And speaking of old garden books...

The catalogue that makes my knees go weak is that of Hinck and Wall, antiquarian booksellers with a specialty in garden history. (They also, enviably, own the url gardenhistory.com).

If-wishes-were-horses-and-beggars-could-ride I might choose to own the entire 1913-1969 run of the super-luxe French garden periodical LA GAZETTE ILLUSTRÉE DES AMATEURS DE JARDINS at $8000 the set. Hand-colored plates, high quality photographs, and occasional watercolors, and the source of the lovely image above, another of my Art Deco gardens. Note the stepped 'Aztec' arches; a recurring Deco motif.

Steep prices, but beautiful historic volumes...if you can afford these I envy you.

Oh for pots of money for piles of books!

Hortus Palatinus Update

A German friend from Heidelberg has just informed me that plans to re-create the Hortus Palatinus are under consideration by her city. At first, I was thrilled. But then she told me that she had signed a petition against it (this, from the friend of a garden historian!) and explained to me why it was so controversial. The remains of the gardenand the castle are now a free-form, free-access park, open at all hours at no cost and providing one of the only such spaces in a city of about 150,000 people. Re-creating the garden would replace casual spaces with formal ones, open access with gates and closing times, and free space with fees to defray the considerable costs of a new formal garden. I see her point.

I hope that the city will seek a middle ground...perhaps recreating a portion of the formal gardens while leaving the rest of the grounds as they are. Even I can't say that the beauty of a long-vanished landscape trumps current human needs. Your thoughts?

Also, apparently someone has beaten me to the 'virtual reality' version of the H.P (not that I have the computer skills for it anyway)....it's available on DVD for 34.90 USD. Now if only they could make it into a series of enormous holograms Heidelberg could have its parkspace AND the Hortus Palatinus.

Because it's Beautiful...Boston Parks

Used to be 25 cents, now it's $135 from rulon-miller books.


"Boston Park guide including the municipal and metropolitan systems of greater Boston. Boston: published by the author, 1895. $1358vo, pp.[4] ads, [4], 69, [6] ads; folding frontispiece plan of the park, 2 other folding plans, 17 plates from photographs, a number of other illustrations and plans in the text, some full-p.; original pictorial wrappers printed in brown, black and green, by Chas. H. Woodbury"

Sure to include Boston Common, the oldest park in America: circa 1634 when each householder paid a minimum of six shillings toward its purchase. In the 1870s it became part of Frederick Law Olmstead's 'Emerald Necklace' of park landscapes encircling Boston, but he (sensibly) didn't alter it.

Guevrekian's Disco Ball

The artist Gabriel Guevrekian's garden for the 1925 Paris Exposition des Arts Decoratifs, from which the 'Art Deco' design movement takes its name, was one of many temporary show gardens installed along the streets of Paris just for the event. It uses the ubiquitous Art Deco form of an acute triangle, repeated in a composition that reflects the cubist tendencies in the art world at the time.

I enjoy this garden because it is such a synthesis of old and new; the flower planting is essentially just a remodeled parterre, and has more in common with Victorian planting schemes than with Le Corbusier's modernist approach to landscape, on display just down the street.

The mirrored 'disco' ball did, in fact, rotate...it was highlighted by spotlights at night and water streamed onto it from the matching silver statuette behind, adding splash and spray to the effect. It seems a bit gauche now, but for its time it was a theatrical display of mechanical and electrical technology, brought to life in the garden.

One of the neglected Art Deco gardens I'll be discussing in my talk next Wednesday.

A Modern Treillage

London-based designers Superblue were inspired by the organic forms of hedgerows to create a 'soft' boundary structure--an undulating honeycomb, which they have turned into fence panels, and a potting shed, both in wood, as well as an an aluminum gate for a private sculpture park. The varying intervals between the cross-pieces within the panels create striking patterns when lit. It's not easy to update what is essentially a trellis-fence...well-done.

Green Roofs Now and Then

Green roofs c. 1728 (the Hermitage in Queen Caroline's gardens at Richmond, later to become Kew), 1797 (location unknown, from the NYPL collection, and isn't the garden seat sketched below the gazebo beautiful?),

and 2007, from the School of Art Design & Media in Nanyang Singapore, by CPG Consultants Pte (via haute*nature). I love that the rooftop is functional space, accessed by a stairway that runs all along the sides. Picnic on the roof, anyone?

