Garden History

and Landscape Studies

at the Bard Graduate Center

Volume ıı | Number ı | Fall/Winter 2004/2005

Letter from the Editors Visiting Italian Villas which are derived from period engravings of plans and perspec- tives as well as from historic and contemporary drawings and and Their Gardens photographs, cover several periods up to the present. When those for a particular villa are combined, they constitute a Virtual Villas computer screens and what he landscape historian learns to consider place both palimpsest bearing the marks and erasures of time. his fall marks the we sense and comprehend experientially as scenery and sensation in three A group of landscape historians with individual collections of halfway point when we make or visit dimensions and intellectually in terms of a fourth photographs and institutions with archival prints of historic in the fulfillment gardens and move through dimension – time. This four-dimensional approach in villas are augmenting the content of this useful visual resource. of a National them – and how these which an understanding of landscape in relation to Johanna Bauman, curator of Visual Media at the BGC, is super- Endowment for the two means of knowing can be theT passage of time – of all earth and human history as a non- vising the assembly and cataloging of digital images to be placed HumanitiesT grant to the Bard complementary. static continuum – is fundamental to the curriculum of Garden in a database called Catena. She is also managing the construc- Graduate Center for the Since landscapes are so History and Landscape Studies at the Bard Graduate Center. It is tion of a companion website that development Catena, a digital varied in their nature and also the premise upon which the creation of the BGC’s Digital will serve as a pedagogical sup- archive of historic landscape design intent, we felt that in Archive of Historic Landscape Sites is based. By the beginning plement in which viewers will images. It is worth reiterating creating Catena it was impor- of 2005, the first component of the archive, continued on here the focus of this endeav- tant to have a specific focus which has been funded by the National page 4 or and how its projected end on a landscape type (rather Endowment for the Humanities, will differs from the mere offer- than on a geographical or go online with 2,000 images of ing of a plethora of images period unit). Because of approximately 60 villa gardens. similar to ones already avail- much fine recent scholarship With its searchable database, this able on the Internet at no cost on the design and meaning of image bank, available at no cost (as these also will be). In Italian and other types of villa for educational and scholarly addition, because images are gardens in recent years, we purposes, will serve teachers only a surrogate for reality, we decided to assemble a body of and students in the field of hope that readers of this issue images and scholarly exege- landscape history as a virtual of Viewpoints will want to ses related to this subject. slide library. These images, consider the significant dif- The value of the project ference between virtual and lies in the creation in one experiential understanding – place of a searchable database Restored mid-sixteenth-century between what we see on our of images of historic villa ceiling fresco, Villa d’Este, depicting sites that can be used for scenes from the Labors of Hercules, teaching in the same way that the mythological hero with whom slide collections in academic Cardinal Ippolito d’Este is continued on page 2 identified.This image is part of the forthcoming Digital Archive of Historic Landscape Sites. 1 institutions and museums random images pulled off the Viewpoints is made possible by New Course Offering Calendar traditionally have been used Internet cannot do. The con- the generosity of our support- to teach art history. However, tributions of participating ers. In this issue readers will Catena differs from tradi- scholars to the companion find an envelope for contribu- tional art history image col- website that we are now tions to Garden History and Johanna Bauman, curator of Visual Fall Benefit lections, which are typically building in conjunction with Landscape Studies at the Bard Media at the Bard Graduate Center, Wednesday single-object-based, in that it completing the scanning and Graduate Center. Besides help- has a background of scholarly accom- September 29 provides multiple images cataloging of images (with ing continue this publication, plishments as a landscape historian 12:00 until 2:00 p.m. of sites from different per- useful keywords to facilitate your gift will make possible in addition to her skills in the field of Woodland Fantasy: A Picnic spectives, something that is their search) will further guest faculty, lecture series, and digital technology, supervising with Gnomes in Central Park essential to understanding enhance the archive’s peda- other important forms of an extensive slide library, building to benefit Garden History designed landscapes since gogical uses. course enrichment and public academic websites, and currently and Landscape Studies at the many of them are conceived But even as we move education. Please cast your vote overseeing the creation of Catena, a Bard Graduate Center in spatially complex ways toward completion of the pro- of appreciation for our work digital archive of historic landscape Erik de Jong, professor of with extensive projected itin- ject, we understand its limits. by responding to this appeal. images funded in large part by the National Endowment Garden History, Bard eraries for moving through Historic villa gardens are for the Humanities. Soon Bauman will be able to draw on her Graduate Center, will speak them. Internet access to this much more than academic previous experience as an instructor at the University of on “Magic! The Garden database of landscape images landscape design problems to enriches our on-the-spot Virginia by teaching a course on medieval gardens as part of Gnome and His Origin: A means that, as our field be visualized, discussed, and experience of them. It is Garden History and Landscape Studies at the BGC. Her course Tale of Friendship with of studies continues to grow, decoded. First and foremost, finally this possibility of a will cover the landscape traditions of Byzantium, Western Nature.” any professor or teacher their value lies in the forms meaningful interaction Europe, and the Islamic world during the period between 1000 anywhere can assemble a of sensory awareness they between the real and aesthetic and 1500. Location: The Swedish coherent body of images of a evoke. Gardens demand sen- and the virtual and academic Bauman spent her childhood years in Arlington, Virginia, Cottage in Central Park historic landscape for a sitivity not only to nuances of that, in our view, makes and graduated from George Mason University, taking her For further information Powerpoint presentation, the appearance but also to sub- worthwhile our considerable junior-year abroad at the Albert-Ludwigs University in Freiburg, please call 212 501-3071. method that is, increasingly, tleties of sound, scent, flavor work and that of our gener- Germany, where she studied German literature and history. replacing the projection of and tactility. ous colleagues in creating Subsequently, she attended the Free University in Berlin where Fall Lecture Series transparencies as a more ver- Archival engravings of gar- this digital archive. she took a course in landscape history with the head of parks September – November satile and convenient means dens are essentially static We hope that readers of and gardens in Berlin. Bauman pursued this subject in studying (Four Wednesdays) of instruction. (sometimes partly fictional) this issue of will for her Ph.D. at the University of Virginia in the department Viewpoints The Inscribed Garden: Word, By selecting ten sites for representations at a particular see how the of Art History, where she became interested in the relationship knowing about Image, and Garden in the extended treatment among moment in time, and pho- and the landscapes between art theory and technology. She explored this relation- knowing of Work of Ian Hamilton Finlay the more than 60 that are tographs, whether taken in is mutually reinforcing and ship by reading ancient and medieval agricultural treatises with This series of four talks, being assembled, the digital- brilliant sunshine or in the how the BGC’s concentration an eye toward understanding how these were reflected in garden organized by Garden History archive user will be able to light of late afternoon, cannot in Garden History and design and practical horticulture. Her dissertation on the plea- and Landscape Studies with key historic images and more convey the bodily sensations Landscape Studies and simi- sure garden in Piero de’ Crescenzi’s thirteenth-century treatise, the assistance of the depart- recent photographic ones to we receive when we walk or lar programs in a growing Liber ruralium commodorum, was published as the entire ments of Exhibitions, Public garden plans, thereby simu- sit in gardens at different number of other institutions Summer 2002 issue of the journal Studies in the History of Gar- Programs, and Development lating both past and present times of day and in different is furthering that end. dens and Designed Landscapes. Her most recent publication is at the Bard Graduate Center, movement through a particu- seasons. At the same time, an a translation in Critical Inquiry of “On Historical Time” by the is generously funded by UBS. lar landscape, something that appreciation of the long histo- noted art historian Erwin Panofsky. It explores the landscape ries and transformations over Bauman’s medieval gardens course will explore connections work of Ian Hamilton Finlay time of old villa gardens and between the theoretical and the practical as students examine lit- other landscapes deeply erary sources and images in manuscripts and books (there are almost no medieval gardens in existence with the exception of a few old, much-altered cloister gardens). In so doing, the class will learn a great deal about agricultural and garden practices, including the cultivation of medicinal plants, within the monas- tic tradition and other realms of medieval society. 2 Contributors

