design, while at the same time retaining In this indirect but important way, then, Oudry’s love When he discovered his house in Thiré one Sunday regularity. There were no curving walks and twisting shapes of nature and his field trips to the small village of Arceuil morning in 1985, it resembled a giant mushroom sprout- as one might find in English gardens of the same era. Like influenced Fragonard’s later and more famous accomplish- ing from desolate, abandoned fields, with only a solitary the Rococo manner in other arts, it was a gardening style in ments. For Fragonard, too, fell in love with plein air drawing, tree. Built in the late-sixteenth or early-seventeenth century, transition. lush landscapes, and overgrown gardens – and he went on the seventeen-room house was never lived in by its original Unfortunately, the prince had been Arceuil’s true care- to make red chalk drawings of Villa d’Este that stand as tours owners, but instead sheltered generations of tenant farm- taker, and his creation began to suffer after his death. For de force of garden art. – Tav Holmes ers who did not alter it. With seven fireplaces, room for an a time, this neglect seems to have intensified the garden’s extensive library, old wooden doors, and outbuildings for appeal; the captivating combination of artifice and unchecked further use, the house presented boundless possibilities. The property’s timely listing as a Monument Historique provided grants and low-interest loans for restoration by local artisans; today, repairs and renovations are in the hands of the sec- ond generation of masons and carpenters. For the grounds, Christie envisioned a green theater. He likens his creation of

15 the thirty-seven-acre garden Photograph of William Christie seamlessly with the red décor of the interior grand salon. A to taking a composition by Gary Gunderson. raised stone terrace across the back of the house overlooks by Jean-Philippe Rameau the entire dramatic landscape. Lutyens-style curved steps or Charpentier and add- “In my mind,” Christie descend in reverse semicircles into another series of topiary ing musical ornaments to says, “the underlying idea gardens below. embellish its structure. of this garden was music, In the house, a seventeenth-century Flemish tapestry in When I arrived in Thiré in the way that every opera deep shades of green and blue hangs prominently between last August for the Rencon- in the seventeenth cen- the kitchen and the salon. The tapestry depicts a garden with tres musicales en Vendée, as tury engages gardens.” He symmetrical rows of clipped hedges and trees, a spouting the festival is called, the first remembers dissolving into fountain in a pool, and an arcade in the background, giving concert I attended was held tears the first time he heard visitors a glimpse of the sort of landscape they are about to late in the evening in the passages of music written enter. I descended the main terrace steps and walked between village church. My initial for a shady glen in Handel’s tall topiaries cut into whimsical shapes, crested with balls of encounter with Chris- Acis and Galatée, an opera yew, and enclosed by a hornbeam hedge with swags. Beyond tie’s garden was therefore Les Arts Florissants has per- them lay the garden’s culmination, the Miroir d’eau, a rect- near midnight, during a formed. While he initially angular reflecting pool with a central plume of water, lined candlelight promenade. enlisted professional advice, on either side by allées of plane trees. Farther along, a stand Rows of sheltered candles lined the pathways, strings of light and a coterie of garden-designer friends is frequently about, of poplar trees is reminiscent of Rousseau’s island tomb at illuminated ghostly pyramidal topiary shapes and an open- in the end, he says, “I flew with my own wings, and every Ermenonville, and a stream edged with wild purple loose- latticework pergola, and stars twinkled above. Although it was detail is my own.” He even trims the topiary himself and strife meanders off to quiet glens. A seven-arch hornbeam difficult to orient myself in the darkness as I wandered in and “talks” to his garden every day, he says, through his gardener! arcade with a stately architectural presence formally closes out of enclosures and across courtyards and terraces, it was By retaining the Protestant austerity of the house’s main this view, but in the distance, elevated above an agricultural also exhilarating to feel lost there, surrounded by points of facade, Christie has provided a rustic, whitewashed foil for field, is the final point, an eye-catching grotto on the hillside. light that seemed to reach out to infinity under allées of trees. the formal entrance courtyard. Containing four parterres Everything then melts into forest. The next day, I was given a plan to direct me through of clipped box in elaborate, arabesque patterns, it features Throughout the music festival, the garden continuously this highly structured garden. One might first assume that fanciful topiaries, including cones, and balls in terracotta revealed itself. Afternoons were dedicated to a program of it had been designed in the French classical style, given its pots. After crossing beneath a rustic pergola of grapevines promenades musicales, in which small groups of musicians preponderance of topiary and clipped hedges and its owner’s entwined with roses, the visitor enters the Théâtre de ver- and soloists performed fifteen-minute concerts in one of six devotion to the musical world of the court at Versailles. But dure, the green theater Christie dreamed of when he first saw garden retreats, each sufficiently distant from another. Over in fact his revelatory moment relating to gardens came when the land. Across the top of this dense, circular, yew enclosure the course of three hours, the audience moved leisurely from Ralph Kirkpatrick, his Yale harpsichord professor, steered is a playful series of pagoda-style roof motifs in yew that cre- one location and performance to the next, with ample time him to Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., when Christie ate the illusion of architectural chinoiserie. A stone bench to take in the surroundings: one had the feeling of being in a was there demonstrating against the Vietnam War in 1967. As around the interior perimeter will provide seating for the baroque idyll. Christie tells it, the garden – designed from the 1920s on by concerts to come. And as the music enhanced the gardens, the gardens Beatrix Farrand for Mildred and Robert Woods Bliss – “blew Just behind the theater, a new white garden, planted with enhanced the music. Sitting first in a grove of pollarded wil- my mind.” nicotiana, salvias, petunias, and asters, among others, has lows by the Chinese bridge, listening to a medley of John Already passionate about architecture, he noted immedi- been banked up against the curved yew wall in stunning con- Dowland’s airs sung by a countertenor and accompanied by ately how Farrand managed eclectically to combine English trast. Beyond that is a vast orchard of peach and apple trees, a theorbo, I became aware of a rippling brook and leaves rus- arts-and-crafts techniques, the Edwardian and Queen Anne divided into four squares