TheMother of theArts

katie campbell

Influential Gardeners:The Designers WhoShaped 20th CenturyGarden Styleandrew wilson

Mitchell Beazley 2002 £30.00 $45.00192 pp.isbn 1-84000-512-2US Clarkson Potter $45.00isbn 1-4000-4811-7

Grounds for Pleasure:Four Centuries of theAmerican Gardendenise otis

Harry N Abrams, 2002, £52.00 $75.00352 pp. 333 illusisbn 0-8109-3273-3

The Garden: An EnglishLove Affairjane fearnley-whittingstall

Weidenfeld & Nicolson 2002 £25.00359 pp. c 90 illusisbn 0-297-843079

Gardening has come of age. Asgarden lovers search for some-thing more profound than the oft-

lamented TV make-overs, garden histor-ians are looking beyond the great estatesto explore the less celebrated gardens ofthe past for evidence of social, cultural andpersonal values. The established horticul-tural texts are also being supplementedwith literature, poetry, paintings, posters,advertisements, letters and diaries, all ofwhich can reveal enormous amountsabout the meaning of the garden indifferent eras.

In Influential Gardeners, Andrew Wilson,himself a garden designer, looks at themembers of his profession who haveshaped the way we garden today. Thoughthere are few surprises in his catalogue ofkey designers, what is enlightening is hismethod. He breaks the field into sevencategories: colour and decoration, plant-ing, concept, form, structure, texture andmaterials. While one may question thecategorising of John Brookes under

`materials' rather than `planting', orprotest that Frank Lloyd Wright was asconcerned with `concept' as with `form',this novel format allows such provocativegroupings as Jellicoe, Noguchi and MarthaSchwartz under `concept', or Lutyens,Topher Delaney and Fred Gibberd under`materials'. Sandra and Nori Pope seemglaring omissions in the `colour' category,and Percy Cane ± one of the unsung heroesof twentieth-century design ± remainsunsung, but generally Wilson throws upinteresting comparisons.

Wilson traces lines of influence, notinghow Brenda Colvin ± another notableomission ± encouraged Sylvia Crowe,

who subsequently employed JohnBrookes. Beth Chatto acknowledges thepainter and plantsman Cedric Morris ± atantalising figure about whom it would benice to know more. Dan Pearson, one ofEngland's most interesting young de-signers, pays homage to Chatto's eco-logical approach, though he names as hishero the American, Thomas Church ± inparticular Church's 1948, modernistlandscape, El Novillero in Sonoma, Cali-fornia. Wilson also dubs El Novillero `the

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Young Daughter of the Picts, Jacques le Moynede Morgues, c 1585.Yale Centre for British Art:Paul Mellon Collection. FromThe Garden: AnEnglish Love Affair byJane Fearnley-Whittingstall

volume 10 issue 4 september 2003 ß bpl/aah TheArt Book 3

icon of twentieth century garden design'. Aleisure space in which gardening and,indeed, plants are almost incidental, ElNovillero challenged prevailing notions ofthe garden's role. In one of the many astuteobservations which take this book beyondhistory, Wilson observes that Pearsonhimself, though trained as a plantsman,is becoming more attuned to spatialrelations and is employing an increasinglyspare palette of plants ± rather like hismentor two generations ago.

Through chapter introductions, Wilsontraces the development of garden designfrom the turn of the twentieth century,when horticulture and architecture battledfor dominance, to the end of the century,when politics and self-expression emergeas major elements. He points out that theherbaceous border, that quintessentiallyEnglish feature invented by Jekyll, refinedby Sackville-West and perfected by Verey,Hobhouse and Lloyd, is inefficient, un-ecological, anachronistic and labour inten-sive, yet it continues to be promoted bybooks and magazines simply because it isphotogenic.

Unusually for an English designer,Wilson acknowledges the importance ofthe modernist movement. By eliminatingthe preconceived design vocabulary,modernism allowed the development ofvibrant, individual gardens appropriate tospecific sites, clients, social contexts andregional cultures. Though the movementwas viewed with suspicion in this countrybecause of its German, socialist origins,Wilson draws subtle parallels between1930s' modernism and the eighteenth-century English landscape style when,once again, an absence of axial dominanceallowed the garden to integrate with thesurrounding landscape. Happily the NewWorld, less encumbered by xenophobia,horticultural traditions and vernaculararchitecture, embraced the lessons ofmodernism.

Indeed, Wilson suggests that Ameri-cans have always tended to accommodaterather than dominate nature, creating gar-dens that are either restless and dramaticor stark and serene. He characterises theAmerican approach as having greatswathes of single species, a penchant forperennial planting and a preference forseasonal rather than evergreen plants,while the English, in his view, are stillessentially florists, enchanted by exoticspecies, colour, exuberance and variety.