in relation to Ian Hamilton November 3 throughout history and how March 8, 2005 Ethan Carr is a visiting profes- Jay Property/ Marshlands Finlay: Works on Paper, an The Garden Art of Ian they have created for their Painshill: The Flowering of sor at the Bard Graduate Conservancy. She is the exhibition sponsored by The Hamilton Finlay patrons or themselves special the English Landscape Center, where he teaches author of numerous cultural UBS Art Gallery and curated Stephan Bann, Fellow of the places in the world using the Garden “Central Park: History, landscape planning reports by Pia Simig and Ann British Academy, professor materials of nature and art Mark Laird, senior lecturer in Management, Restoration.” and articles in professional Uppington. of the History of Art at the and how foreign ideas and the History of Landscape He is also an assistant profes- journals. University of Bristol in botanical discoveries have Architecture, Harvard Design sor of landscape architecture Location: The UBS Art Melanie Simo is a historian England, author, and writer of influenced their work. The School, and author of The and regional planning at the Gallery, 1285 Avenue of the of art and landscape who has “A Description of Stonypath,” second two lectures will show Flowering of the Landscape University of Massachusetts, Americas, between 51st and held teaching positions at the first comprehensive how an English landscape – Garden: English Pleasure Amherst, and is the author of 52nd Streets (September 23 the Harvard Design School, account of Finlay’s garden in Painshill – and an American Grounds 1720–1800 through December 3, 2004) Wilderness by Design: Rhode Island School of southern Scotland landscape – the Hudson Landscape Architecture and March 29, 2005 Design, and Carnegie Mellon September 29 River Valley – serve as case the National Park Service Lectures: 6:00 – 7:15 p.m. Hudson River Landscapes: University. She is the author Willful Ignorance: Ian studies in this regard. (1998). Receptions: 7:15 – 8:00 p.m. Andrew Jackson Downing, of several books on landscape Hamilton Finlay and Location: The Bard Graduate Nurseryman and Apostle of Elizabeth Eustis is a doctoral history, including Contemporary Land Art January 11, 2005 Loudon & Center, 38 West 86th Street Taste candidate at the Bard the Landscape: From Country John Beardsley, senior lectur- The Happiness of the Admission is free. Advance David Schuyler, Shadek Graduate Center. She serves Seat to Metropolis, 1783–1843 er in the Department of Garden: Gardening as an registration is required and Professor of the Humanities as honorary adjunct curator at (Yale University Press, 1989), Landscape Architecture at the Historic Act is provided on a first-come, and Professor of American the New York Botanical Invisible Gardens: Search for Harvard Design School Erik de Jong, professor of first-served basis. For further Studies, Franklin and Garden and is the president Modernism in the American Garden History, Bard October 20 information and to register, Marshall College, and author of the New England Wild- Landscape (with Peter Walker. Graduate Center, senior fel- Inscribed Gardens please call 212-501-3011. of Apostle of Taste: Andrew flower Society. She teaches in MIT Press, 1996), and Forest low, Garden and Landscape Douglas Chambers, former Jackson Downing 1815–1852 the Landscape Institute of the & Garden: Traces of Wildness Studies, Dumbarton Oaks professor in the Department Winter Lecture Series Arnold Arboretum while writ- in a Modernizing Land, Research Library and Lectures: 6:30 – 7:30 p.m. of English at the University of ing and lecturing primarily 1897–1949 (University of January – March 2005 Collection, and author of Location: Christie’s Board Toronto and author of on seventeenth-century Virginia Press, 2003). (Four Tuesdays) Nature and Art: Dutch Room, 20 Rockefeller Plaza Stonyground: The Making of a garden prints and nineteenth- Nature and Art: The Making Garden and Landscape Seating is limited so please Margaret Sullivan is a free- Canadian Garden century gardening magazines. and Experience of Gardens Architecture 1650–1740 register early. Registration lance writer and editor. She October 27 Past and Present will be accepted at the door Patricia O’Donnell, FASLA, holds an M.A. in English February 15, 2005 Word, Image, and Garden in This series of four lec- only if seating is available. AICP, a preservation land- from Columbia University Travelers in the Landscape: the Work of Ian Hamilton tures, which is co-sponsored Register for all four scape architect and planner, and taught for 20 years at The Influence of Italy on Finlay by the New York Botanical and receive a discount: is principal of Heritage Hunter College in the Garden History and Culture John Dixon Hunt, Professor Garden and The Bard $81 NYBG members Landscapes, with offices in Department of English. She Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, and chair of the Department Graduate Center, explores the $90 non-members Charlotte, Vermont, and is chairman of the New York senior fellow and founding of Landscape Architecture making of gardens from a Registration fee for Norwalk, Connecticut, which Committee of the Garden director, Garden History and and Regional Planning at the historical and cultural per- each lecture: she founded in 1987. Club of America, president of Landscape Studies, Bard University of Pennsylvania, spective. The first two lec- $23 NYBG members Some recent projects have the Southampton Historical Graduate Center, founding author, and founding editor tures will focus on gardeners $25 non-members addressed Thomas Jefferson’s Museum, and a trustee of president, Central Park of Studies in the History of To register, please call: Poplar Forest, Washington Bowne House. Conservancy, and author of Gardens & Designed 212-501-3064. Irving’s Sunnyside, Pitts- Landscape Design: A Cultural Landscapes burgh’s historic regional and Architectural History parks, Camden Harbor Park and Amphitheatre, and

3 find interpretative information about the designs and designers Lorenzo de’ Medici and the of particular villas as well as the social, political, economic, and flowering of humanistic art, cultural contexts of villa life. poetry, and classical learning Gaining first-hand impressions from on-site observation at his villa in Fiesole and to immeasurably deepens the virtual experience of touring villas admire the simple, harmo- via the Internet. This past June I had the opportunity to visit and niously proportioned architec- photograph several Italian villas and their gardens, including ture’s total integration with Villa Rotonda in Vicenza, Villa Medici in Fiesole, Villa Garzoni the site, which was chosen for near Lucca, Villa d’Este in Tivoli, and Villa Giulia, Villa Medici, the spectacular views of the Villa Borghese, and Villa Pamphili in Rome. There I met some countryside and the distant of the consultants and directors of restoration programs who are Duomo – all these things hav- serving as participating scholars in the development of Catena. ing been achieved according to Important to the objectives of historic villa preservation are the building principles articu- two major American institutions: I Tatti, the Harvard Center of lated in the fifteenth century Renaissance Studies near Florence, and the American Academy by Leon Battista Alberti – only in Rome. In these two places art history and landscape studies to find that this spot is a appear to be merging effortlessly in historic settings of special chorus of other echoes. Today, beauty and scholarly opportunity. At I Tatti I spent a pleasant it requires a feat of historical afternoon with director Joseph Connors walking in the gardens imagination to catch the created by Cecil Pinsent for Bernard Berenson in 1913. A few barely lingering presence of days later, Lester Little, the director of the American Academy in Lorenzo and his circle of Rome, discussed with me the work of the current fellows, humanist scholars, poets, and including that of Charles Birnbaum, the founder of the Cultural artists. Landscape Foundation. Birnbaum is completing a project com- As a precocious only child, paring, in a collage format, villa photographs taken by fellows of the future writer and march- the Academy in the early years of the twentieth century with his esa of Val d’Orcia Iris Origo own digital photos shot from the same vantage points today. grew up in this same villa What Birnbaum’s collages make graphically explicit – the and played in the bosco above Villa Medici, Fiesole, with Banksia The atmosphere and way of life created by the Florentine combined mutability and persistence of certain landscapes over the terrace garden where roses, lemon plants, and paulownia social circle of Italian villa owners and their friends are embod- time – is something that many of us fail to fully comprehend. her mother conversed with tree. ied now only in the novels of Edith Wharton and Henry James. We operate from the evidence before our eyes, forgetting that Berenson and other mem- In Fiesole itself you find only ghosts the way you might if you like the rest of the physical world, old villa gardens are simply bers of the Florentine Anglo-American expatriate community. walked the streets of Bloomsbury trying to catch the presence of versions of previous older versions of their original states of In 1911, Origo’s mother had rented the villa, which had been Leonard and Virginia Woolf. Such is the way historic landscapes nature and design. The slow erosion of soil and stone by wind owned in the eighteenth century by Lady Orford, Horace come down to us, and for historic preservationists, who must and rain, the picturesque discoloration of sculpture by moss and Walpole’s sister-in-law, for by then Florence had begun to exert a serve as custodians of the past as well as stewards of living land- lichen, the growth, death, and replanting of trees – often several pull on wealthy English families, who came and stayed because scapes, this raises interesting problems because the cultural times over – have successively transformed these gardens of its salubrious Mediterranean warmth and artistic riches. context in which these exist has so vastly and so many times throughout their centuries of existence. Later, in the nineteenth century, American artists, writers, and been altered. But forces other than those of nature have been at work as expatriates joined them. Florence remained a home away from Propelled in revolutionary ways during the last three cen- well. The villas that we see today as tourists are, in fact, only the home for the amply leisured, aesthetically devout, and intellectu- turies, the West has lurched rapidly away from governance sys- latest iterations in the history of their existence. Powerful social, ally curious until World War I shook the foundations of the tems based on the uncircumscribed power of the princes of economic, political, and cultural trends continue to transform world of aristocratic privilege. Soon, the currents of modernism Church and State and the vast privileges, possessions, preroga- the landscape palimpsest and our relationship to it. Nor are completed the work of sweeping that world away. tives, and untaxed wealth of landed aristocrats to systems based these manifold changes merely local and incidental. In Italy on greater individual freedoms, populist values, and democratic today we visit villas as tourists of the past as well as tourists of capitalism. New technologies have found their way into old place, spectators of lost worlds, hardly realizing the seismic shifts that have occurred in Western civilization since these vil- las were first built. We come to Florence to catch an echo of

