Introduction to the History of Garden Design in America
Humanity spread from Africa to colonise the World. The Americas were settled, from Asia, c30,000 BC and re-colonised at various later dates. North America is thought to have had less than a million inhabitants, but no gardens, at the time of Columbus’ 1492 landfall. European immigration grew from that date and by 1776 the Eastern States were strong enough to declare their independence from Britain. Since then, the annual number of immigrants, especially to North America, has remained high, though their origins have varied. The number of states in the union had also grown. In 1894 America replaced Britain as the world’s leading manufacturer and by 1914 it was producing more than the factories of Britain, France and Germany combined. Both World Wars contributed to America’s economic supremacy.
To consider the immigrant frame of mind, let us take a single example. John Muir was born in Dunbar, in 1838. The town is 35 miles from Scotland’s capital, Edinburgh, has a good natural harbour and played a part in the wars between Scotland and England. It is surrounded by the famously rich ’Dunbar red potato soil’. But times were hard and the Muir family decided to emigrate in 1849. Their grandparents came to wave the young family goodbye, knowing it was forever. When the migrants settled in the New World (near Portage, Winconsin), life was no easier than in Scotland but the prospects were better. They felled trees, ploughed land, built a house and survived. Such families never forgot the Old World origins of their culture - but they were attracted to the nature of the New World. John left the family home in his teens, taking with him only the gold sovereign which his grandparents had given him on that dark morning in Scotland. John earned his living in many ways and the details of his life are known to us because of his reputation as a founder of American National Parks. He was largely responsible for Yosemite and Sequoia parks in California
When America came to view itself as a nation instead of only a union, after the Civil War, there was an increased desire to compete with the glories of the Old World. This was one reason for the establishment of American National Parks which were viewed, rightly, as better examples of Wild Nature than anything which could be found in Europe. Since garden designers had spent centuries ’imitating nature’, information on the National Parks began to appear in histories of garden design and the professional skill of managing National Parks was claimed as part of ’landscape architecture’. These sections have been left out of the 1928 history of American gardens.
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It may be said, by way of summary, that at the present time a catholic taste prevails. Landscape architects and home gardeners use freely all kinds of plants with little respect to their nativity. Japanese species show a rather peculiar adaptability to the Atlantic seaboard region, yet the unquestioned merits of American species, especially trees and hardy shrubs, give them a conspicuous ascendancy in nearly all American landscape gardening.
2005-10-03 00:01:03
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Emphasis must be placed upon the fact that these large areas represent major physical subdivisions of the continent, characterised by substantial differences of soil, rainfall, altitude or temperature, such as exert a determining influence upon plant culture. Nor may the complementary fact be overlooked that within these areas lie many smaller sections with very diverse conditions. The full development of local possibilities under these peculiarities has not, generally speaking, been accomplished in America, perhaps from lack of time; and this lack of intensive local refinement is one of the distinguishing characteristics of American horticulture as compared with that of Europe. In America, where everyone from coast to coast buys the same manufactured articles, reads the same garden magazines, and patronises the same nurseries, and where they even buy standardised ready-made houses from mail-order merchants, the tendency toward uniformity is very strong and the development of local specialities is correspondingly impeded.
2005-10-03 00:01:03
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加载更多American Colonial Gardens and Nineteenth Century Landscape Architecture
George Washington’s Mount Vernon Andrew Jackson Downing Frederick Law Olmsted
The first permanent settlements in America were made in Virginia in 1607 and in Massachusetts in 1620. Other colonies were planted soon after, notably the one at New Amsterdam (now New York), the one in Maryland, Penn’s settlement at Philadelphia, and the Carolinas. The early American colonists found some crude gardening already practised amongst the Indians. They found many useful native fruits and herbs (they were, for example, greatly impressed by the abundance of native grapes); and they were all under the stern necessity of making the utmost efforts towards supplying their own wants. Thus they were gardeners by example and by compulsion. They immediately began the cultivation of all economic plants. They formed small enclosures about their homes, and in what were literally gardens, they soon brought to blossoming, urged by a higher spiritual need, the favourite flowers of their old English homes and gardens.
Some of these early Colonial American gardens were reasonably commodious and notably fruitful. Abundant records remain of Governor Endicott’s garden in Salem, Governor Winthrop’s garden in Plymouth, and of the gardens of Charleston dating back to 1682. Yet for the first hundred years there were no great gardens of princely scope, nor indeed anything more than American cottage gardens, properly speaking. A few were larger and better furnished than the others; but the typical picture is that of a small garden plot next the humble colonial dwelling, in which cabbages, beans and corn were grown for food, and hollyhocks, rosemary, penny royal, coriander and sweetbrier were cultivated about the windows and in the front yard. No particularly fine or famous gardens have come down to us from those colonial days. [Editors note: many gardens have been restored in Colonial Williamsburg, which was the capital of the Crown Colony of Virginia]. Yet there are remembered Mount Airy, built in 1650; Tuckahoe, from 1700; Stratford Hall, in 1725; and Westover (Fig. the home of Colonel Byrd, built in 1726. Magnolia-on-the-Ashley (South Carolina) dated from 1671; and John Bartram’s famous botanical garden in Philadelphia from 1728.’ [References to these items are to be found in Earle, Old Time Gardens, New York, 1913; Tabor, Old Fashioned Gardening, New York, 1913; Historic Gardens of Virginia, Richmond, 1923.]
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Native Flora and American Gardening
In every land and in every time the art of gardening must have shown some impress from the native flora. In North America this impress has been very considerable. The following reasons may be alleged for the influence of native plants on garden design in America: First, the severity of the climate has made the introduction of exotic plants always difficult. Second, the inhabitants have always shown a keen delight in the natural landscape and the native plants. Third, the natural style of landscape gardening for which a distinct preference has been manifest would tend to favour native scenery and plants. Fourth, there has been working at sundry times a strong propaganda for native plants. Fifth and last, the native flora of America is extensive, varied, and exceedingly interesting, commending itself to the skill of every garden lover. How cogent is this appeal may be read in hundreds of volumes written by early explorers on these shores—by Michaux, Rafinesque and scores of others. For upwards of two centuries the importation and acclimatisation of American plants in Britain and on the continent of Europe was the vocation and delight of all botanists and gardeners.
The index of American plants is a very long one, owing to obvious physical and climatic conditions. There are many notable species of trees well suited to planting for forest and landscape use—dozens of species of pine, fir, hemlock, maple, elm, and oak, not to mention such particularly interesting sorts as the tulip-tree, the live oak, the catalpa, and the magnolia. The species of shrubs suitable for ornamental planting probably exceed a thousand, many of them of signal beauty. The rhododendrons, azaleas and kalmias supply a suggestive illustration, Likewise the great number of desirable herbaceous species should be emphasised. The asters, solidagoes, pentstemons and aquilegias may be cited merely by way of example. In spite, however, of this abundance of native flora it is quite certain that the ultimate effect upon American gardens would have been less had it not been for urgent preaching in a country where waves of propaganda have a powerful influence. A good many nurseries have been established which specialise in the collection, propagation, improvement and sale of indigenous plants; and of necessity their advertising has supported the doctrine that native plants are to be favoured. Yet it is a curious fact that some of the very best garden varieties of American plants have come from the nurseries of Europe, where they have been raised and large quantities sent to America. The selected varieties of asters grown in England, and the delightful coreopsis from Erfurt, Germany, exemplify this point.
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