Garden for an American Craftsman House

The bungalows from the early twentieth century (c. 1890-1930) we in America refer to as 'Craftsman' houses are often now, in the twenty-first century, landscaped with rocks and grasses. While this looks appropriate and somehow natural and even beautiful to our eyes, it is certainly not what a gardener of the time period would have used in the landscape.

A more historically sensitive garden could be drawn from images like that above, also from the New York Public Library collection, circa. 1904. Note the wide paths used to segment the lawn, which is designed to be in, not just to gaze at. Healthy time in the out of doors was an important part of Arts and Crafts philosophy. Tall evergreens, so popular in the preceding Victorian era, are still used to frame the house, but the area around the entrance is accented by only small trees/large shrubs so as not to obscure the entrance, a point modern homeowners would do well to take note of. The entrance to the house is, in fact, the most prominent feature in the landscape, being extended by a porch and emphasised by the wide path-crossing in front of it.

Color is provided by the planting beds within the lawn segments, formality by the judicious use of shaped evergreens, privacy and enclosure by the encircling hedge, and the arbors are an appropriate nostalgic touch for what was, after all, a nostalgic movement. Which is why a modern garden doesn't really suit.

Where to study Garden History, cont'd

Still, it was a big decision and when I packed up and left I was wondering if I'd made the right one.

Each year, the new intakes spend the first weekend of the course together, to bond and break in their wellingtons on some intense walk-arounds of historic gardens.

My group started at Stowe.
Lancelot (later to be Capability) Brown signed the church window to celebrate his wedding there in 1744. I got goosebumps, and knew I was in the right place.

A word to the wise from Professor Mowl: 'Always go in the church'.

And read your Milton.

Where to study Garden History

Many people who are involved in garden history actually have come to it through related fields of study: landscape architecture, architectural history, or art history. And you can, while studying for a graduate degree in one of these fields, specialize in the study of historic gardens.

But I wanted a more direct route, when I realized, after lots of reading purely for my own interest, that one could actually get a degree in the subject.

There is one program available in the US, at the Bard College of Design in New York City, which I seriously considered. As one might expect, there are a variety of training opportunities within the UK; they can be found on the aforementioned website of the Garden History Society.

I ultimately chose to enroll in the Garden History MA from the University of Bristol in England. It gave me the option of fulfilling the degree in one year (intense but doable; most do it in two), which was the longest time I could take off from work. And I had come to realize that whatever program I was in, a great deal of study would be devoted to the great English gardens. I wanted to learn from them firsthand instead of in books.

And that was a primary consideration for me...I'm interested in the actual place of gardens, not in sociologic analysis or marxist reinterpretations, or the garden's 'non-human interactions' (that's an actual quote; I have yet to figure out what it means). But I was still uncertain when I took advantage of a cheap winter airline fare and flew over for just a few days to see the program and meet the tutor, Tim Mowl. The quality of the program, as well as Professor Tim's intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for both his field of study and his students, decided me.

When Tim took me 'round Stourhead, explaining its history, the paths and grottos and temples were suddenly animated. I went home and told my department chair (this would be the department of Chemistry and Biochemistry) that I wanted to take a year off and go to England and study Garden History.

He took it rather well, considering.

Previous Art Installation in Madison Park and the New York Public Library Image Collection

A previous art installation at Madison Park was this high-rise birdhouse, from an 1871 print in the collection of the New York Public Library. Lovely example of the Victorian inclination to ornament.

Once again, search on 'garden' for a visual feast of images, not just of New York, but of various sites both inside and outside the United States. An excellent resource for the garden historian.

Many thanks to the NYPL for making their collection available...having just returned from Britain I can say that my British friends are unsurpassed at consolidating their historic archives into central locations, but the US is leading the way in making their collections digitally available to all.

Also above, the park in 1893. Note the Victorian-style layout of paths...

Big Shiny Trees in Madison Park

The work of Roxy Paine installed until February 28th in Madison Park, NYC. Though tree forms from unusual materials are not in themselves terribly unique, I think these are brilliantly sited. I love the way they seem to reach for each other. Paine makes big shiny rocks as well...

See more of her work at the link.

via aestheticgrounds, which is a dialogue on public art.