4 gardens. Almost all maintenance is now machine-assisted. Once been since 1803 the pensione of the fortunate winners of the dens – they were enclosed by high walls extending from the unimaginable innovations in communications and transporta- presigious Prix de Rome.) facade of the villa. Now only an iron-rail fence exists in place of tion have opened many garden gates to mass tourism. This and In the charming studiolo Cardinal Fernando Medici built the walls, and Campiteli does not wish, as some historic preser- the intellectual dominance of science have created a cultural around 1580, Galletti pointed out a small fresco depicting the vation purists might, to have the old walls replicated, inasmuch climate in which factual knowledge today counts far more than villa and its gardens. This, he said, was one of a series of as this would prevent the public from viewing the gardens. simple emotional response, making it impossible to experience clues used to resurrect the original design intentions for the Her office wall has, framed, the proclamation of 1903 landscapes in the same way that earlier generations schooled site. “You must forget the met- announcing the opening of Villa by the Romantic poets and John Ruskin once did. Hear for ric system and think in terms Borghese to the public after the example, Henry James describing the Villa Medici in Rome as of the unit of measurement Church had turned its administra- “perhaps on the whole the most enchanting place in Rome.” used at the time,” he told me. tion over to the State, at which With his inimitable ability to picture for us the elements of this As we strolled along the gravel time the extensive gardens enchantment, James goes on to say: paths bordered by rectangular became Rome’s principal munici- compartments enclosed by bay pal park and the villa’s casino a The upper part called the Boschetto has an incredible, impos- laurel hedges, he explained museum where the public can sible charm; an upper terrace, behind locked gates, covered how these were once beds for now enjoy Cardinal Borghese’s with a little dusky forest of evergreen oaks. Such a dim light vegetables and fruit, the sale superb collection of ancient sculp- as of a fabled, haunted place, such a soft suffusion of tender of surplus produce being a ture and Baroque masterpieces by grey-green tones, such a company of gnarled and twisted lit- means of generating revenue Bernini. Campitelli recently over- tle miniature trunks – dwarfs playing with each other at for the cardinal. Following saw the renovation of the muse- being giants – and such a shower of golden sparkles drifting Galletti’s advice, these hedges um’s opulent interiors with their in from the vivid west! are gradually being realigned walls of richly veined multicolored Although few would write with such striking hyperbole and and old axial relationships marbles and ceilings of trompe lush fantasy today, one can still feel a Jamesian thrill walking within the garden reestab- l’oeil frescoes depicting allegorical through this boschetto, as I did before my meeting with Giorgio lished. dramas. So popular are these Galletti, one of the participating scholars for the BGC’s Digital Like some other art histori- splendidly restored galleries that Archive project. Galletti, a highly respected consultant to several ans whose professional com- Villa Medici, Rome, fresco depicting visitors are issued tickets for specified two-hour time slots to private owners, institutions, and government agencies undertak- mitments have carried them original plan. prevent overcrowding. ing landscape preservation projects, has examined archives into the field of landscape On the grounds outside, I saw that, since my last visit a and other evidence to determine the original grid layout of these restoration, Alberta Campitelli, the chief official overseeing his- few years ago, in addition to the two enclosed gardens flanking gardens, which was obliterated when, in the 1960s, the grounds toric properties, parks, and public museums within the munici- the museum, the parterre garden, the twin aviaries, and the of the villa were renovated under the painter Balthus, who pal government of Rome, has developed a sound working Meridiana (or sundial tower) had been carefully restored. Copies was then director of the French Academy. (The Villa Medici has knowledge of botanical science. The gardens flanking the grand of Bernini’s large herms depicting the garden gods Bacchus and casino of the Villa Borghese, which once displayed Cardinal Pomona (the originals are now in the Metropolitan Museum Scipio Borghese’s collection of rare bulbs, exotic plants, and of Art in New York City) preside over gravel walks and clipped simples had fallen into a state of extreme neglect. Old plant lists hedges of box. Children splash water from a central fountain and the kind of archival botanical research that Lucia Tongiorgio basin. For Campitelli, as for me, there was obvious pleasure in Tomasi, another participating scholar in the BGC’s Digital the sight of Roman citizens enjoying the villa’s gardens as a Archive project, has done to significantly advance understanding green respite from the noisy streets. of the contents of historic Italian villa gardens helped Campitelli As one of the great seventeenth-century papal villas, Villa and her colleagues to re-create the concept of these gardens Borghese occupied an enormous vigna, or suburban estate, that as botanical showcases. Conceived as giardini segreti – secret gar- Scipione Caffarelli, nephew of Pope Paul V (formerly Cardinal Camillo Borghese), and his family acquired following the pope’s election in 1605. Beyond the gardens immediately surrounding the museum, the park is a much-altered version of the Borghese Gardens as they existed before 1903. Only landscape scholars can trace the outlines of the gardens’ three recinti, or precincts,

The boschetto of the Villa Medici in Rome. 5 Gambarelli family; the possibly rebuilt house of 1610, when the Garden History and Landscape property was owned by Zenobi Lapi; the villa after it achieved more or less the present garden layout in the first half of the Studies Student Steven Whitesell eighteenth century, when it was owned by the Capponi family; as the imaginatively redesigned early-twentieth-century gardens Steven Whitesell, now enter- in which Princess Ghyka, sister of Queen Natalia of Serbia, sub- ing his second year as an stituted pools of water for the then existing parterre beds; as a M.A. candidate in Garden charred ruin after German officers headquartered there set fire History and Landscape to their maps following the Allied invasion at the end of World Studies at the Bard Graduate War II; and now, again, as a smiling series of green rooms Center, is a landscape archi- in which statues of putti are half hidden in mounds of clipped tect licensed in both New box foliage. As Osmond spread her photographs of Princess York and Connecticut and Fresco of a vine-clad pergola in the Villa Giulia and the Villa Medici in Ghyka’s drawings out on the stone table in the center of the gar- has been employed by the studiolo, Villa Medici, Rome. Like Rome commissioned trompe l’oeil den along with the photographs taken in the early part of the New York City Department the ancient Romans, who painted frescoes of garden structures twentieth century, I could see how similar yet how altered La of Parks and Recreation for over 14 years. Having earned a frescoes that were illusionistic adorned with flowers, vines, and Gamberaia is since the days when Florence harbored a colony of B.F.A. and a B.L.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design, extensions of their gardens, patrons birds. expatriates and when large private incomes and low prevailing Whitesell was attracted to the program at the BGC because it of such Renaissance villas as the wages made it possible to have 20 gardeners rather than two. combined garden and landscape history with several of his other Yet, under the respectful hand of Luigi Zalum, its present interests, which include contemporary art and the decorative owner, La Gamberaia is still a magical spot, perhaps even more arts. which segregated the part reserved for private family use from so than in 1904 when Edith Wharton extolled it as “probably the As a child Whitesell absorbed his family’s love of nineteenth- the boschetti, which on certain days could be visited by the pub- most perfect example in Italy of great effect on a small scale.” century American furniture, and with his parents and four sib- lic, and the part that served as a game park. Now the gardens are The survival through the vicissitudes of history of anything so lings, he often visited historic house museums. His father was a all one recreational landscape – Rome’s “Central Park” – in fragile and ephemeral as a garden is truly remarkable, and the consultant to the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan, and his sis- which you can see the traces of later landscape-design enthusi- future of such landscape loveliness is a legitimate cause for con- ter worked at the museum as a tour guide. While a student in asms, such as the English-style lake, and institutional additions, cern. The art of landscape salvation is not simple and cannot fol- the program of landscape architecture at the Rhode Island such as a zoo and a modern art museum. Recently, a Shake- low to the letter prescribed formulas or guidelines, although School of Design, Whitesell took courses in garden and land- speare theater, built in imitation of the original Globe Theater these may serve a useful function. Wharton’s Italian Villas and scape history and gained a knowledge of significant practitioners on London’s South Bank, was added. In such ways does the Their Gardens, published in 1904 when industrial America was and their work. However, he credits Garden History and river of culture wash over old landscapes, removing some things enjoying its Gilded Age, looked at the same villa landscapes I Landscape Studies at the BGC with introducing him to the con- and leaving in place the varied deposits of time. saw on my recent journey through northern Italy. But she textual aspects of landscape history, including the literary At Villa La Gamberaia, Professor Patricia Osmond, one viewed them romantically, aesthetically, and with a yearning to sources and the material and cultural theories that ground it of the participating scholars in the Digital Archive project, has import their graceful charm to the harsher light of America. within the humanities. researched several epochs of that villa’s history. Like other Now we try to see them still as objects of beauty, but also, as Because Whitesell works in the Borough of Queens at the Tuscan villas, it is more intimate in scale, domestically allied, scholars and preservationists, we seek to know and interpret Olmsted Center, the Design and Construction Division of the and wedded to its agrarian surroundings than the grand them as multilayered documents of social and design history. New York City Department of Parks, and lives in nearby Kew Renaissance and Baroque villas in and around Rome. Osmond’s Our restoration efforts are necessarily circumscribed by politics Garden Hills, it is logical that he would become interested in the analyses of her findings, which were published in a recent issue and practicality. I am happy to believe that – thanks to the history of the area as the birthplace of commercial horticulture of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, National Endowment for the Humanities, the Samuel H. Kress in this country. The French Huguenots, settling there in 1685, make it possible to view La Gamberaia in layers: the originally Foundation, and the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, as well introduced new plants (the lady apple [Syzygium suborbiculare] simple and then later embellished Tuscan farmhouse of the as to the teachers and students in Garden History and Landscape and the bell or pound pear [Pyrus communis] among them) as Studies at the Bard Graduate Center and the participating scholars we have assembled as colleagues to create Catena – the work of historic landscape preservation is becoming more nuanced and cognizant of the fourth dimension: time. – EBR