Such sweeping national generalisa-

tions are refined in two other recentbooks. Denise Otis' Grounds For Pleasureattempts to define the American gardenstyle. America is not known for itshorticultural traditions, it has no greatbody of theoretical writing ± at least notbefore the twentieth century, and thephrase `American Garden' does not bringa clear picture to mind. Nonetheless, Otissets out to prove that America did notsimply imitate European traditions. Hergreatest challenge is the sheer mass of thesubject. Despite its relatively brief history,America has a huge geography: the OldWorld urbanity of the east, the openprairies of the centre, the southernswamps with their Afro/French/Caribbeanheritage, the Mexican deserts, the westcoast littoral, cut off from the rest of thecontinent by mountains and imbued withthe Spanish culture of its earliestEuropean inhabitants. What is more, asthe French traveller Alexis de Tocquevilleobserved several centuries ago, `The spiritof the Americans is averse to general ideas;it does not seek theoretical discoveries'.

Otis divides her unwieldy subject intothree sections: a history of Americangardening, an examination of the differentforms of the American garden and aportfolio of significant twentieth-centuryAmerican gardens. The historical sectionbegins with a fascinating exploration ofthe horticulture of America's aboriginalpeople. While the Indians expected theland to produce enough food for basicneeds, the Puritans, coming from a culturethat viewed land as a source of wealth andpower, treated land as a commodity.Furthermore, these early colonists wereunder pressure to produce profits for thehomeland investors who financed theirsettlements. While the Indians wereinitially bemused by the newcomers'preoccupation with enclosure and titledeeds, such alien concepts soon led toantagonism between the two peoples.

Two centuries later, this idea of land asa speculative investment evolved into theperception of the wilderness as a culturalresource. The wilderness national park, auniquely American innovation, was builton the premise that the natural wonders ofthe New World were equivalent to the OldWorld's castles and cathedrals, andequally worthy of preservation.

After setting out her case in the firstsection, Otis convinces in Part Two.Exploring the influences, precedents,strategies and concerns of American

garden-makers, she demonstrates howAmericans departed from their Europeanforebears to evolve a unique designvocabulary. Though this is most evidentin the post-colonial period, Otis pursuescharming digressions on `walls andfences', `wilderness as inspiration', and`individualism, community and the frontlawn', to reveal that from the earliest yearsthe colonists had their own way of doingthings.

Despite the Puritans' obsession withenclosure, most foreign observers havebeen struck by the absence of propertyboundaries in America. Otis believes thatin space-starved Europe the garden was anextension of the house, a place of seclu-sion, whereas in spacious America itbecame a place of inclusion, a transitionalarea between the privacy of the home andthe freedom of the public way. She alsotraces the ubiquitous American frontporch back to Iberia, via slaves fromCaribbean plantations ± verandah being aPortuguese word, not East Indian as iswidely believed.

Otis explores such diverse forces as thelack of primogeniture to foster allegiancesto particular regions and the nationalrestlessness ± noting that in the 1960s,20 per cent of the population moved in anyone year. Despite ± or perhaps because of ±such rootlessness, America evolved adistinct garden style. In the 1930s therevolutionary trio of Garret Eckbo, JamesRose and Dan Kiley, all rebels from theHarvard Graduate School of Design,transformed the American approach.Their `recreational style' redefined thegarden as a place for leisure rather thanhorticulture. Ridiculing traditional designwith its axial layouts and rigid geometry,they promoted a new informal style, withroots in `literature and sentiment ratherthan form and arrangement'.

Otis also pays tribute to ThomasChurch and his California style, observingthat its canopied patios, paved lawns,container-held plants, barbeques andpools, though evolved to suit the hot, dryCalifornia climate, now permeate thecontinent. In an intriguing but not whollyconvincing aside Otis posits that service-men stationed in California after theSecond World War became enchantedwith the lifestyle and carried its elementsback to their own suburban plots, howeverinappropriate the prevailing climate.

She also makes the imaginativesuggestion that the recent fashion for

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Feature Reviews

gardening began in the 1970s with astrong dollar and a sudden surge ofmiddle-class tourists visiting Europe.Keen to recreate the exotic cuisine ofabroad they were forced to grow their ownchervil and tarragon as local supermarketsrefused to stock such alien goods. It's justas likely that the middle class interest innature was provoked by Rachel Carson's1962 Silent Spring which exposed the long-term consequences of our use of chemicalpesticides and fertilisers.

