DOI Artikel:
Hunt, John Dixon: On the formation and conduct of garden history
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14576#0014
8
JOHN DIXON IIUNT
he constructed an impressively fuli map of garden practice and use in classical Athens from scraps of dif-
férent documents that on the face of it were not "about" gardens, including légal and court courts - some of
it yielding what one might certainly have expected, but much also surprising in its conclusions.
In fact, the shape of garden history over the last 30 years has often - in its more exciting moments -
been directed by the requirements of the subject rather than by the capabilities and training of its practition-
ers or by their expectations of what archivai and published sources would be most fruitful. Suzanne Turner
found the notarial archives of New Orléans that allowed access to a whole new world of garden design and
expérience7. Woodbridge's work on Stourhead is also exemplary here: the way in which the making of a spé-
cial site required the movement outward from the garden itself into the larger archaeological, political and
philosophical landscape; Malcolm Kelsall further contributed and extended an understanding of Stourhead
by determining the significance of both its gothic as well as its classical allusions within a broader 18th~cen-
tury culture8.
Garden history has established two unavoidable trajectories. The first is the investigation of the design
and formai évolution of individual sites; this involves land holdings, patronage, available design skills (espe-
cially before the days of professional landscape designers tout purs), and above ail a focus upon formai
moves, usually drawn first on paper and then transferred onto the ground. Art and architectural historians
found this approach congenial and even familiar. The second trajectory sought to elucidate why sites were
created in those ways: what were the motives of patrons, the éducation and inclinations of designers (includ-
ing their knowledge of earlier forms), ail of which tended towards a focus upon the meaning that a designed
site held for its original creators and owners. Philosophers, historians of science and literary critics were
particularly drawn to this mode of history. Both those approaches privileged the design of original sites, but
what they did not generally seek to understand was how subséquent générations saw or (perhaps) remodelled
the original designs. My own book on The Afterlife of Gardens (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadel-
phia 2004) raised the issue of how garden historians could or should involve the changing circumstances and
responses to sites after their "completion": for instance, how were they to deal with responses to designs that
had no basis in original ("authorial") intentions or original cultural contexts and yet were much involved in
historical narratives.
But there was also a third garden history, in fact one long established and exercising an immensely
strong hold upon ail who entered the field in the modem period, which is to see the topic of current research
or analysis within a long narrative of garden-making. Ever since the 17th century, writers on gardening mat-
ters - whether focused on design or practical horticultural matters found the need to position themselves
historically, to write their stories within what they construed as the historical narrative right up to the moment
of their own intervention: like many early authors, John Evelyn in his "Elysium Britannicum" saw the ban-
ishment from Eden as the terminus ab quo for ail subséquent gardens, a narrative beginning that is still much
in vogue to this day. And once you have started with Eden, if s almost inévitable that you trace humans'
subséquent involvement with gardens. The first addition of a substantial historical narrative to a published
volume was Stephen Switzer's The History of Gardening in his Ichnographia Rustica of 1718, which also
begins its story with Eden. And thereafter almost every major work on garden and landscape design has
kicked off with an extended history of its subject, from J.C. Loudon's extensive historiés of différent cultural
modes in An Encyclopedia of Gardening (1822 and several later éditions) to Alphand's survey of Egyptian
gardens onwards in Les Promenades de Paris (1867-1873), from Hirschfeld's Gardens of the Ancients and
Modems in Théorie der Gartenkunst (1775 et seq. ) to Tunnard's pictorial survey of changing design tastes
in Gardens in the Modem Landscape (1938). Since so many of thèse publications were written to promote
and celebrate the latest, cutting-edge fashions in gardens and landscapes, like Alphand's Parisian work under
Haussemann or Tunnard's modernist agenda, they almost inevitably saw their own contribution as the logi-
cal, best and most advanced product in the field, or sometimes as a significance departure from previous
practice. Whether the new contribution simply brought together ail the best features from earlier, half-hearted
Roots of a régional garden tradition: the drawings of the New Orléans notarial archives, [in:] Régional Garden Design in
the United States, ed. Th. О ' M a 11 e y and M. Tr с i b, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C. 1995, pp. 163-190.
8 K. Wood bridge, Landscape and Antiquity = aspects of English culture at Stourhead 1719 to 1838, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1970. M. Kelsall, The Iconography of Stourhead, "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes", 46 (1983),
pp. 133 143. I have explored the différent perspectives and analyses of historians on Stourhead in Stourhead Revis ited & the pursuit
of meaning in gardens, SHGDL, 26 (2006), pp. 328-341.