with paths running in between. I tling in the wind, adding their own strains to the music. In styles, and Dutch and Italian landscape motifs. In essence, walked from there into the potager, with a mélange of vegeta- the cloister, the trickling fountain could be heard in the quiet Farrand had traveled throughout Europe to garner her mix- bles and flowers, and finally into another garden with a long between madrigals by Giaches de Wert. And while we were matched design vocabulary, and under her influence, Christie bed of rudbeckia by a garden pavilion. One realizes that the seated in the red garden, listening to one of Handel’s English imported it back to France. With its pergolas, pebble paths, property’s appeal comes from large gestures in a sequence of cantatas, a flock of white fantail pigeons suddenly flew up in a pleached lindens and hornbeams, and rose-laden walls, his confined spaces that flow one into the other. circular sweep with a great batting of wings, heading for the garden in Thiré displays the same love of the vernacular that Christie has made imaginative use of retaining walls at sixteenth-century pigeonnier next to the house. gives Farrand’s gardens their charm. either end of the long, horizontal house, creating on one side For the final promenade concert, everyone gravitated to an enclosed cloister garden with four knot gardens and a the main terrace and stood or sat by the immense topiaries, fountain, and on the other, a red garden. Here Christie has installed glass doors so that the outside appears to blend 16 which by then were casting long shadows in the glow of the Book Reviews slipped gradually away. The the small, unobtrusive stone simply, sublimely, beautiful. late-afternoon sun. The harpsichord was brought out for Wil- deeper I went into the park, markers traditionally used This sublime beauty is liam Christie, now in a gleaming white jacket, to accompany the more untamed the land- by Quakers. The landscape celebrated in Prospect Park: the singers, and the terrace became a stage seemingly sup- scape became. Consulting surrounding the cemetery Olmsted & Vaux’s Brook- ported by topiary buttresses below. In an earlier conversation, Prospect Park: Olmsted & my map, I turned onto the was thickly forested. Hawks lyn Masterpiece. Published Christie had told me of a teenage summer when he’d worked Vaux’s Brooklyn Masterpiece Center Drive. The foliage soared overhead. The cem- in collaboration with the on an Indian reservation in New York State and escaped a few By David P. Colley was dense around me. The etery itself had the look of Prospect Park Alliance times to attend concerts at Tanglewood. “It was paradise for Photographs by Elizabeth trees were so tall that they an arboretum, with tulip and bearing endorsements me,” he recalled. “A summer music festival close to nature, Keegin Colley hid the brilliant sunlight trees, copper beeches, and from former New York City an arcadian experience that has been important to me ever New York: Princeton that had embraced me elegant Japanese maples. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, since.” At the end of the piece, as the crowd showed its appre- Architectural Press, 2013 minutes earlier. I no longer The actor Montgomery Brooklyn Borough President ciation with rhythmic clapping, I thought about how Christie heard the sounds that had Clift was apparently buried Marty Markowitz, and U.S. had re-created that arcadian experience for others. Several years reached me in the Friends cemetery, Senator Chuck Schumer, For the grand finale of the festival, everyone attended ago, when I from the Long but I don’t recall seeing his this is the first monograph the evening performance of Henry Purcell’s opera Dido and was writing Meadow – grave site. I do remember on the park. It’s a love letter Aeneas, which was performed on a floating stage in the middle my second of soccer and grave after grave of young in the form of a coffee-table of the Miroir d’eau. Narrow rills of water ran in a refreshing novel, I went baseball, and adults, mostly in their twen- book, illustrated by gor- trickle down either side of the short flight of stone steps lead- on a research children frol- ties and thirties, who died geous photographs taken ing to the wide lawn, where the rows of chairs set up for the excursion to icking. Even in November and December over a five-year period by audience around the watercourse were occasionally punctu- Prospect Park. the joggers of 1918. Although I’ll never Elizabeth Keegin Colley, ated by convoluted rocailles. As daylight faded, the plane trees My destina- and bicyclists know for certain, most of with text by her husband, illuminated from below were reflected in the water. tion was the had disap- these young people were David P. Colley, whose previ- A hush settled over the crowd as the regally costumed cast Friends Ceme- peared. All probably victims of the ous publications include and musicians emerged through the trees and filed across a tery on Quaker was silent. As Spanish Flu epidemic that several books about World ramp to the stage. In the center once more was the harpsi- Hill. Laid out I searched for raged during those months. War II. Colley approaches chord with Christie at its helm, his back to the audience to before the the turnoff to The epidemic touched the his Prospect Park portrait conduct, his signature red socks visible under his pants legs. park was built, the cemetery the Quaker cemetery, I had lives of the characters in my with an astute perspective As the ensemble performed, complete darkness enshrouded remains private property. an eerie, disquieting feeling novel, too, and seeing the on the goals of Frederick the area and the cast glowed, jewel-like, at the center, lit from One of my fictional charac- of abandoning not simply graves brought the past to Law Olmsted and Calvert below by radiant lighting and animated by Christie’s superb ters, a member of the Society the crowded city but the life for me in all its heart- Vaux, goals which remain direction. of Friends, had died tragi- twenty-first century itself, break. strikingly relevant today. While William Kent may have proved that “all nature is cally, and I was looking for a of leaving behind even the After taking some notes, “Prospect Park,” he writes, a garden,” William Christie would say that “all nature is a place to bury her. era of Olmsted and Vaux I left the cemetery and wan- “realized its designers’ stage” – and one most suitable to the baroque period and its Although by then I’d and returning to a prime- dered the park. The Nether- vision of the democratic music. For the visitor who passes through sunny glades lis- lived in New York City for val period before Brooklyn mead, the Lullwater, the Vale ideal where people would tening to harmonies by day or sits still in darkness as voices decades, I’d never visited existed. of Cashmere . . . the names mingle and socialize waft over clear waters, his garden casts a spell. It is a dream Prospect Park. Setting out The entryway to the themselves were evocative of openly – and without world. “While we are here,” I heard someone say, “we are all from Manhattan on a brisk Friends cemetery was cut the magical places I found. reservation – with