6 well as horticultural methods of growing plant material in what Bowne’s story is pivotal in the history of colonial religious Books and Exhibitions we know today as nurseries. The French successfully traded and freedom and is one of the contributing factors to the American bartered trees and plants. But it was an Englishman, Robert Constitution’s later separation of Church and State. On Prince, a descendant of Governor Thomas Prince of the December 27, 1657, the freeholders of Flushing formally protest- Plymouth Colony, who came with his son William to the area ed Governor Peter Stuyvesant’s ban on worship by denomina- The Flowering Amazon: and established America’s first commercial nursery in 1737. tions other than the Dutch Reformed Church. (The Flushing Paintings by Margaret Mee Between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, the Remonstrance is recognized as the first declaration of religious from the Royal Botanic area became the site of many rival nurseries. tolerance in American history.) Soon after, when John Bowne Gardens, Kew The Parsons family, highly respected Quakers, established allowed his fellow Quakers to worship in his new home, New York Botanical Garden, their Flushing nursery in 1838. It covered 95 acres and Stuyvesant had him arrested and deported to Holland. Upon his The William D. Rondina and employed upward of 60 men. Fruit trees were in great demand arrival there, Bowne appealed to the governing body of the Giovanni Foroni LoFaro as the country developed westward, and the nurseries prospered. colony and persuaded it to overrule Stuyvesant and permit reli- Gallery of the LuEsther By 1847, Samuel Bowne Parsons had traveled extensively, collect- gious freedom in the colony. T. Mertz Library ing ornamental shrubs and trees for American gardens, includ- The Bowne House, with its important collection of Early April 23–August 8, 2004 ing the first pink-flowering dogwood (Cornus florida var. rubra) American furniture, has been closed to the public for several and the weeping European beech (Fagus sylvatica ‘Pendula’). A years while undergoing major restoration. The structure and the The name Margaret Ursula specimen of the latter, which still stands on the site of the old grounds (which contain remnants of a Quaker Cross Garden) Mee (1909–1988) is familiar nursery, is the progenitor of all weeping beeches in America and recently have become part of the Historic House Trust of New to anyone with an interest in many others worldwide. On a trip to Europe in 1858, Parsons York City. botanical art, but few are assisted Frederick Law Olmsted in his purchases of plant mater- When the trustees of Bowne House offered Whitesell an aware of the courage she dis- Aechmea Rodriguesiana, watercolor ial for the new Central Park. internship – a requirement for all M.A. candidates at the BGC – played and her importance as by Margaret Mee. While the history of the Prince and the Parsons nurseries is he was given an opportunity to work with a trustee, Ronald G. a botanical explorer and con- central to Whitesell’s research, the Bowne name may be of equal (“Chuck”) Wade, a horticulturist and former executive director servationist. A recent exhibi- detailed observation. The importance in the history of Flushing. In the mid-seventeenth of the Queens Botanic Garden. Wade has taught horticulture tion at the newly opened modernist landscape designer century, John Bowne, a Quaker, built a home – the oldest house at John Bowne High School in Flushing since 1984 and is active gallery in the LuEsther T. and artist, Roberto Burle in Queens – which still stands at 37th Avenue and Bowne Street in the Queens Historical Society. At the 2004 Historic Plant Mertz Library of the New Marx, along with other adjacent to Kissena Park, the site of the former Parsons Nursery. Symposium at Monticello in August, Wade spoke on “The York Botanical Garden puts influential Brazilians, recog- Prince Nursery of Flushing, Long Island,” and on October 25, her remarkable career in nized her exceptional skills 2004, he will make a presentation at the Flushing Town Hall perspective. both as a botanist and a entitled “Encounters with America’s Premier Nurseries and As an art student in post- painter. Botanical Gardens.” Working with Wade will afford Whitesell war London, Mee painted With more than 50,000 opportunities to continue to conduct research on the Prince with a highly accomplished identified plant species, and Parsons nurseries and their role in American horticulture. realism. In 1952, at mid-life, Amazonia is the largest and As a result, new facts may come to light that will advance our after moving to Brazil with most botanically rich complex knowledge and understanding of the contribution of nineteenth- her husband, she turned her of tropical ecosystems on century nurserymen to landscape history. – Margaret Sullivan talents to botanical illustra- earth. However, construction tion. In 1956, inspired by the of the Trans-Amazon High- local flora, she made the first way in the 1960s abruptly of 15 journeys in a dugout increased the vulnerability of Undoubtedly he most widely dis- plant expedition to Belgium. When canoe along the Amazon this region to development. seminated of Parson’s imports was it died in 1998, the tree stood River and its tributaries. Over When widespread deforesta- the great Weeping Beech (Fagis more than 30 feet tall and was sur- the next 32 years, braving dis- tion began in the 1970s, Mee sylvatica ‘Pendula’), memorialized at rounded by a circle of offspring that ease, broken bones, and near became a pioneering conser- Weeping Beech Park on 37th Street, had grown from its outer roots. drowning, Mee discovered vationist. In concert with between Bowne Street and Parsons Today the tree is a stump, but its various botanical species Marx, she zealously defended Boulevard. The “grandmother” offspring still flourish around it. (nine of which were named the increasingly embattled of all the weeping beeches in Courtesy of City of New York Parks after her) and produced hun- American graveyards began life in & Recreation dreds of plant and animal 1847 as a cutting in a flower pot Caption text and photograph by portraits based on direct and carried back to Flushing from a rare Benjamin Swett 7 Brazilian rain forests and Martius, originator of the in art and nature is excessive times previously republished of in 1909, Sir Osbert viewed advanced the field for the past their Amerindian inhabitants. thirty-volume Flora Brasil- and affected. Indeed, the but largely forgotten minor that lost golden age, “the days 30 years. Coffin’s books As her environmental con- ensis, sets the stage for word beauty has become sus- classic On the Making of of good King Edward” – when on the great gardens of Papal cerns grew, she began to set Margaret Mee’s life work. The pect, having been polarized Gardens by Sir George British aristocrats still took Rome, including one on the many of her botanical studies selection of Mee’s fine botani- by the advocates of mod- Sitwell, a book in which the for granted the assumption of Villa d’Este, and recent books in natural habitats. cal art culminates with a case ernism who promoted func- intentions of the author are privilege and the possession by Claudia Lazarro, Mirka After decades of surviving dedicated to the Amazon tionality and technological from first to last aesthetic. of leisure – from a historical Benes, Dianne Harris, and extraordinarily difficult Moonflower (Selenicereus wit- innovation as superior values. Who was Sir George perspective in which two Tracy Ehrlich have interpreted conditions in the Amazon, tii), an ephemeral night- This modernist ideal – the Sitwell (1860–1943)? In a world wars, the sinking sun the rich iconographies and and while still at the peak blooming cactus-flower that twentieth-century aesthetic 1951 edition of his book, his of Empire, and restructured underlying messages of of her career, Mee perished Mee, after a two-decade pur- (yes, anti-aestheticism is itself son Sir Osbert (1892–1969), policies of taxation had made Italian gardens. Sitwell can- in a car accident in England. suit, finally witnessed six an aesthetic) – valued the pro- in what is perhaps one of the the upper-class aesthete’s not be faulted for not doing Following her death, the months before her death. Its gressive future and discredit- most unfilial introductions creed seem quaintly irrele- what they have since done Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew florescence and her all-night ed the historical past. For all ever written, describes him as vant. Nevertheless, the atten- with the benefit of archival raised funds to purchase vigil to witness its few hours forms of art, this has had a neurasthenic whose recu- tion that Sir George gives to research and close examina- many of her paintings, as of bloom are presented in a the effect of eliminating what perative sojourn in Italy bore analyzing old Italian gardens tion of historic engravings, well as her sketchbooks and brief video loop that records is ornamental and symbolic, fruit in an excessively should be of interest to for his method and objective diaries. The diaries have the opening of the flower and which has struck a particu- researched, overly romantic the garden historian today. In were different. His study of been published and her works Mee’s sketching of it by torch- larly severe blow to the art of period piece that failed to win the process, he draws on Italian gardens was conduct- exhibited, but this traveling light. – Elizabeth Eustis landscape design. Today, sufficient readers to become a wide and deep reading of ed on the spot and based exhibition, which originated with few exceptions, the poeti- commercially successful. contemporary works on entirely on his own firsthand at Kew, is one of the first On the Making of Gardens cal potential of sculpture as Somewhat churlishly, Sir psychology by William James observations. efforts to bring a representa- by Sir George Sitwell an integral, symbolically Osbert sets about a post- (1842–1910) and Herbert After obtaining permission tive selection of her work to with an introduction significant element in garden mortem settlement of old Spencer (1820–1903) as well from the owner of a garden, North America. by Sir Osbert Sitwell and design has been abandoned. scores, portraying his father as the works of John Ruskin Sitwell – accompanied by Curator Ruth L. A. Stiff foreword by John Dixon Hunt Instead, landscape architects as often misguided, easily (1819–1900), whose monu- his servant, Henry Moat, who has taken the opportunity to (Boston: David R. Godine, create gardens as showcases irritated, and overly broad in mental Modern Painters was a was equipped with a wicker juxtapose Mee’s gouache Publisher, 2003) for artworks that are meant to his interests to the point vast primer of aesthetics for picnic box and had the paintings with the sponta- Paths of Desire: The Passions be regarded in formal, con- of leaving many projects Sitwell and his generation. demeanor and physique of a neous drawings in her sketch- of a Suburban Gardener ceptual, or political terms. In unfinished, including his It is true, as John Dixon bodyguard – would sit for books. She introduces the by Dominique Browning addition, in many twentieth- own garden at Renishaw, the Hunt points out in his fore- hours on a portable air cush- paintings and drawings with (New York: Scribner, 2004) and twenty-first-century gar- ancestral home in Yorkshire. word, that Sitwell does ion in some shady spot a display of implements used dens, the rich resources of He concedes, however, with not discuss “the role of ideas making notes, a green-lined by Mee in her travels: from The word aes- the plant king- regard to On the Making of or the topic of meaning sun umbrella on the ground brushes and palette to the thete has dom are Gardens, that his father in gardens, which we know beside him. Nor was his lenses and notebooks of a acquired, underutilized. “knew what he was talking was a prime constituent of intention merely to distill the botanist. A presentation of beyond its orig- David Godine about, having observed, noted Renaissance design.” But this aspect and mood of the more the nineteenth-century explo- inal definition is thus to be and practiced” and that defect has subsequently been than 300 gardens he visited rations of the Amazon by of one who cul- commended “whatever may be judged of remedied by the kind of gar- throughout Italy. The title of Richard Spruce, an original tivates an for bringing the achievement [this one den history scholarship pio- his book – On the Making of contributor to Kew’s Museum unusually high out the four- book] was wholly realized neered by David Coffin at Gardens – suggests a differ- of Economic Botany, and Karl sensitivity to down to the last comma and Princeton as well as by Hunt ent aim: “namely, that of Friedrich Philipp von beauty, a pejo- final full stop.” himself, who has admirably influencing the newly recov- rative meaning, Writing his introduction to ered art of garden design.” In implying a per- On the Making of Gardens no sense is it a how-to-repli- son whose pas- 42 years after its publication cate book; instead, Sitwell sion for beauty seeks to articulate landscape

