Introduction to the History of Garden Design in AmericaHumanity 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.
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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These conditions obviously affect every phase of life in America deeply, distinguishing it from Europe, with its multitudinous races and tongues. The strong national tendencies extend even to gardening. Nationally known brands of oranges, apples and bananas are eaten everywhere. Strawberries, onions, celery, early potatoes, peaches and watermelons are shipped in heavy carloads across the continent. And the nurseryman who introduces a new rose or a new philadelphus advertises it impartially to Canada, California and Virginia. Every book on landscape architecture is written for sale over the whole breadth of the land.
Geographic factors influencing American garden design and landscape architecture
America is a large country, and no one can gain any comprehension of the garden-making problem there without due consideration of factors of geography, topography and climate. In latitude and longitude the inhabited portions of North America cover a territory equal to the British Isles, all of Western Europe, all Eastern Russia, one-half of Siberia, and the whole Mediterranean Basin, including Turkey, Persia and Northern Africa. If it is necessary, in writing of European gardening, to discriminate carefully such areas as Italy, Germany, Russia and Great Britain, it is equally necessary to examine the peculiarities of California, Florida, the Mississippi Basin, New England and Canada in speaking of gardening in North America.
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Aside from its mere physical vastness, this North American continent has a highly varied topography. Beginning at the eastern seaboard there is found a narrow coastal plain marked by low hills, often rocky. Back of this lies the geologically old Appalachian mountain range, heavily wooded and watered, and in its northern reaches strongly glaciated. Next comes the Mississippi valley, very wide, generally level, considerably varied in its soil but largely of limestone derivation, exceedingly fertile and mostly well cultivated. The eastern two-thirds of this basin has an ample rainfall, ranging roughly from twenty- five to thirty-five inches annually. The western third verges toward arid conditions, the rainfall diminishing westward to the Rocky Mountains. In this system of high mountains is found a remarkable range of physical conditions, varying from narrow, sunny, fertile, well-watered valleys to arid steppes and mountain peaks capped with eternal snow. West of the Rocky Mountains lies the great interior plateau, about the size of France and comprising several states. The elevation ranges from 2000 to 6000 feet above sea-level, with many local mountains running considerably higher, a few up to 10,000 feet. Rainfall is deficient, but a few small areas under irrigation are highly fruitful. This brings us to the Sierra Nevada range, almost as high as the Rockies and perhaps more picturesque. These mountains are heavily wooded on their western slopes but nearly arid on their eastern side. Between them and the Pacific Ocean lie the rich, varied and mild areas of the Pacific slope in British Columbia, Washington, Oregon and California. Here the rain- fall is generally heavy, especially northward, forests are made up of enormous trees and crowding undergrowth, and the climate is much milder than in corresponding latitudes eastward. This amelioration of the Pacific Coast climate by the warm ocean currents from Japan is a factor of commanding importance.
This glance from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coasts necessarily ignores many local conditions of great importance. And it leaves the necessity of retracing steps to speak of Canada at the north and the Gulf States at the south. It is true that, in general terms, the topographic features just sketched extend northward across Canada; true also that, lying farther north, each Canadian zone has a slightly shorter growing season and a lower summer temperature than the corresponding zone in the United States. Yet Canada is a highly fertile arable area, and has a large population of cultivated citizens who have made great progress in horticulture and landscape architecture. The areas bordering on the Gulf of Mexico constitute another zone of quite individual qualities. This zone includes the whole of Florida, with portions of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. Altitudes are low, usually hardly above tide-level, the surface is flat, and there is much swamp land. There is naturally much heavy forest in which southern species of pine are conspicuous. Rainfall is ample and the temperature is warm and equable.
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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.
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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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.
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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16楼
顶，不错
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17楼
好！看起来有挑战性！我喜欢
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看不懂
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19楼
有没有中文的
或是翻译过来再发不好些>?
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英文看不懂，看得懂的各位大哥麻烦翻译一下啦
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好帖,应该顶一下!!!支持楼主
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