others living William Christie’s dream.” On this last evening, the and sunny autumn after- into the foliage on the left The paths were an invitation from diverse backgrounds, resounding opening chorus of Dido and Aeneas caught the noon, I took the F train to side of the drive. A muddy to exploration. The land- cultures, and socioeconomic spirit of the place: the 15th Street stop and path led to the wrought-iron scape became sheltering, levels. . . . It is a sanctuary entered the park through gates, and surprisingly, the comforting. I felt a sense of that also fulfills its role as a See Nature, rejoicing, has shown us the way the Bartel-Pritchard gates were open. Still seeing both relaxation and renewal, melting pot.” With innocent revels to welcome the day, entrance, with its majestic, no one, I went in. I walked as well as a whimsical curi- Colley’s history of the The tuneful grove and talking rill, neoclassical columns. As up a hillside covered with osity about what lay around landscape that became Pros- The laughing vale, replying hill. I walked along the West each curve of the pathway. pect Park begins in the Ice With charming harmony unite, Drive, any sense of the city I imagined myself walk- Age, when “millions of tons The happy season to invite. ing across a lush English – Paula Deitz country estate. The park was 17 of ice, stacked as high as one third largest city by the Stranahan’s grasp of Major park construction tricks, if you will – that Concert Grove House and thousand feet, scoured the end of the 1860s. Colley money and power politics took place between 1866 and Olmsted and Vaux sought to replaced his fanciful bridges land that today makes up provides an intriguing his- made the park possible, but 1873. Colley examines the create a powerful contrast to with “utilitarian cement the Long Meadow and the tory of the Brooklyn of that its primary designer was construction of each section the clamoring city streets.” spans that had lead-pipe Nethermead.” The glacial era – its teeming harbor, Calvert Vaux. “Vaux was the of the park in turn; and Prospect Park was mostly railings and chain-link erratics found in the park its waves of immigrants, man whose plan shaped the archival photographs, complete by 1873. Stranahan fencing.” Moses welcomed came from the canyon walls its homeless and poor, and the raw acres of land – illustrations, and diagrams led the Park Commission cars to the park, and grass- of the New Jersey Palisades, the barely checked violence hills, forest, farmland, and that accompany this discus- for another decade, fighting lands became parking lots. and these boulders were among radically different bogs – into Prospect Park,” sion are fascinating. He stalwartly to maintain it as By the 1960s, Prospect utilized by Olmsted and ethnic groups and economic Colley writes, in an exten- has a gift for explaining in Olmsted and Vaux had envi- Park was well into a down- Vaux to construct the park’s classes. With parkland sive and touching portrait layman’s terms the techni- sioned it. By 1900, however, ward spiral. By the late Boulder Bridge as well as essentially nonexistent in of the Englishman whose cal details of how things 15 million people were visit- 1970s, fewer than 2 million the Ravine’s Fallkill and Brooklyn, by 1860 Green- reputation has always been work, whether addressing ing the park every year. With people a year visited the Ambergill waterfalls. Wood Cemetery was draw- dwarfed by that of his part- himself to drainage, leak- such heavy use, the land- park – down from the 15 When the first Europeans ing roughly half a million ner. Olmsted was working age from the Lake, or the scape deteriorated. Vaux’s million a year in 1900. The arrived in the early six- visitors a year. At this point, at the Mariposa Mining construction of the well and rustic wooden structures park was filled with trash, teenth century, the Lenape James S. T. Stranahan, a Estate in California when accompanying steam engine began to rot, and the Lake covered with graffiti, and tribe of Native Americans Brooklyn businessman and Vaux asked him to return that fed the water features turned stagnant. The City had become a haven for dominated the region. Cen- civic leader, stepped forward to New York City to assist and reservoir (which existed Beautiful movement and criminals. Many New York- turies later, the East Drive of to spearhead the effort for a with the construction of into the 1930s). He also the growing prominence ers were afraid to enter it. Prospect Park would run, at park through the Brooklyn the new park in Brooklyn. identifies English parks of neoclassical architecture Finally, in the 1980s, the least in part, along a Native Park Commission. Capturing the tragedy of that inspired the designers, brought a new aesthetic to situation changed. Tupper American trail. During the Stranahan, Calvert Vaux, Calvert Vaux, who is thought such as Birkenhead, near the park, reflected in monu- Thomas, an experienced American Revolution, the and Frederick Law Olmsted to have committed suicide Liverpool, which Olmsted ments, memorials, arches, public servant, “worldly, Battle of Brooklyn (also each brought unique gifts in 1895, Colley insightfully visited several times. And and entryways added around tough, and smart,” became called the Battle of Long to the development of the writes: “Vaux had the ability Colley explicates the design the turn of the nineteenth the Prospect Park admin- Island) was fiercely fought park, but Colley consid- to design Prospect Park, but elements that make Pros- century, many designed istrator and served in that on the land that became ers Stranahan the most he lacked Olmsted’s hard- pect Park so alluring, such by the architectural firm role for thirty-one years, Prospect Park, in the areas important player. “Although nosed management skills to as the small waterfalls that of McKim, Mead & White. bringing together compet- now called Redoubt Hill and Olmsted and Vaux are the implement his plan. . . . It is fill the air with the sound of Meanwhile the decline of ing forces and spearheading Battle Pass. “It is in today’s park’s marquis figures,” Vaux who is responsible for rushing torrents; the views the landscape itself – from the park’s turnaround. She Prospect Park that we find Colley writes, “it was really the handsome arches, the framed by archways and erosion, deferred mainte- “impacted the development the only urban Revolution- Stranahan’s shrewd political Dairy, the Oriental Pavilion, strategically placed foliage nance, and overuse – con- of Prospect Park as much ary War battle site that still maneuvering and iron will the Concert Grove House, and trees; and the scenery tinued unabated. Robert as anyone who had come exists almost as it was in that made the park a reality.” the rustic wooden shelters, reflected by the cleverly situ- Moses, parks commissioner before,” Colley writes. The 1776,” Colley notes. In a sad Born near Syracuse, the son and the bridges that blend ated Lake. Paths and drives from 1934 to 1960, took some Prospect Park Alliance was coda to this history, bodies of a farmer, Stranahan came so seamlessly into the park were curved to create an action to preserve the park, formed in the mid-eighties, of American