8 design principles derived from garden versus the essentially perfection, he analyzes the five years earlier, simply bile age), green sanctuaries, well as a fourth dimension. analyzing old Italian gardens. architectural garden was successful elements of many describe with able pen a realms of calm, places where, Sitwell likens a true garden to His book thus was intended still raging. Sitwell was anti- others up and down the series of Italian gardens and mind at rest, one can notice an opera by Wagner in which to help contemporaries create Brown and also anti- Italian peninsula. the mood produced by leap- such sights as the undersides several arts are employed in beautiful and lasting gardens Picturesque and definitely on With Sitwell as our guide ing fountains, purling cas- of light-struck leaves; discern dramatic unity and the setting of their own. More than this, the side of Blomfield’s argu- in the Giusti Garden, we pass cades, still pools, sentinel the varied music of murmur- is one of a distant, myth-and- he wanted to articulate the ment for a return to an older, from bright sunshine to cool cypresses, moss-and-lichen- ing, splashing, and dripping magic-impregnated primor- emotions these old gardens more formal garden style shade and toil up a steep covered stone, and hoary water; feel the touch of cool dial time. Beyond its ability to evoke, emotions based on the that had been enthusiastically slope, resting at each level ter- sculptures of mythological stone surfaces; smell the stimulate deep unconscious psychology of sensory percep- swept away by eighteenth- race to gaze at the increasing- deities. Instead, he drew scent of sun-warmed hedges forces of hidden memory, tion. His book is therefore an century Augustan aristocrats ly broad views of garden, city, upon his voluminous reading of box, resinous pine, and “time is a wayward traveler,” analytical essay describing the and nineteenth-century and distant landscape. This in the then new field of psy- flowering lime trees; and and in the garden it may ingredients that constitute Victorian garden-makers and verbal tour is marked by a chology to discern the rela- savor food eaten outdoors. pause and confer a sense of “garden magic.” He hoped their followers on the Conti- keen sensibility born of tionship between Mind and (Food is perhaps enjoyed immortality on the attentive that it would be influential in nent. However, he was not, deeply experienced sensory Landscape. Like his mentors, more mindfully in nature, the soul and receptive mind the manner of Francis like some previous polemi- observation mixed with liter- Spencer and James, he is in a primary source of all human because, as Sitwell explains: Bacon’s 1625 essay “On cists, vitriolic. ary allusion. He can also proto-Jungian way attempting nourishment, and the plea- In contemplation of the Gardens.” In a time when only a few encapsulate the essence of to probe the unconscious and sure of outdoor dining in villa recurring miracle of This was no small ambi- well-chosen black-and-white “garden magic” in a single understand the alchemy of gardens on summer evenings spring and of that eternal tion. Although some will find photographs were interleaved vivid sentence. At Caprarola, perception. And, anticipating was not lost on the ancient stream of life which is ever Sitwell’s prose too fervid, its among the pages of a book for instance, he finds worth the philosophers of phenome- Roman consul Lucculus at flowing before our eyes, sonorities, arresting insights, and color-illustrated coffee- admiring only the upper nology, he wants to grasp the Frascati or on Cardinal we may find that it stands and obvious passion for the table volumes did not exist, garden of the Barchetto “in nature of space and place in Gambara at Villa Lante and for something more – one subject make it eminently Sitwell used words to paint the giant guard of sylvan terms of memory and sensory Cardinal d’Este at his villa in of the three things the readable today. British garden landscape pictures and divinities, playing, quarreling, awareness. He shows by his Tivoli.) Greek philosopher thought writers often have demon- describe the sensory impact laughing the long centuries own example how gardens In Sitwell’s admittedly it lawful to pray for, hope strated a bent toward the of gardens on the human away, which rise from the should be experienced with romantic view, it is the ability to the dying; for along the polemical, and Sitwell is no mind. Like his contempo- wall of the topmost terrace alertness to the messages of these gardens to conjure in thread of time and con- exception. In the eighteenth raries, Edith Wharton and against the blue distance of received by reverie and active us personal, collective, and sciousness the individual century, there were fiery Henry James, who also used an immeasurable amphithe- employment of all five senses. fictional memory that make is never severed from the debates initiated by the theo- their formidable descriptive atre walled in by far-off hills.” The same gardens that them so much more psycho- race. rists of the Picturesque who powers to analyze the visual Although we may not praise were conceived in the logically potent than later gar- challenged Humphrey components of the Italian it with the same extravagant Renaissance as encoded itin- dens from which the essential Discovering a poetics of Repton’s professed continu- landscape and its effects upon emotion, Cardinal Odorado eraries of humanism and spirit as well as the represen- gardens is difficult, particular- ance of Capability Brown’s the foreign viewer, Sitwell is a Farnese’s woodland retreat statements of power have the tations of the old mythologi- ly in those gardens that have landscape style. Closer to prose stylist. His three touches in us a responsive ability to enchant and cal, symbolical gods have become tourist destinations Sitwell’s time, the feud favorite gardens are the Villa chord, and we, too, find our- impress long after the fasci- vanished. or public parks, but it is still between William Robinson d’Este in Tivoli, the Villa selves awed by the mysterious nation with the recovered The mute past, especially possible today. In our fast- and Reginald Blomfield over Lante in Bagnaia, and the synthesis of art and nature in antique past and the authority if it extends over many cen- paced, gregarious, sports- the respective merits of the Giusti Garden in Verona, and a timeless work of landscape wielded by the great princes turies, is a source of mystery minded culture the pleasures preeminently horticultural his descriptions of them design. of the Church and City-State that feeds the imagination. of the garden aesthete will are literary tours de force. In Sitwell did not, as Wharton have ceased to matter. This is Time, then, is a sixth sense as seem laughable to some. Why addition to describing the had done in Italian Villas so because they were still in shouldn’t the contemplative composite characteristics by and their Gardens published the early twentieth century, garden stroller be forced to which these gardens achieve, when Sitwell wrote (and even bow before the popular desire in his opinion, a state of total more so now in our country- and-city-destroying automo-

9 for more lively forms of recre- thete in park visitors and gar- less than half an acre in sub- ing setbacks are the stuff of thetic approach to landscape, single sunny border where ation and entertainment? den tourists and encourage urbia – that middle landscape comedy as well as of moral which includes the two-way her first tentative efforts as a Mixed with the contemporary them to find a quiet, agree- of small house lots, squab- heroism. Browning, who is a benefits of borrowed scenery.) gardener had begun but then culture of consumerist able spot in which to give way bling neighbors, rebellious talented writer and editor She thus sets herself up as had been obliterated by the democracy, which has made to their own psychological teenagers, and pilfering ani- (she has been the editor in the protagonist of a drama in breached and fallen retaining the leisured life and unhur- impulse to let mind and body mals – that she coaxes a prob- chief of House and Garden which the other actors have wall). ried travel enjoyed by aristo- connect with the forces of lem-ridden property into since 1995), is adept at the role-defining names: the True The kind of garden that crats such as Sitwell obsolete, nature and the power of land- becoming a hortus conclusus. genre of personal garden Love, whose attentions are Browning ultimately created is the undeniable commercial scape art. For Browning, like Sitwell, writing built on a learning- frustratingly intermittent; the following the period she calls motive on the part of both But how, we is romantic by from-mistakes-with-the-help- Helpful Men, who include the Winter of Last Daydreams private and public owners to might ask, can nature. She of-bemused-experts approach, Leonard, the can-do nursery- was the product of obses- make ends meet, something one sustain understands of which Michael Pollan, man and Mr. Fix-It, and Bob, sion. Garden images captured that is necessary for the con- such an idea at the impor- author of A Place of My Own: the affable, instructive her night as well as her tinuance of their gardens. a time when so tance of sitting The Education of an Amateur arborist; and the creativity-lib- daydreams, and these were Today, Renishaw, the Italian- much seems to quietly on a Builder, Second Nature, and erating Artist. Then there are reinforced by childhood ate garden that grew from be going wrong movable chair, Botany of Desire, is currently the Boys, her teenage sons recollections and somatic Sitwell’s imagination, hosts with the world? studying her the undisputed master. She Alex and Theo, who see no memory – the potent, coach tour groups and school Today, habitat- garden-to-be knows what Pollan knows: redeeming value in the con- because unconscious, bodily parties as well as a variety of rich rainforests from multiple that the self-made garden is version of their childhood memory of place and “what events, including plant and are being bull- perspectives the only deeply satisfying one. backyard playground into the earth is supposed to feel craft fairs and an Easter egg dozed out of with an atten- Although she is a postfemi- their mother’s garden refuge, like under your feet.” This hunt. existence, and tive eye, regis- nist who values both career especially when they are was her winter of discarded Yet, even if we cannot many cities tering her opportunity and domesticity, called upon to lend a hand. fears and uncertainties aspire to achieve the resonant have sacrificed psychological she is no Martha Stewart, Finally, there are the Three accompanied by hidden antiquity of the great villa gar- their once- responses to who makes homemaking and Graces – Caroline, Bonni, and growth. As spring approached dens of 400 years ago, handsome downtowns to a the way in which “the genius gardening look deceptively Zoe – the sympathetic female she began to design not on Sitwell’s observations and diffuse and formless urban of the place” slowly reveals easy. She knows there are few friends to whom the book is paper but on the land, arrang- design principles still may metastasis. Dominique itself. She listened to this simple solutions in gardening dedicated. ing and rearranging long inspire the creator of today’s Browning does not have an landscape as it began to speak or in life and that the trials Browning began her proj- nylon cords of different colors version of the hortus conclusus explanation for why, in the to her the language of aes- of both are as unending as ect of creating a garden fol- as she delineated the shapes in weaving together elements face of ecological destruction thetics, summoning a latent the joys. lowing the collapse of a of beds, two defined patches of ordered expectation and and metropolitan ills, nurtur- beauty that was hers to real- Browning’s literary long retaining wall due to a mud- of lawn, and paths of desire – delightful surprise, in consid- ing a small piece of the ize. But not without many tri- suit is vulnerability. It is the slide caused by a builder who those routes we instinctively ering the effects of leaf- planet matters, but in Paths als and missteps along the vulnerability of a single rerouted a neighbor’s storm- use when navigating a cam- filtered light and rippling or of Desire: The Passions of a way, for her paths of desire mother without a dependable water drainage into her yard. pus, a park, or a garden as reflecting water, in under- Suburban Gardener she were tortuous and fraught man in her life, helpless Hesitantly at first, she chal- “our own footsteps etch our standing the expressive demonstrates her faith that with the difficulties that beset (perhaps more helpless for lenged herself to go beyond desires into the ground.” power of natural stone and it does, at least on an individ- the owner of a charming but narrative effect than is actual- repair and to improve and When she was done, with the sculptural and painterly ual, personal level. Unlike deteriorated, cash-draining ly the case) in the face of a fashion into a unified land- some helpful criticism from properties of plants, and in Sitwell, she has no ample old house and a site with collapsing retaining wall, rot- scape composition the prop- Leonard and the knowledge enlarging the garden’s space ancestral estate, so it is on stony soil, too much shade, ten roof, eroded driveway, and erty’s several parts – the Old she had gained earlier from with borrowed views of town unsightly views of neighbor- unpleasant neighbors. (They Garden (a bedraggled front studying the garden’s sight- and country. His book also ing backyards, and ailing clearly do not share her aes- yard), the Back Forty (the may liberate the latent aes- trees. ignored woods away from the Overcoming obstacles and immediate environs of the persisting in spite of frustrat- house), and the Back Bed (the