Otis' concluding section examines 15recent gardens. Mixing the work ofprofessionals, such as Wolfgang Oehmeand James Van Sweden, with that of keenamateurs, such as John and Jane Platt, shereveals the richness and variety of con-temporary American garden design. Onewonders how Francis Cabot's Quatre Ventsfound its way into this portfolio. Thoughundoubtedly a glorious garden, and one ofthe largest to be created in the last quartercentury, it is more eighteenth-centuryeclectic than twentieth-century modern.Furthermore, as Otis ignores both Mexicoand Canada in her definition of `America',surely Quatre Vents, situated in NorthernQuebec, is beyond her remit.

Such quibbles aside, the book is richand rewarding. Stunning photos, copiousfootnotes, a detailed bibliography and acomprehensive timeline make it suitablefor scholar and amateur alike.

Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall's TheGarden An English Love Affair manages toshed new light on old territory. Herchronological account of English garden-ing underlines the role of politics inshaping landscape. The England of todaywith its neat, domestic fields is a far cryfrom the densely wooded island con-quered by the Normans in 1066. Despitethe menace of the forest ± its store ofmythical and real beasts, the speed withwhich it reclaimed hard-won cultivatedspaces ± many managed to glean food,fuel, building materials and wintergrazing from its floor.

When the Norman conquerors claimedthe forests for royal sport, they imposedrules of `vert and venison', infringementsof which were punishable by removal ofthe offender's eyes and testicles; by thetwelfth century it was neither the harsh-ness of nature nor the threat of wolves, butthe sheriff's cruelty people feared.

Until the early Renaissance, the needfor a peripatetic court to maintainauthority over its possessions mitigatedagainst the creation of gardens. The ideaof cultivating plants for pleasure did nottake hold until the mid-sixteenth century,when Henry VIII's dissolution of themonasteries enabled newly rich trades-men to establish themselves as countrygentlemen in those of the 8,000 monasticproperties the king hadn't seized forhimself. By the late sixteenth century,Huguenots fleeing France brought newskills with them, while exotica such astulips and lilacs poured in from AsiaMinor and sunflowers, nasturtiums andtobacco were arriving from the Americas.

Throughout the seventeenth century,political strife forced much of the aristo-cracy and gentry to retreat to their countryestates: those reluctant to take sidesduring the civil war, Royalists andCatholics during the Protectorate, Puri-tans and Parliamentarians after theRestoration. The great English love ofhorticulture flourished in this rural exile.

Though Fearnley-Whittingstall trawlsthe recognised authorities, the real joy ofher book is when she explores less obvioussources for new angles on the subject. Onefelicitous gem is the declaration by aRothschild head gardener that a squirewould require 10,000 bedding plants a yearfor his garden, a baronet 20,000, an earl30,000 and a duke 50,000 ± this, after therevelation that Baron Ferdinand deRothchild's Waddesdon Manor gobbledup a full 100,000 bedding plants in its late-nineteenth-century summer displays.

A fascinating digression into prisonhorticulture reveals that when Leigh Hunt

was imprisoned for libelling the PrinceRegent he papered his cell with roses,painted a blue sky on the ceiling, fenced inthe lawn outside his cell, and planted itwith flowers and fruit trees. He lived theresnugly with his wife and son, visited bysuch luminaries as Thomas Moore andLord Byron, while continuing to edit theExaminer, in which the libel had appeared.

The author also explores the treach-erous territory of social nuance throughthe fiction of such horticultural snobs asPG Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh; alongthe way she provides the sublime descrip-tion of Vita Sackville-West as `LadyChatterley and her lover rolled into one'.Pointing out that, after the war, urbanslum-dwellers re-housed in council houseshad no knowledge of gardening, shebrilliantly evokes the 1950s' suburbangarden through the words of Polly Garter,from Dylan Thomas' Under Milkwood:`Nothing grows in our garden, onlywashing. And babies.'

Occasionally one gets the impressionthat the author has not visited all thegardens of which she speaks, as when shequotes Jellicoe's description of the grottohe designed for Sutton Place withoutmentioning that it was never constructed,or when she perpetuates erroneous belief± traceable to Jane Brown's The Art andArchitecture of English Gardens ± that OliverHill's Joldwyns was demolished; thoughits owner sued the architect for shoddywork, Joldwyns still presides over theSurrey hills looking much as it did whenerected 73 years ago.

A frustrating lack of footnotes and noattributions for the quotes make this bookmore suited to the garden-lover than thescholar, but the quirkiness and breadth ofFearnley-Whittingstall's research, and herobvious love of the subject more thancompensate for any academic short-comings.

katie campbellGarden historian, Bristol University

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