soldiers were to Brooklyn when he was in landscape. But in enlist- illusion of distance, as if one but left a mixed legacy over- with the restoration of the discovered there during the his thirties. His commercial ing the assertive and driven were being drawn deeper all. Moses added baseball Carousel as its first proj- park’s construction. interests included railroads, Olmsted, he acquiesced to and deeper into a wilder- fields, the band shell, and ect. Landscape restoration In the nineteenth cen- lumber, grain elevators, second billing, and through- ness. Among the many bril- the zoo (replacing Olmsted began and continues. Today, tury, Brooklyn experienced ferry boats, and real estate. out the remainder of his liant details of Olmsted and and Vaux’s menagerie), and Prospect Park is a ravish- remarkable growth, on its He led efforts to bring cul- life he lived, largely by his Vaux’s plan was the lowering built playgrounds and a ing, glorious fulfillment of way to becoming America’s tural centers to Brooklyn, as own design, in Olmsted’s of the paths that traverse skating rink too. But he also Vaux and Olmsted’s original well as schools and librar- shadow.” the Long Meadow, so that destroyed Vaux’s Dairy and vision. ies. Before the Civil War, he the meadow appears end- Is it possible to have served one term in the U.S. less. Colley explains, “It was too much of a good thing House of Representatives. through the employment in a monograph about a of these design elements – 18 landscape as magnificent Gardening by the Book: Gorgeously designed by Rachel McMasters Hunt, tions, and images of land- Warren’s catalog offers as Prospect Park? Alas, yes. Celebrating 100 Years of the Linda Florio and sumptu- for example, is well known scape designs, the catalog an accessible and enticing Colley’s text often slips into Garden Club of America ously printed in Connecticut to the world of bibliophiles, includes magnificent images window on her subject for adoration, as if each sen- By Arete Swartz Warren by GHP Inc., Gardening by and it is a revelation to read from a wide range of other the general audience and tence ended with an excla- New York: The Garden the Book enables the reader of her development as a sources as well: books on broadens the awareness mation point. In the chapter Club of America and to absorb the images and garden-club member who birds, a treatise on beekeep- of more specialized read- entitled “Delights of the The Grolier Club, 2013 information that were wrote articles for the GCA ing, an early interpretation ers, cogently summarizing Park,” he is especially prone offered in concentrated Bulletin, chaired the library of fossils. There are rare information from histories to this overenthusiasm. The Just over a profusion at committee during World and luxurious plate books of botanical illustration, modern photographs of the hundred years the Grolier’s War II, and helped to curate represented, such as Johann herbals, horticulture, and park, arresting one by one, ago, twelve gallery in its exhibitions, all the while Volckhamer’s eighteenth- garden design. In order to take on a sameness. The local garden New York. collecting the rare books century folio of citrus vari- maintain its broad appeal, Long Meadow is pictured clubs formed The Garden that in 1961 would form the eties floating on the page the catalog has no footnotes, over and over, in similar a national Club’s library contents of the new Hunt above garden views, Mark and the bibliography omits views, each caption once association to emerges as Botanical Library (now the Catesby’s illustrated natu- most narrowly focused again telling the reader share horticul- a dynamic internationally respected ral history of the American scholarship as well as works how beautiful the Meadow tural exper- collection, Hunt Institute for Botani- Southeast, Robert Thorn- of contextual history. is. The devastation of the tise, encourage a tribute to cal Illustration at Carnegie ton’s famous Temple of Flora, There is much to be 1960s and 1970s is repre- civic planting, a venerable Mellon University). Priscilla Falkner Bury’s gleaned from casting so sented only by several small, and protect association of This catalog begins with stunning portraits of lilies wide a net, but inevitably generic-looking photos of native plants regional gar- a series of short introduc- and amaryllis, and Adveno the requirement of exper- the effects of erosion, photos and birds. The den clubs and tory essays: one by Leslie K. Brooke’s chromolitho- tise on 150 various subjects that might have been taken organization grew rapidly, the dedication and generos- Overstreet briefly survey- graphed Italianate gardens causes occasional problems. anywhere. attracting garden writers ity of its members. ing the history of botanical of Victorian England. These A careless error raises a A generation of New and designers as well as As its title suggests, the books; another by Denise are balanced by botanical cautionary flag: Salomon de Yorkers essentially grew community leaders. Within catalog celebrates the orga- Otis on American women textbooks, popular manuals, Caus could not have worked up without Prospect Park. a year, a library commit- nization and its book-loving in garden writing and and more recent volumes for the Sun King since Louis If not for the resolve of tee was established. Over constituents as much as the landscape design (and their still familiar and helpful XIV was born after the death the citizens who fought to the course of the century, volumes themselves. To a many connections to the to gardeners today. Warren of that garden engineer. save it, the park could have a remarkable collection of great extent, this is a work GCA); and a third by Arete adds valuable introductions This misstatement appears been lost forever. Prospect rare books grew under its of social history, noting Warren on the develop- of the twentieth-century within the entry on Alicia Park the monograph is a supervision, largely due to the names, relationships, ment of the GCA, its leaders, literature to the more thor- Amherst, which repeats lavishly illustrated celebra- the donations of members. estates, and activities of and its library. This last oughly studied works of pre- uncritically the claim that tion of Vaux and Olmsted’s Today the chair of the the people associated with is a unique contribution, vious centuries. Especially Amherst was the “founder of great masterpiece, but this library committee is Arete these books. At a time when drawing new attention to useful are the discussions garden history,” an over- celebration would have Swartz Warren, a well- privileged women were the intellectual life of the of books connected with the statement ignoring John been more powerful yet had known speaker and the encouraged to pour their association. GCA itself. Foremost among Claudius Loudon among the book included a visual coauthor of a handsome intelligence and energies The essays are followed these, Alice Lockwood’s others. A presentation of recognition of how very book on the history of glass- into domestic and volun- by 150 entries, organized in Gardens of Colony and State Frederick Pursh’s Flora of bleak its condition was just houses. In celebration