10 lines from several angles as ultimately a testament of love. ancient wildwood had already “The leaves on the oak trees tial relations. This is, in short, oil and honey and yeast, she moved her lawn chair It is about deeply felt place- diminished,” she writes, with- are opening earlier; the not an inclusive history of and milk from each beast from one place to another, making of the kind that roots out much evidence at hand. aphids are coming sooner gardens but a designer’s his- that is on the land, and a she was ready to place more a person in a landscape in But soon the sources accumu- and there are more of them.” tory, a record of significant portion of each type of tree permanent garden furniture which accreted memory gives late, and even a plant list or a Rose Standish Nichols cov- details. What Nichols liked, that is growing on the in spots where it would be meaning to the rest of life, ledger can offer valuable ers a somewhat shorter peri- she wrote about. What she land, apart from the hard- pleasant to sit and read or making our solitary journey clues. Writing for pleasure od – from the time of the disliked is absent or unillus- er woods, and a portion of ruminate. Yet, experiencing richer. It is also about hope and driven by curiosity, she Romans in Britain (with trated in English Pleasure each nameable plant, the transit from open lawn to and renewal because, as every would simply like to know glimpses of gardens in Egypt, Gardens – a fact better appre- excepting buckbean only, shady woodland and the vari- gardener knows, a garden is more about the gardens and Assyria, Persia, and Greece) ciated after reading Uglow’s and then apply holy water ation in scenes as one moved never finished and there is people of times past and per- to “Modern Gardens,” circa Little History of British and let it drip thrice on the through the garden was always next spring. – EBR haps answer a question or 1900. As in Uglow’s history, Gardening. underside of the turf and important, too. Therefore, she two posed by a friend. England is the geographical say then these words: needed to configure the A Little History The author of books on focus. At the same time, “The driest of the lists grow, and multiply, and fill ground plane, defining beds of British Gardening William Hogarth, Elizabeth Nichols draws freely from the bring a vanished world to the earth. for shrubbery in a way that by Jenny Uglow Gaskell, and George Eliot, traditions of Italy and France life,” Uglow comments before This charm, a remnant would connect its several (New York: North Point Uglow seems most at home as well, from antiquity mentioning items in the from the so-called Dark Ages, parts physically as well as Press/Farrar, Straus and in the past few centuries. through the late eighteenth account books of a Cistercian is like a piece of a broken visually. As Browning puts it, Giroux, 2004) More than half of this history century. Pliny and Varro, monk in Hampshire, circa chain, part of a long tradition she likes “a wandering sort of English Pleasure Gardens is devoted to the years from Raphael and Vignola, Le 1260 C.E. Manure carts, gar- of using and caring for the garden” but one in which all by Rose Standish Nichols 1702 to the present – years Nôtre and Rousseau all den gloves, forks, spades, land that Uglow has set out to the parts cohere. with a new introduction when evidence of gardens in appear in this account of buckets, and sieves all help to retrieve. It is a tradition of Nor was she afraid to use by Judith B. Tankard literature, paintings, engrav- English pleasure gardens, sketch in the gardening world gardening among the rich some eccentric ornamental (Boston: David R. Godine, ings, and other documents is along with Chaucer, John of Medieval England, along and the poor, the famous and features within her garden. Publisher, 2003) most abundant. Uglow draws Evelyn, and other British writ- with lists of vegetables sold, the obscure, the exquisite and These might be eye-catching on her own memories, as ers, ending with Reginald gallons of honey produced, the commonplace. Others items from a yard sale, such A history that well. “When I Blomfield, Gertrude Jekyll, and vats of cider stored. have traced the same tradi- as two upended stone drag- stretches from was thirteen and their contemporaries. Black-and -white illustrations tion, with more or less ons supporting a tiny tabletop prehistoric my family Long quotations abound, but appear on nearly every page emphasis on aesthetic, social, suitable for drinks, or gifts times to the moved from the text is fairly brief (in this of this book, and colorplates or environmental factors. from friends, such as a small present is the bleak edition, 275 pages, densely fill the signatures, but some And Uglow acknowledges her Buddha or a pair of gnome- bound to con- Cumbrian illustrated). aspects of garden history only well-known predecessors, like garden sculptures verg- tain a few peri- coast to As Judith Tankard explains can be conveyed in words. including Miles Hadfield, ing on kitsch. But, if these ods treated Dorset,” she in the introduction, Nichols From Anglo-Saxon England – Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe, were placed in just the right with a broad writes, “and I was, among other things, a a warlike period around the Penelope Hobhouse, and spot, they acquired an endear- brush – as in was astounded professional designer of gar- tenth century C.E., when Christopher Thacker. Many ing charm. This kind of orna- Jenny Uglow’s at its velvety dens. All the drawings not Christianity had not yet readers have on their shelves ment is, of course, a far cry A Little History overflowing taken from archives and old entirely taken hold – comes a books by these and other writ- from the stone sculptures of of British greens, its books are by Nichols’s own charm, or magic recipe, for ers. Now, as popular and mythological deities that Gardening. almost suffo- hand – delightful drawings, making unpromising land scholarly monographs contin- inhabit the old villa gardens “More settled cating lush- revealing a designer’s under- fruitful: ue to appear, do we really Sitwell describes, but they, ways of life began around ness. The garden summed up standing of textures and spa- Take by night, before it need yet another history of too, have meaningful associa- 2000 BC and by 1200 BC the storybook Victoriana.” Her dawns, four turfs from the tions of a personal nature. closing pages touch on issues four corners of the plot, Finally, what both Sitwell of the twenty-first century, and make a note of where and Browning impart is the including global warming: they belonged. Then take notion that a good garden is