What does your garden mean?

I'm still thinking about the Hortus Palatinus. One thing I love about old gardens is that they were designed to mean, not just to be. It's one of the reasons that gardening was historically considered an intellectual pursuit; a labor of the mind rather than of the flesh.

We've lost more than just the ability to decipher the language of the Hortus Palatinus.

We seem unable to speak the language of meaning in the garden at all anymore.

And even if we did, would anyone understand? When you hear a modern gardener talk about meaning, they are usually speaking of a deeply personal expression; unlikely to be deciphered by a garden visitor or understood in the same way by anyone but them. One exception is the language of memorial, which we still speak. Is that enough? Should there, could there, be a new garden language?

It occurs to me that the symbology inherent in historic gardens was an expression of the importance of symbols in the larger culture, and that in turn was largely a result of illiteracy. Symbols were essential for communication. Might we come full circle in an age where visual imagery is replacing print, and young people feel more connected to the simple language of the graffiti tag, whose forms could easily become a parterre?

It should be remembered as well that the number of plants available to work with in the garden was a tiny fraction of those we have today. If Salomon de Caus had made a garden that was simply about his choice and arrangement of plant varieties, it wouldn't have been very big. Or very interesting. The increase in our plant vocabulary has led to a reduction of our other vocabularies, to a neglect of other purposes, other ideals in the garden.

I rarely see a modern garden that means. I wish I did.

(graffiti via writinginfaith)

Friday Feature Garden - the Hortus Palatinus, 8th wonder of the World

The Hortus Palatinus is one of the great lost wonders of garden history.

It was designed and built by Salomon de Caus, a French Huguenot refugee to the English court, for Frederick V and his wife Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James I. It took five years (c.1614-1619) for the massive terraced construction to be carved out of the hillside outside of Heidelberg and become known as the 8th wonder of the world

Walking through it you would have been enveloped in a mysterious landscape of statues that wept, robotic birds that sang, mythical beasts carved into hedges, and strange symbolic patterns in the paths and groundscape speaking a garden language as lost as the garden itself. Some have interpreted it as displaying Rosicrucian symbology, but there is no evidence that Salomon had such leanings.

He was a scientist and a polymath; a Leonardo-type character without the name recognition. In addition to his hydraulic engineering, he published treatises on perspective drawing (he was drawing tutor to Elizabeth's brother, Prince Henry who was England's great hope and whose early death from typhoid certainly altered the course of history), music, and sundials. He made what was perhaps the first modern greenhouse (it was at that time poorly understood that plants needed light!) was a pioneer of anamorphosis in art and an unsurpassed fountain engineer...his constructions moved and wept, organs played, birds chirped, and balls were suspended on jets of water in mysterious grottos.

Within a year of its construction, Frederick and Elizabeth fled to Holland and the garden was destroyed in the Thirty Years War; it may even have been gone by the time Salomon published his treatise on it in 1620. Little is left now; one of the only remaining structures is the 'Elizabeth Gate', designed by Salomon and thrown up in only a night to celebrate Elizabeth's birthday. Ceremonial gates were terribly important in the Renaissance, a cultural obsession that often shows up in renaissance gardens.

Fortunately, we can still experience the Hortus Palatinus because of the book Salomon left, which included detailed engravings. It can be viewed in its entirety online at the University of Heidelberg. The publication, by the way, was probably done for the resulting income...working for the king didn't always guarantee financial success. There were of course additional bills associated with the increased social standing of being a royal gardener, and gardeners often had to pay for at least some of the works/supplies out of their own pockets and then seek reimbursement from the treasury. The royals were notorious for being reluctant to pay their bills.

Note as you peruse the engravings that the garden is an 'assembly of parts', rather than a cohesive tableau, as we now expect a garden to be, and lacks the organizational axis that will soon begin to appear in Baroque gardens.

If only I could see the Hortus Palatinus...

Anyone want to collaborate on a virtual reality project?

read more here and here.

A book on Salomon de Caus was published last year and will likely remain the definitive volume on his life. Though a good work of historical scholarship, its dry, academic style disappointingly fails to engage the reader with the amazing person that Salomon must have been. I also wish such a small volume wasn't such a big 'library' price ($55)! But it's still the place to go for just the facts, ma'am...