of teer commitments rather six chronological sections, remains a noble reference North America, which first several decades ago. Such an the centennial, she curated than professional careers, describing each item in work on American garden introduced plants from the acknowledgment would have and wrote the catalog for the formidable talents and the exhibit, from a hand- history, and it is interest- Lewis and Clark expedi- served as a warning about an exhibition of rare books characters of leaders in the painted flower book of 1612 ing to learn more about its tion, states incorrectly that the future, to jolt us from selected from the library of ladies’ clubs produced some to the twentieth-century origins and author. his former employer Dr. complacency. the Garden Club of America monumental achievements. publications of the GCA Benjamin Barton was “unin- – Lauren Belfer (GCA) and hosted by the itself. Although heavily terested” in publishing an Grolier Club, the great weighted towards botanical American Flora himself. American center for biblio- plates, horticultural instruc- Pursh’s Flora was published philes and print collectors. 19 in London in the midst of remains unexplored and for use in her popular lec- illustrated with vintage a partnership with Mattie explicit field notes for guid- the War of 1812; and the out- unmentioned here. tures. The 250-plus images slides from a different col- Edwards Hewitt (1869–1956), ance. She used hundreds rage of Americans support- With these reservations, included here – many of lection, this book provides a another important pioneer of the hand-colored glass ing American publication Gardening by the Book is which have not been seen near-comprehensive visual photographer. Together lantern slides in the popular of those discoveries, who undeniably an achievement in decades – are but a record of American gardens they began photographing lectures she gave around accused Pursh of purloin- of great interest to garden- small sampling of John- during an important time gardens while on architec- the country to garden clubs ing his Lewis and Clark ing enthusiasts and real son’s important collection period and a treasure trove tural assignments around and other organizations. specimens, goes unmen- value to garden-book collec- of eleven hundred black- of information for future the country, profiting from Her first lecture, in 1911, tioned here. A more bal- tors. It is a beautiful book and-white and color slides. studies. the large-format maga- was entitled “Our American anced presentation of Peter with a wealth of splendid Unlike the archives of most Frances Benjamin John- zines devoted to American Gardens,” and from there Henderson, described here reproductions, a pleasure to other garden photographers ston (1864–1952), who was country houses and gar- she branched out into more as someone who wrote only peruse, and a worthy com- of the era, which were either born in West Virginia and dens that began appearing specialized topics such as for nurserymen, would have memoration of the centen- broken up or destroyed, the died in New York, began around 1900. The inclusion garden planning, small affirmed that he was indeed nial of an important Ameri- Johnston collection is intact. work as a photojournalist in of Johnston’s and Hewitt’s gardens, famous gardens, an important stimulus and can environmental, civic, It is housed in the Library the 1880s selling illustrated evocative black-and-white and the like. Between 1915 guide to those professionals and horticultural organiza- of Congress, and searchable stories to magazines. At the photographs in Country and 1923, Johnston delivered but equally concerned with tion. – Elizabeth Eustis online. Academie Julian in Paris Life in America, House and more than one hundred lec- his audience of amateur While sifting through and the Art Students League Garden, The House Beautiful, tures, charging $75 to $100, gardeners, as evidenced by Gardens for a Beautiful the collection to select in Washington, D.C., she and other magazines helped plus $10 for the purchase of his books, seed catalogs, America, 1895–1935: representative images for learned how to frame her codify American gardens individual slides or prints. and vast correspondence Photographs by this volume, architectural compositions and acquired and bring recognition to the By 1930, her reputation well with customers. Missing Frances Benjamin Johnston historian Sam Watters dis- the technical skills neces- careers of leading women established, she commanded from the list of influences By Sam Watters covered that many of these sary for her path-breaking designers like Ellen Ship- $150 per lecture. As Watters on Jacob Weidenmann is New York: Acanthus Press long-forgotten glass slides career. Johnston, who man and Marian Coffin. points out, Hewitt made her Rudolf Siebeck, superinten- in collaboration with the were unlabeled, which tirelessly promoted pho- After her collaboration living as a photographer, dent of the Viennese parks Library of Congress, 2012 made his task more chal- tography as a profession for with Hewitt ended, John- while Johnston became a and an influential designer, lenging. During the identi- women, was an educated ston focused exclusively “garden celebrity.” in whose orbit Weidenmann Gardens for fication and woman who needed to earn on garden photography, Taking a cue from John- learned about gardens a Beautiful selection a living. As C. Ford Peatross which proved to be a lucra- ston’s own slide albums, before coming to America. America, process, he of the Library of Congress tive venture. Her career Watters has organized the Siebeck’s designs were pub- 1895–1935 compiled writes in the preface, “Fran- surged significantly when book around five themes: lished in the same distinc- celebrates extensive ces Benjamin Johnston was some of her photographs Gardens of the East, the tive graphic style as those the heyday research a protean figure – pioneer were included in important West, the South, and the Old of Weidenmann – this is a of American data, evi- photographer, photojour- books devoted to gardens, World, and City and Sub- comparison yet to be studied gardens dent in the nalist, and visual artist – such as Louise Shelton’s urban Gardens. The sites and to this reader the most from the detailed who moved with equal ease Beautiful Gardens in America photographed range from mysterious and intrigu- Gilded notes to among presidents and plu- (1915), the inspiration for the elite, East Coast estate gar- ing characteristic of Wei- Age to the the text tocrats, reformers, archi- present volume. Up until dens on Long Island, in Bar denmann’s book. Finally, Jazz Age, and the work of a and plates. The book also tects, designers, publishers, the mid-1930s, Johnston Harbor, Newport, and the as far as I am aware, Alice pioneering photographer. includes an excellent bib- and promoters.” Theodore photographed hundreds of Berkshires to more infor- Morse Earle’s book Old Time This lavish book is illus- liography and a list of the Roosevelt recommended her city and country gardens for mal country gardens. Some Gardens (1901) was the first trated exclusively with glass books on garden design highly: “She does good work, home