11 British gardening? I believe ing tradition is growing wider Moving England Gardens, along with other bio- ed “A League of Small we do. still. on to English between, say, graphical sketches in print, Nations” some time before While most of these histo- For the uninitiated, Pleasure 1820 and Nichols will become better President Woodrow Wilson ries feature fairly large, well- Uglow’s Little History could Gardens by 1870? Of known – and not for garden proposed his League of maintained country places, offer an engaging intro- Rose Standish course. But design alone. Nations. In Boston, Nichols all products of sophisticated duction to the history of gar- Nichols, we Nichols would At a time when most served as a director of both taste in design and planting, dening in Britain – or enter a more have dis- women did not seek profes- the Cooperative Building Uglow’s Little History offers a gardening anywhere – for we rarefied world missed some sional careers, Nichols stud- Association and the Boston remarkably wide range of all know some otherwise well- where anything without a ied both architecture and Society of Decorative Art. British gardens and the peo- informed person who has no garish or jar- word; others garden design at MIT. While Today, the home where ple who worked in them, lin- idea that there is such a thing ring remains she discusses living with the Saint-Gaudens Rose Standish Nichols lived gered in them, wrote or as garden history. But beware. unseen. It is under the family in New York she since the age of eight is the sketched or painted in them, This book, published in the dawn of the heading studied under the architect Nichols House Museum; the amassed their treasured 2004 by Chatto & Windus in twentieth cen- “Italian Villa Thomas Hastings of Carrère address is 55 Mount Vernon collections there, or planted Great Britain, could have tury. Gardeners Gardens” in and Hastings. In the Chicago Street on Beacon Hill in vegetables there during been better served by the copy have access Chapter 8. area, Nichols worked on resi- Boston. The Nichols family times of war and depression. editor. Some lapses of atten- to a wealth of Apparently dential garden designs with home in Cornish is also open She quotes from familiar tion are peculiar; the names plants from around the world, what mattered to Nichols, the the architects Howard Van to the public in summer; for- sources – the Roman de la of John and Jane Loudon, for and the craft of horticulture designer, was not when, Doren Shaw and David Adler merly known as “Mastlands,” Rose, translated by Chaucer instance, are repeatedly (but has been perfected. But the exactly, some particular gar- and with the landscape archi- with a stone-walled garden in the fourteenth century, and not consistently) misspelled. art of gardening has not kept den or garden feature was tect Jens Jensen. When the that Rose designed, it is now Lutyens’s inscription on And yet how many histories pace, according to Nichols. created but its form – and the managing editor of McClure’s the Cornish Colony Gallery the tombstone of Gertrude of gardening read so grace- “In fact,” she writes, “until tradition to which that form Magazine, Willa Cather, and Museum. (See Alma M. Jekyll – as well as from lesser fully, so little like a survey? within the last few years it could be traced. planned to publish some of Gilbert and Judith B. Tankard, known works, including Uglow writes with equal has gone backward rather Until recently Rose the correspondence of A Place of Beauty: The Artists Thomas Tusser’s Hundred enthusiasm of Christopher than forward in England, ever Standish Nichols (1872–1960) Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and Gardens of the Cornish Good Points of Husbandry Lloyd’s gardens at Great since the period of the Italian has generally been known by Nichols edited the letters and Colony, 2000.) And in (1557), and passages from Dixter and of a garden by the Renaissance.” association with other people. wrote an introduction. Her Milwaukee, a water cascade Charles Dickens, George sea at Dungeness created by This bold indictment, Rose’s mother was the sister friends included several that Nichols designed for the Orwell, and Robert Louis the ailing filmmaker and appearing at the outset of of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s “Henry James Americans” Lloyd R. Smith residence now Stevenson. One photograph is author Derek Jarman. Within Nichols’s first book, disarms wife. Rose’s youngest sister (Jane Brown’s phrase), such forms part of the Villa Terrace entitled “Londoners in a back sight of a vast power station a reader who might question married Arthur A. Shurcliff, as Isabella Stewart Gardner, Museum of Decorative Arts. garden during the Blitz, and a few shacks, his blazing the leap from Chapter 9, once an apprentice in the Bernard Berenson, the Inevitably, these houses and 1940.” In another, “The new red poppies run freely among “Eighteenth-Century Olmsted office. Rose’s friends Cornish circle, and James gardens will have changed Mughal gardens in Bradford, upright stumps, sticks, clay Extremes” (on the work of among the artists, writers, himself. Other friends and somewhat, and yet a visit 2003,” smiling, dark-eyed pots, old kettles, pebbles, wild Brown, Repton, the Marquis and designers of Cornish, colleagues were activists, might reveal something of children dressed in traditional grasses, and sea lavender – a de Girardin, Carmontelle, New Hampshire, included including Jane Addams of Nichols’s affinity for classic silks and cottons from India bit of color amid the chaos. and others) to Chapter 10, Charles Platt – her mentor in Hull House in Chicago form, understated, “rather stand by a little jet of water “Yet Jarman’s garden speaks “Modern Gardens” (on garden design. In her mas- and leaders in the movement like a rosebud about to above a pool or runnel – a to nearly everyone,” Uglow William Robinson, T. H. ter’s thesis on the writings of for women’s suffrage. In unfold,” as Trumbull put it. hint that the British garden- writes: “in her late eighties Mawson, Reginald Blomfield, Rose Standish Nichols Cornish, along with First Better yet, read English my mother spent hours there, F. Inigo Thomas, Gertrude (Dartmouth College, 1989), Lady Edith Wilson and a few Pleasure Gardens and see how gazing out across the English Jekyll, and others). Were any Margery P. Trumbull reintro- other women, Nichols found- one designer worked her way Channel, invigorated by this pleasure gardens created in duced the little-known “Miss through centuries of tradition challenge to emptiness and Nichols,” but the thesis was that she meant to carry on. death.” not published. Now, with – Melanie Simo Tankard’s concise introduc- tion to English Pleasure

12 Forest and Garden: Traces descriptions of contemporary from Garden and Forest. Her current debates over wilder- torical research made her interest in the history of pro- of Wildness in a Modernizing landscape design and aesthet- inquiries begin in 1897, when ness designations and the aware, she notes, of a “gap in fessional landscape architec- Land, 1897–1949 ic theory. Foresters, landscape the magazine ceased publica- management of public lands. time” in the history of ture between the 1890s and by Melanie L. Simo gardeners, and horticulturists tion following the death of She structures the discussion American landscape architec- the 1940s brought her to (Charlottesville and London: made common cause and, Stiles. Frederick Law Olmsted as a series of narrative chap- ture. The nineteenth-century other key figures, such as University of Virginia Press, notably in one case, spoke had ended his professional ters from which certain career of Frederick Law Frank A. Waugh and Arthur 2003) with a single voice: Sargent activities two years earlier, themes emerge: “A growing Olmsted was well appreciat- H. Carhart, landscape archi- himself engaged in all three and a new era was beginning awareness of conflict… ed, and Simo’s own work on tects who crossed disciplines Between 1888 practices and in which writers and artists between natural processes postwar modernism led to a (into horticulture and and 1897, extolled the created new responses to and and the processes of civiliza- better understanding of the forestry, respectively) and Garden value of inter- representations of the tion…; trends towards the recent past; but the interven- who developed influential and Forest disciplinary American landscape, and sci- professionalization of a body ing years – a time of “critical theory and management magazine docu- inquiry. entists, landscape architects, of knowledge, values, and transition in American histo- plans for the preservation of mented a Landscape gar- and foresters struggled to purposes…; a growing appre- ry,” generally – were not well “native landscapes” and remarkable dening, for develop and organize their ciation for small remnants understood by landscape his- “wilderness.” The history of period of shift- example, was professional theories and of once-wild lands…; at the torians. As she studied the American landscape architec- ing attitudes not to be limit- practices. same time, a growing desire generation of American land- ture during these crucial and sensibili- ed to the Simo reassembles the to preserve vast tracts of scape designers who “for one decades before the wide- ties toward “planting of strains of scientific, literary, wilderness.” reason or another resisted or spread adoption of modernist the American flower-beds and artistic endeavor that The history of the idea of ignored the modern move- theory and practice, it turns landscape.1 and of orna- were joined during the first wilderness and the move- ment” in the early twentieth out, figured prominently in Published mental half of the twentieth century ment to preserve it have gen- century, she noticed that this the development of American weekly by shrubs,” but in related efforts to define erated a considerable amount older generation retained attitudes and ideas toward the Charles Sprague Sargent, was a “broad and catholic and elevate what remained of of literature over the last 20 “affiliations with horticultur- value of preserving wild director of the Arnold art…as useful in the preserva- “wildness” in North America. years (much of which the ists, geologists, foresters, and places. Carhart’s collaboration Arboretum in Boston, the tion of the Yosemite Valley or Before there was anything as author discusses in this painters of the old school.” with forester Aldo Leopold in magazine combined articles the scenery of Niagara as it is organized as a “wilderness” book). But Simo’s unique She also noticed the pas- the early 1920s to develop the and information in related in planning a pastoral park or movement, nature writers, point of view as a historian sion with which two promi- U.S. Forest Service “wilder- fields of interest that today the grounds about a country landscape architects, painters, gives her work its own special nent members of that group, ness” land-use designation is are often Balkanized by their house.”2 This editorial tradi- and scientists had already insight. The author of the Henry Vincent Hubbard and well known, but Simo also own professional organiza- tion was rooted in the nine- constructed a cultural basis most important histories of Theodora Kimball, described uncovers an older and broad- tions and university depart- teenth-century periodicals of for describing and appreciat- post–World War II American the “blind destructive forces er strain of professional ments. In the pages of J. C. Loudon and A. J. ing the vanishing traces of a landscape design, Simo also of man’s enterprise,” and the thinking. She discusses the Garden and Forest, Sargent Downing; Garden and Forest world that was succumbing to is a Loudon scholar and the need for modern people to influence of Harvard scientist and his editor, William A. exhorted its readers to expand twentieth-century technology author of a 1988 book on that “find something in wild Nathaniel Southgate Shaler in Stiles, juxtaposed reports on the aesthetic sensibilities and population levels. To doc- nineteenth-century British nature…to fulfill and com- the 1890s, for example, on a scenic preservation efforts developed working on their ument and analyze this pro- landscape gardener.3 Her his- plete their being.” Simo’s second generation of land- and botanical research with own “home grounds” and to foundly diverse phenomenon, scape architects that included become advocates for the Simo wisely eschews compre- Charles Eliot and Frederick 3 preservation of landscape hensive “analytical or theoret- See: Peter Walker and Melanie ASLA Press, 1999); idem, The Law Olmsted, Jr. Shaler was 1 The magazine is accessible beauty wherever it was found, ical frameworks” and avoids Simo, Invisible Gardens: The Coalescing of Different Forces and dean of the Lawrence online through a joint effort by from their own neighbor- Search for Modernism in the Ideas: A History of Landscape Scientific School at Harvard the Library of Congress, the hoods to remote public lands. American Landscape (Cambridge: Architecture at Harvard, during this critical period, Arnold Arboretum, and Melanie Simo’s interesting MIT Press, 1996); Melanie L. 1900–1999 (Cambridge: Harvard where he influenced the for- the University of Michigan’s and erudite book takes its title Simo, 100 Years of Landscape University Graduate School of mation of Harvard profes- “Making of America” project and its point of departure Architecture: Some Patterns of a Design, 2000); and idem, sional degree programs in (http://www.loc.gov/preserv/prd/ Century (Washington, D.C.: Loudon & the Landscape: From gardfor/gfhome.html). both landscape architecture Country Seat to Metropolis, 2 Garden and Forest (May 19, 1783–1843 (New Haven: Yale 1897): 192. University Press, 1989). 13 and forestry. The author of cially for lung diseases. When influenced the development professional practice to the porary appreciation of scenic preservation, horticul- Man and Earth (1905), he Aldo Leopold became inter- of a wilderness aesthetic. purposes of twentieth-century American landscapes and ture, and landscape architec- was able to “institutionalize ested in the arid lands of New Another group was centered preservation, especially in the their use of those landscapes ture were still intertwined his environmental values, Mexico in 1909, he moved, in and around New York and national park system. as literary motifs. among midwesterners who which were basically social as Simo notes, “beyond issues Boston and represented a Olmsted, Jr., influenced the Simo successfully estab- shared a growing concern for values as well.” of human health to consider continuation of Olmstedian National Park Service begin- lishes at least some of the the continued health of what Simo’s insights into this the health of the land.” He thought and sensibilities ning in 1916, when he draft- broader cultural foundations little “wildness” had survived period of American landscape later described the remote in the early twentieth century, ed the key portions of the of the growing and diverse the previous decades of mod- architecture, especially as Chihuahua Sierra as the as expressed, for example, in legislation creating it. The sensibility that, in the ernization and growth. regards its early relationship “healthiest” land he had ever Mariana Griswold Van agency remained imbued post–World War II period, Simo’s excursions are peri- to the appreciation of wilder- seen: the idea of ecological Rensselaer’s Art Out of Doors with essentially Olmstedian coalesced as the modern envi- patetic but purposeful. The ness values, are important health was equated with (1893), a book that was based ideals through the 1950s, ronmental movement. Her half century covered, she conclusions. She is not as “aboriginal condition,” free partly on articles she pub- when the crushing effects of period ends with the publica- notes, “was not known for the interested in “institutional or of any (apparent) human lished in Garden and Forest. mass automotive tourism tion of Aldo Leopold’s Sand active defense of wilderness general views,” however, as influence. The definition Some of the writers Simo fatally undermined the goal County Almanac in 1949, in the United States, apart much as in “personal feelings of “unspoiled wilderness” as presents, such as John of preserving landscapes arguably the first and still from the efforts of a few indi- and perceptions of the land, a “healthy organism” (and Burroughs and Charles “unimpaired” for the purpose most pertinent manifesto of viduals and organizations, its uses, its beauty, its fate.” other places, therefore, Keeler, are well-known today; of public “enjoyment.” Simo environmental ethics. Jens rowing against the current of And it is in the retrieval of as “sick land”) would be as others, such as Donald follows the complementary Jensen published The a modernizing, urbanizing these personal perceptions influential and pervasive as Culross Peattie and Edwin trajectories of professional Clearing, his ruminations on society that was increasingly that the book makes its most Leopold’s “land ethic,” itself. Way Teale, have become rela- forestry, planning, and eco- the midwestern landscape dependent on the findings significant and original con- The development of an aes- tively obscure. Nonetheless, logical science, noting the and landscape design, the of science and the advances tributions. Part One is orga- thetic of desert beauty and they all shaped the sensibili- degree to which intellectual same year. Both works were of technology.” Organized nized as a series of evocations the association of the desert ties of preservationists and hybridization still occurred influenced by the develop- “wilderness” preservation of landscape types: desert, with human health, however, even scientists, and Simo among them. While her ment of the ecological sci- would come later, notably prairie, and forested moun- prefigured Leopold’s under- goes a long way in the redis- accounts of the life and work ences by individuals such as when Congress enacted the tains, for example. Simo sur- standing of the ecological covery of their roles. of well-known figures, such Henry C. Cowles at the 1964 Wilderness Act. But veys the nature writers, poets, health of desert wilderness. Part Two of the book is a as Lewis Mumford, Bob University of Chicago and by Simo chooses her examples painters, and other artists of With regard to the prairie, more chronological account Marshall, and Benton regional groups, including well and finds the threads the period who generated the Simo introduces the land- in which she emphasizes MacKaye, are available in the Friends of Our Native that bind these individuals sensibilities that necessarily scape architect and preserva- the professional activities of more detail elsewhere, they Landscape, that advocated the and organizations and their preceded appreciation, and tionist Jens Jensen by first landscape architects, park are recounted here with the preservation of ecologically works. Many of these com- therefore preservation, of wild discussing the writing of managers, scientists, and additional context of less significant areas. The concern mon themes were presaged places. Rutgers art history Emerson Hough and Willa wilderness advocates of her known contemporaries, such for “native” plants and land- in the pages of Garden and professor John C. Van Dyke Cather. Literature again com- period. She rightly begins as Henry Hazlitt Kopman, scapes characterized the mid- Forest magazine by a remark- and best-selling author Mary plements early-twentieth-cen- with Frederick Law Olmsted’s whose Wild Acres (1946) was western landscape designs of able (and remarkably diverse) Austin, for instance, created a tury environmental thought, advice at the end of his active an ecological portrait of New Jensen, O. C. Simonds, and group of contributors. Simo’s cultural phenomenon with and Simo establishes needed life to his son, Frederick Law Orleans, or drama critic Elsa Rehmann, as well as apt inspiration for a starting The Desert (1901) and Land of literary and artistic contexts Olmsted, Jr. More than any Walter Pritchard Eaton, local preservation efforts, point has resulted in a Little Rain (1903), respective- for scientific and advocacy other Olmsted apprentice, the whose columns in the which increasingly were valuable interdisciplinary ly. The desert was seen not efforts. She also notes certain younger Olmsted attempted Berkshire Eagle in the 1940s based on ecological as well as exploration into how a broad only as beautiful but restora- concentrations of writers, to adapt his father’s ideas and advocated the preservation of scenic criteria. Leopold’s range of cultural figures tive of human health, espe- poets, and designers in the the fast-disappearing country- landmark essays grew out of constructed and valued the San Francisco Bay area, side of western New England. a world in which science, traces of “wildness” that including poet Charles Keeler Better known authors, includ- they saw receding around and architect Bernard ing Sarah Orne Jewett and them in the twentieth Maybeck, who particularly Edith Wharton, are examined century. – Ethan Carr anew in light of their contem-

