Landscapes of the 1950s

Also, I'll be speaking about 'atomic gardens' at a study day on landscapes of the 1950s to be held at my alma mater, the University of Bristol on April 24.  I'd love to meet my UK readers so register soon by sending an email to the conference organizer, Dr Katie Campbell, at katie@gardenhistoryinstitute.co.uk.

Here's the brief from the website of the Institute for Garden and Landscape History:

This study day takes a cross cultural look at Britain in the 1950s to see if the decade produced a unique and distinctive style.  The title recalls a response to the Skylon, the futurisitic sculpture that epitomised the 1951 Festival of Britain; predictably, the phrase was soon applied to the nation itself.  While America emerged from the Second World War as 'the Affluent Society', Britain had to buckle down to a period of ‘reconstruction and regeneration’.  It was the era of milk bars and dance halls, slacks and cigarettes, spies and sputnik, cocktails and carnivals; it saw the rise of the Cold War and the death of the Debutante.  The Festival of Britain, followed two years later by the Coronation gave rise to a self-conscious patriotism and by 1957 Harold Macmillan could finally assure his people, ‘You’ve never had it so good!’  Examining key figures in visual arts, architecture and garden design we will attempt to tease out preoccupations, themes and motifs to determine if there really is a 50s style, and if so, what it looked like. 

[photo is the 'Skylon' installation from the 1951 Festival of Britain]

2010 Garden History Society Essay Prize

The essay prize of the Garden History Society was established to encourage vibrant, scholarly research in the field of garden history.  It is open to any student registered in a bona fide university or institute of higher education, or any student who has graduated from such an institute in the past twelve months.

Submissions must be 5000–6000 words and the only restriction on subject matter is that it must be of relevance to garden history.  Deadline for the 2010 competition is April 30. 

The prize includes a cheque for £250 (to be awarded at the GHS Annual Summer Garden Party), free membership of the society for a year and consideration for publication in the peer-reviewed, scholarly journal Garden History.

Note that the prize is not restricted to UK citizens or residents.  Past winners include yours truly...full information (including rules and entry forms) at the GHS website!

The Gardens of Bakhchisaray Palace and the Fountain of Tears, Crimea

My native land abandoned long,

I sought this realm of love and song.

Through Bakchesaria's palace wandered,

Upon its vanished greatness pondered;

All silent now those spacious halls,

And courts deserted, once so gay

With feasters thronged within their walls,

Carousing after battle fray.

Even now each desolated room

And ruined garden luxury breathes,

The fountains play, the roses bloom,

The vine unnoticed twines its wreaths,

Gold glistens, shrubs exhale perfume.

The shattered casements still are there.

 Within which once, in days gone by,

Their beads of amber chose the fair,

And heaved the unregarded sigh;

The cemetery there I found,

Of conquering khans the last abode,

Columns with marble turbans crowned

Their resting-place the traveller showed,

And seemed to speak fate's stern decree,

"As they are now such all shall be!"

Alexander Pushkin

Bakhchisaray, which literally means palace in a garden, was the capital of the Crimean Khanate from the early 16th century until it was annexed by Russia in 1783. One of  few images of its antique gardens is a plate depicting tower-tall arbors (top), from "Meyer's Universum", a compendium of the world published by Carl Joseph Meyer in 1860.   The palace was originally built by Mengli Giray in the early 16th century and functioned as both the  residence of the Tatar Khans and the administrative headquarters of the Khanate, evolving over time into a complex of buildings and garden courtyards.

In one still stands the "Fountain of Tears" (c. 1763), immortalized by Puskin in his 1824 poem  The Fountain of Bakhchisarai, but attached even prior to the poet's visit with romantic tales of a Khan in love with a captured maid and the eternally weeping fountain he commissioned as a memorial upon her death.  Pushkin makes the heroine a devout Polish girl, sitting aloof from the pleasures of the harem and its garden.

Though little known in the West, the story and its setting are beloved in Russia, inspiring in addition to the painting by Karl Briullov a ballet, an opera, and film based on Pushkin's tale.  Bakhchisaray is today a museum of Crimean Tatar history and decorative arts. 

Still do the gurgling waters pour

Their streams dispensing sadness round,

As mothers weep for sons no more,

In never-ending sorrows drowned.

In morn fair maids, (and twilight late,)

Roam where this monument appears,

And pitying poor Maria's fate

Entitle it the FOUNT OF TEARS!