owners, editors, and places are iconic, such as to guide a Colonial Revival lantern slides taken by the that were in Johnston’s and any promise she makes landscape architects. The Breakers and The Elms garden style in America, renowned photojournalist library. In conjunction with she will keep.” In her studio in New in Newport, while others preceded by her magazine Frances Benjamin Johnston Mac Griswold and Eleanor After moving from York City, Johnston trained are comparatively unknown, article on the subject Weller’s The Golden Age Washington to New York production assistants to in 1896 – but this essential of American Gardens: Proud City around 1909, she began hand-tint her black-and- question about the book Owners, Private Estates, white photographs and glass 1890–1940 (1982), which is slides, supplying them with 20 such as Brookside in Great well – in particular, in Santa viduals and firms as well as Exhibition Saule, hoped to place his wealth of contextual analysis Barrington, Massachu- Barbara, Montecito, and technical information about work ‘in perspective” by that will surely encourage setts, and Waveny in New Hillsborough, which she the images. offering new interpretations students to explore not only Canaan, Connecticut. The began photographing in In 1945, after her long of his accomplishments. the role of the landscape images that stand out visu- 1917. She also photographed and productive career had André Le Nôtre Indeed, newly attributed architect but also the dis- ally are classically oriented missions, adobe houses, ended, Johnston retired to en perspectives, 1613–2013 archival documents were semination of the baroque gardens, with axial views, and ranches. In her travels a cottage in New Orleans’ Château de Versailles, used to illuminate Le garden. It is interesting linear hedges, and formal through the South in 1927, Vieux Carré, where she October 22, 2013 to Nôtre’s social status as well to note, however, that the statuary, rather than more she captured both Ellen made her own tiny garden. February 23, 2014 as his working practice. catalogue stresses (as did informal gardens filled Shipman’s once-exquisite She was eighty-eight years Exceptional loans from the the exhibition) connoisseur- with billowing flowers. The colonial revival garden at old when she died in 1952, The commem- Bibliothéque ship on the one hand and views of classical French and Chatham Manor in Freder- by which time photogra- oration of the Nationale de scientific innovation on the Italian gardens Johnston icksburg and Charleston’s phy had become a popular four hundredth France, the other, rather than interdis- took during the summer of Magnolia Plantation in all pursuit with cheap cameras. anniversary Institut de ciplinary analysis of land- 1925 – the Villa d’Este, Villa its lushness. City and subur- Since her death, she has of the birth of France, the scape garden design. Gamberaia, the romantic ban gardens photographed been the subject of many André Le Nôtre Musée du The exhibition filled Château de Courances – by Johnston range from the books and studies, but this (March 12, 1613) Louvre, and eight rooms with over four rival photographs shot by modest garden of a jani- one is outstanding. Not only was lavishly Stockholm’s hundred objects, including Charles Latham in Italy and tor’s apartment in New York does it contain a wealth of celebrated with Nationalmu- paintings, books, drawings, Frederick Evans in France. City to the private enclave at scholarship for historians an exhibi- seum provided sculptures, models, videos, The oblong format of the Turtle Bay Gardens. and preservationists, but it tion held at unrivaled and scientific instruments. book is ideal for viewing Wisely, Watters has kept beckons to armchair readers the château of opportunities The introductory room, horizontal photographs. In the captions brief so as not as well, thanks to its visual Versailles and to contemplate dedicated to Le Nôtre’s art several cases, gatefolds allow to detract from the pleasure appeal. As Frances Benjamin accompanied by a luxuri- the complexity of landscape collections, was configured a series of photographs of viewing the pictures. The Johnston wrote, “There is ous hardcover catalogue, architecture in seventeenth- as an octagonal space. In it, to be shown in sequence. highly informative notes in more to photography than André Le Nôtre en perspectives, century baroque visual the curators reconstituted For example, Beacon Hill, the back matter, however, just taking pictures!” 1613–2013 (Éditions Hazan, culture. the cabinet from Le Nôtre’s the Arthur Curtiss James include dates, names (of Sam Watters is guest 2013). Although the public The curators placed Le home in the Tuileries estate in Newport, is shown designers, architects, and curator of Gardens for a premise of the exhibition Nôtre’s work in the broader gardens, which archival in six photographs dating clients), published refer- Beautiful America: The was to reveal the landscape context of the era’s scientific research revealed was hung from 1914. Among them ences, and explanations of Women Who Photographed designer’s “secrets, genius and mathematical innova- with paintings from floor to are images of the iconic features. Beatrix Farrand, Them, an exhibition based and vision” – themes well tions, recalling the 2010 ceiling. They were remark- Blue Garden (currently Marian Coffin, Olmsted in part on this book. It will entrenched in Le Nôtre exhibition Sciences & Curi- able works – primarily undergoing restoration) Brothers, Charles Gillette, be on view in the Rondina scholarship – the title word osities à la Cour de Versailles landscapes by Poussin and and the ornamental farm Martha Brookes Hutcheson, and Lo Faro Gallery at the “perspectives” evokes not (also under the direction Claude and Italian masters on the estate. The lesser- Rose Standish Nichols, Ruth New York Botanical Garden only Le Nôtre’s transfor- of Beatrix Saule), and André such Albani. The collection known outdoor theater at Dean, Clarence Fowler, (NYBG) from May 17 until mation of the landscape Le Nôtre: Fragments d’un was a vivid manifestation Piranhurst in Montecito is George Thiene, Ellen Ship- September 7, 2014. The through axial alignment but paysage culturel; Institutions, of Le Nôtre’s accession to recorded in three views – the man, and Greene & Greene exhibition includes forty also suggests that curators arts, sciences et techniques the nobility (in 1675) and theater boxes, the wings, are among the numerous of Johnston’s original color Patricia Bouchenot-Déchin (2006), the proceedings of his status as an academi- and the stage – all created landscape architects and slides, a camera of the same and Georges Farhat, under a colloquium organized by cian. Notably, three allego- from immaculately clipped designers whose work is model used by Johnston the direction of Beatrix Georges Farhat. In the cata- ries by Albani – Earth, Air, hedges. By today’s stan- represented in the book. In and Hewitt, period prints of logue accompanying Andre and Water – as well as two dards, the “green” theater is his introduction, Watters photographs, glass lantern Le Nôtre en perspectives, over refreshingly modern. provides biographical infor- slides, and vintage