14 Remembering Daniel Urban Kiley white marble fountain on the center axis and an Alexander As Dan Kiley’s productive career has ended, closing a Calder sculpture beside it. Dark slate paving was underlain with significant chapter in modern landscape architecture, the mis- and His Works heating elements to melt snow (not functioning now). Two sion of understanding and preserving his reputation must con- groves of London plane trees formed an inward-warped grid tinue. It is my hope that the profession will widely recognize, an Kiley’s name is legendary in Vermont, both within focused on an oval fountain (also not functioning). The ground document, preserve, and celebrate his legacy as a modern mas- and outside the design professions. Eleven years ago, plane under the trees was decomposed granite around marble ter of landscape architecture in the years to come. my spouse, Jim Donovan, and I found our place, a tree rings, providing contrasting color and texture and requiring – Patricia O’Donnell scenic west Charlotte former dairy farm, and settled little maintenance. Locust and gingko trees and yew shrubs in the town where Dan Kiley and his family had screened adjacent building facades. The open space around the Dlived for decades. My remembrances of the highly regarded fountain and sculpture and the dappled light under the open landscape architect are rooted here and in my experiences of his canopy of the groves provided a plaza interior of artistic charac- works beyond Vermont. ter and refinement. Yet these trees were being cut as construc- Our town, about 1,600 households, and the surrounding tion was getting under way. We mourned the current taste that Burlington region is a neighborly place, and I encountered Dan signaled disregard of the integrity of the original Kiley design. casually on several occasions. In person, Dan was lively, pulsing I had the opportunity to observe and study the grounds of the with kinetic energy, his white hair seemingly electrified. He St. Louis Arch in the early 1980s when, belatedly, additional ele- spoke tersely, and his clear eyes observed everything around ments of Kiley’s original collaboration with Eero Saarinen were him. Once, Dan and his wife Anne were at the local woodstove under construction. More recently, I lectured on the evolution store and we discussed stoves, wood, and heating performance; of American estate design and design principles using six on town meeting day Dan was in line with us to vote, and we examples, including the Miller Garden in Columbus, Indiana, exchanged greetings; on a few early morning flights to see designed by the Office of Dan Kiley. Afterward, I led a tour clients we talked briefly about where we were headed. When my of the Miller Garden for the symposium group, pointing out office was researching a local historic district for a mutual client, how Kiley’s landscape design worked in conjunction with we enjoyed a jovial, interesting lunch with Dan, Anne, and son the house design by Saarinen as well as with the Alexander Deedle Kiley across Lake Champlain. Girard interiors. In 1992, my office developed a comprehensive plan for the Currently, in my role as a founding board member of the system of 32 parks in Hartford, Connecticut. One of these was Cultural Landscape Foundation, I am supporting CLF’s efforts the Alfred E. Burr Memorial Sculpture Court, which had been to fund an interactive computer-based learning segment of designed by the Kiley firm in 1968–70 and constructed in the “Cultural Landscapes as Classrooms.” This initiative focuses on early 1970s. Although in some disrepair and poised for two modern gardens: Kiley’s Miller Garden and Thomas significant changes, this urban plaza demonstrates Dan’s clarity Church’s Donnell Garden. and ingenuity as a landscape architect. The 1.7-acre space As a part of the Wave Hill/Cultural Landscape Foundation/ between the Atheneum and City Hall had as its focus a stepped National Park Service symposium, “Preserving Modern Landscape Architecture,” in April of 2002 (proceedings pending 2004, Cultural Landscape Foundation), I attempted to explain the spatial organization and character of Kiley’s design for the Lincoln Center Plaza in New York. Like many other people, I am dismayed at the prospect that this major work of modernist Burr Sculpture Court, drawn by landscape design will be compromised by the proposed plan for Office of Dan Kiley, 1970s. the plaza’s renovation, which fails to reinstate the Kiley work.

15 18 West 86th Street, New York,NewWest Street, 10024 18 86th NY Studies Landscape and History Garden Culture and Design, Arts, Decorative the in Studies for Center Graduate Bard The

Volume 11, Number 1 Fall/Winter 2004/2005

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Associate Editor: Erik DeJong Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy Editor: Margot Dembo Design: Skeggs Design Contributors: Ethan Carr Elizabeth Eustis Patricia O’Donnell Melanie Simo Margaret Sullivan

For more information about Garden History and Landscape Studies at the Bard Graduate Center, please call 212-501-3064 or visit www.bgc.bard.edu and www.elizabethbarlowrogers.com