maga- thirty scholars joined the Johnston firmly estab- mation about these indi- zines and books from the two curators in providing a lished herself as the fore- NYBG’s LuEsther T. Mertz most photographer of Library. – Judith B. Tankard gardens in the West, as 21 sunsets by Claude Lorrain, moved to a royal position, horticulture, hydraulic engi- monies spent on parkland master. His “teams” were jeux d’eau, treillages, and all included in the exhibi- Jardinier ordinaire du roi en neering) needed to organize for Versailles – revealed that often drawn from his famil- rocailles rivaled sculpture. tion, demonstrated his eye charge de Tuileries, inheriting extensive landscape com- the king carefully expanded ial networks. They testified to Le Nôtre’s for harmoniously balanced, the title held by his father, missions. his seigneurie by acquiring Entering the fifth room, fertile imagination and luminous landscapes. A Pierre Le Nôtre. In the second room, a tracts of land that were des- one was greeted by a stun- the desire to surprise and selection of small bronzes Traditionally, this career series of large-scale rep- tined for the garden. ning, fifteen-meter-long, captivate the king and his from Le Nôtre’s cabinet, path has been considered resentations of Versailles, Le Nôtre at work was the glass model of the axial per- courtiers. also included in the first a transfer from father to notably by Martin and theme of the exhibits in spective at Versailles. Con- The final exhibition room of the exhibition, son, with a prescient father Cotelle, were exhibited with the fourth room. Scientific ceived by Georges Farhat, it space was dedicated to Le suggested that he preferred enrolling his son in the paintings and plans of Le instruments (compass, dramatically demonstrated Nôtre’s legacy. While it was subjects often associated atelier of Simon Vouet to Nôtre’s other interventions quandrants, surveying tools) Le Nôtre’s use of optical helpful to view seventeenth- with gardens, such as Apollo assure that he would be at Choisy, Meudon, Saint surrounded a glass work- illusions to compensate for and eighteenth-century and Daphne and the Farnese able to master perspec- Cyr, and Clagny. Le Nôtre table, where plans, notes, extremely flat terrain. The architectural plans by such Hercules. Seen in the tive. However, in essays worked at the center of a drawings, and tools were model was accompanied by a masters as Claude Des- context of Le Nôtre’s own in the catalogue, Patricia large royal patronage net- superimposed to suggest video explaining Le Nôtre’s gots, Alexandre LeBlond, work, the bronzes inspired Bouchenot-Déchin and work in France and Europe, an active designer develop- exploration and manipula- and Contant d’Ivry, and reflection about his concep- Nicolas Milovanovic reveal and these images helped to ing several sites simultane- tion of mathematics (notably instructive to reexamine tion of scale in sculpture, that Le Nôtre benefitted illustrate the extent of his ously. From 1660 until 1683, the anamorphose) to modify the illustrated theories of given the contrast between from extraordinary patron- practice. Le Nôtre did not have his the slope of the land to Dezaillier d’Argenville, who works he could hold and age from the outset of his The third room provided own studio but supervised suggest boundless space. disseminated the formal manipulate and those he apprenticeship. By 1647 he exceptional insights to Le his projects on site or from Engravings and plans of the style, the inclusion of works was asked to place strategi- was no longer a Jardinière Nôtre’s practice within Versailles or his home at the Tuileries, Champs d’Elysée, by nineteenth- and twenti- cally in gardens. ordinaire but Conseillier du roi the political and economic Tuileries, aided by a team and Chantilly, exhibited eth-century urban planners In the corridor leading et controleur général des bâti- context of the seigneurial of assistants. Drawings by near the model, revealed the and landscape architects was from the first to the second ments, arts & manufactures. At domain. Between 1660 and Le Nôtre’s own hand are primacy of the axis in their perplexing. To suggest that room, visitors could retrace the age of thirty-seven, he 1693, he coordinated teams very rare; however, we saw designs as well, underscor- these projects were inspired the beginnings of Le Nôtre’s received the most important of workers to expand the in this exhibition a number ing Le Nôtre’s mastery of by Le Nôtre’s, without really sixty-five-year-long career. commission of his career – domain at Versailles, glori- of drawings prepared by optical illusion. engaging their cultural There they found Carlo from Nicolas Fouquet for fying the king and his fam- his design team that bore The next two rooms implications, added up to a Marrata’s famed portrait of the creation of Vaux le ily, mistresses, and court- his annotations. Using ink focused on the parterres and formalist teleological analy- Le Nôtre; a video exploring Vicomte (1649–1660). Per- iers. Brilliantly conceived and gouache, he sketched the bosquets respectively. sis that undermined the Le Nôtre’s family tree; and haps unsurprisingly, Vaux interactive plans and in fountains, with their Room Six, dedicated to the complexity of seventeenth- several paintings by Simon received little attention in videos demonstrated that spurting jets of water; cre- parterres, displayed plans, century garden aesthetics. Vouet, with whom Le Nôtre this exhibition, represented Le Nôtre’s conception ated new axes; outlined the accounts for bulbs and Likewise, although it was apprenticed, and who rivaled only by one large painted of the central allée often placement of underground plants, ingenious drawings certainly fascinating to Poussin in the first half of view of the château and gar- dictated the extension of the pipes; commented on scale of topiary, and schemes by speculate on whether Cor- the century. Le Nôtre’s first dens. And yet it was Fouquet domain. During Le Nôtre’s and slope; and indicated both Le Nôtre and Lebrun busier’s plans of the Ville circle of patrons was also who empowered Le Nôtre lifetime, the Petit Parc appropriate plantings. His for the Parterre d’Eau. Room d’Avray, Sigfried Giedion’s evoked: Gaston d’Orleans, to apply his aesthetic vision and Grand Parc of Versailles assistants, including the Les Seven evoked the magic of “Space, Time and Architec- Madame de Sevigne, in unparalleled circum- were expanded to total Desgots and Mollets, and the fifteen bosquets of Ver- ture,” and drawings of the Madame de Scudery, and stances, signaling that he ten thousand hectares – individual gardeners such as sailles, the symmetrically Washington Mall could be of course Nicolas Fouquet. had mastered the unusually approximately ten times Le Bouteux, Carbonnet, and aligned spaces that framed considered Le Nôtre’s “lega- In 1635 Le Nôtre became wide skill set (mathematics, larger than they are today. Trumel, both assisted and the axes while also offering cies,” the overload of mate- first gardener to Gaston A series of registers on created side by side with the an enchanted scenography d’Orléans, and in 1637 he display – such as the Carte de for marvelous baroque spec- Rocquencourt, which records tacles. Dissimulated behind green walls, these fountains,

22 rial reduced the debate to a Contributors simple question of influence and interest in symmetry. The inclusions of a Donald Judd minimalist cube and Lauren Belfer’s first novel, Elizabeth Eustis specializes in Gary Hilderbrand is princi- with Perrin Stein (2013); articles and reviews. Beatrix a photo of the 9/11 memo- City of Light (1999), is a the history of garden-related pal of Reed Hilderbrand in Franzosische Gemalde I: Wat- Farrand: Private Gardens, rial in Manhattan might portrait of Buffalo during prints and publications. Cambridge, Massachusetts, teau, Pater, Lancret, Lajoüe, Public Landscapes (2009) have been more interesting its glory days at the turn Her own publications range and a professor in practice with Christoph Vogtherr was named an Honor Book if the organizers had seized of the last century. It was from “The Garden Print at the Harvard Graduate and others (2010); and for the 2010 Historic New the opportunity to interpret a New York Times Notable as Propaganda, 1573–1683” School of Design, where he three illustrated children’s England Book Prize. She potential economic, politi- Book as well as a New York in The Changing Garden has taught since 1990. He nonfiction books. Recently is an editorial advisor for cal, or cultural reasons for Times bestseller. Her second (1993) to entries in Romantic is a fellow of the Ameri- she co-curated an exhibition Garden History: Journal of the French formal or symmetric novel, A Fierce Radiance Gardens: Nature, Art, and can Society of Landscape on the fête galante, on view Garden History Society (UK) revivals in contemporary (2010), set in New York City Landscape Design (2010). Her Architects and the Ameri- at the Musée Jacquemart- and serves on the advisory landscape practice. during World War II, was a chapters on the history of can Academy in Rome. His Andre in Paris from March boards of several preserva- Far more successful was Washington Post Best Novel American seed catalogs and published works include to July 2014. tion organizations. the inclusion of plans for of the Year and an NPR Best on early publications of the The Miller Garden: Icon of an installation commis- Mystery of the Year. American flora will appear Modernism (1999), Making Susan Taylor-Leduc, PhD, is Christopher Vernon teaches sioned from Louis Benech in the forthcoming Flora a Landscape of Continuity: the dean of Parsons Paris, design and the history and and Jean Michel Othoniel Paula Deitz is editor of the Illustrata: Great Works from The Practice of Innocenti & the French academic center theory of landscape archi- for the Theatre d’Eau, and Hudson Review, a magazine the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, Webel (1997), and Visible | for Parsons The New School tecture in the Faculty of scheduled to open in 2014. of literature and the arts to be published by the New Invisible: Landscape Works of of Design. Since 1994, Architecture, Landscape and The plans for this project published in New York York Botanical Garden and Reed Hilderbrand (2013). Reed Taylor-Leduc has taught Visual Art at the University offered a unique opportu- City. She writes about art, Yale University Press. Hilderbrand received the international and American of Western Australia. In his nity to evaluate Le Nôtre’s architecture, and landscape 2013 Landscape Architec- students in Paris. She has scholarship, he focuses upon impact on contemporary design for newspapers and Mary Hawthorne is a journal- ture Firm Award from the served as a visiting lecturer architecture and landscape design. Similarly, Giuseppe magazines here and abroad. ist whose reviews and essays American Society of Land- at the Graduate School of as collective expressions of Penone’s monumental tree Of Gardens, a collection of have appeared in The New scape Architects. Design at Harvard Univer- identity, especially within sculptures, commissioned her essays, was published Yorker, the London Review of sity, Sciences Po in Paris, the context of designed for the gardens at Ver- in 2011 by the University of Books, the Times Literary Sup- Mary Tavener Holmes, PhD, and Columbia University’s national capitals such as sailles and magnificently Pennsylvania Press. plement, the New York Times is a teacher, curator, and Global Center in Paris. Canberra, New Delhi, and sited, spoke to both the Book Review, and the Neue author specializing in Building on a background Brasilia. He is a leading past and present. Although Joseph Disponzio is a preser- Zürcher Zeitung. Her article baroque and rococo Euro- in eighteenth-century authority on the lives and it is unfortunate that the vation landscape architect “Handmade in Switzer- pean Art. Her publications landscape design, Taylor- works of Walter Burley curators did not highlight with the New York City land” appeared in German include A Magic Mirror: The Leduc has explored multiple Griffin and Marion Mahony the connection between Department of Parks and translation in the anthology Portrait in France from 1700 periods and disciplines, Griffin, the designers of Penone’s cast-bronze trees Recreation, and director Was ist schweizerish? (2009) to 1900, with George T.M. such as the interconnections Australia’s national capital, and Le Nôtre’s Bosquet du of the M.S. in Landscape and her essay on Anita Shackelford (1986); Nicolas between gambling, play and on the Prairie School in Marais – a bronze tree that Design program at Colum- Brookner’s Hotel du Lac was Lancret 1690-1743 (1991); Eigh- theory, and French pictur- American landscape archi- spurted water into a tem- bia University. Currently he included in The Good of the teenth-Century French Draw- esque garden design. tecture. He is the author of porary swamp formed by is finishing a book on Jean- Novel (2011), a book of con- ings in New York Collections, Graceland Cemetery: A Design painted bronze – Penone’s Marie Morel. temporary literary criticism. Judith Tankard is an art histo- History (2011). plays of dissimulation and She is on the editorial staff rian specializing in British revelation perhaps best of The New Yorker. and American landscape incarnated Le Nôtre’s legacy. history. She is the author of – Susan Taylor-Leduc eight books and numerous

23 Volume ix, Number ii Spring 2014

Publisher: Foundation for Landscape Studies Board of Directors: Antonia Adezio Vincent Buonanno Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Nancy Newcomb Laurie Olin Therese O’Malley John A. Pinto Reuben M. Rainey Frederic C. Rich, Chairman Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Margaret Sullivan

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Associate Editor: Alice Truax Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy Editor: Margaret Oppenheimer

udies Designer:

t Skeggs Design Contributors: Lauren Belfer Paula Deitz Joseph Disponzio Elizabeth Eustis Mary Hawthorne Gary Hilderbrand dscape S Mary Taverner Holmes Susan Taylor-Leduc an Judith Tankard Christopher Vernon L tion r For more information about the fo Foundation for Landscape Studies, visit www.foundationfor landscapestudies.org., or contact info@foundationfor ounda landscapestudies.org 7 West 81stWest Street7 New York, NY 10024 F