JOHN DIXON IIUNT
he constructed an impressively fuli map of garden practice and use in classical Athens from scraps of dif-
férent documents that on the face of it were not "about" gardens, including légal and court courts - some of
it yielding what one might certainly have expected, but much also surprising in its conclusions.
In fact, the shape of garden history over the last 30 years has often - in its more exciting moments -
been directed by the requirements of the subject rather than by the capabilities and training of its practition-
ers or by their expectations of what archivai and published sources would be most fruitful. Suzanne Turner
found the notarial archives of New Orléans that allowed access to a whole new world of garden design and
expérience7. Woodbridge's work on Stourhead is also exemplary here: the way in which the making of a spé-
cial site required the movement outward from the garden itself into the larger archaeological, political and
philosophical landscape; Malcolm Kelsall further contributed and extended an understanding of Stourhead
by determining the significance of both its gothic as well as its classical allusions within a broader 18th~cen-
tury culture8.
Garden history has established two unavoidable trajectories. The first is the investigation of the design
and formai évolution of individual sites; this involves land holdings, patronage, available design skills (espe-
cially before the days of professional landscape designers tout purs), and above ail a focus upon formai
moves, usually drawn first on paper and then transferred onto the ground. Art and architectural historians
found this approach congenial and even familiar. The second trajectory sought to elucidate why sites were
created in those ways: what were the motives of patrons, the éducation and inclinations of designers (includ-
ing their knowledge of earlier forms), ail of which tended towards a focus upon the meaning that a designed
site held for its original creators and owners. Philosophers, historians of science and literary critics were
particularly drawn to this mode of history. Both those approaches privileged the design of original sites, but
what they did not generally seek to understand was how subséquent générations saw or (perhaps) remodelled
the original designs. My own book on The Afterlife of Gardens (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadel-
phia 2004) raised the issue of how garden historians could or should involve the changing circumstances and
responses to sites after their "completion": for instance, how were they to deal with responses to designs that
had no basis in original ("authorial") intentions or original cultural contexts and yet were much involved in
historical narratives.
But there was also a third garden history, in fact one long established and exercising an immensely
strong hold upon ail who entered the field in the modem period, which is to see the topic of current research
or analysis within a long narrative of garden-making. Ever since the 17th century, writers on gardening mat-
ters - whether focused on design or practical horticultural matters found the need to position themselves
historically, to write their stories within what they construed as the historical narrative right up to the moment
of their own intervention: like many early authors, John Evelyn in his "Elysium Britannicum" saw the ban-
ishment from Eden as the terminus ab quo for ail subséquent gardens, a narrative beginning that is still much
in vogue to this day. And once you have started with Eden, if s almost inévitable that you trace humans'
subséquent involvement with gardens. The first addition of a substantial historical narrative to a published
volume was Stephen Switzer's The History of Gardening in his Ichnographia Rustica of 1718, which also
begins its story with Eden. And thereafter almost every major work on garden and landscape design has
kicked off with an extended history of its subject, from J.C. Loudon's extensive historiés of différent cultural
modes in An Encyclopedia of Gardening (1822 and several later éditions) to Alphand's survey of Egyptian
gardens onwards in Les Promenades de Paris (1867-1873), from Hirschfeld's Gardens of the Ancients and
Modems in Théorie der Gartenkunst (1775 et seq. ) to Tunnard's pictorial survey of changing design tastes
in Gardens in the Modem Landscape (1938). Since so many of thèse publications were written to promote
and celebrate the latest, cutting-edge fashions in gardens and landscapes, like Alphand's Parisian work under
Haussemann or Tunnard's modernist agenda, they almost inevitably saw their own contribution as the logi-
cal, best and most advanced product in the field, or sometimes as a significance departure from previous
practice. Whether the new contribution simply brought together ail the best features from earlier, half-hearted
Roots of a régional garden tradition: the drawings of the New Orléans notarial archives, [in:] Régional Garden Design in
the United States, ed. Th. О ' M a 11 e y and M. Tr с i b, Dumbarton Oaks, Washington D.C. 1995, pp. 163-190.
8 K. Wood bridge, Landscape and Antiquity = aspects of English culture at Stourhead 1719 to 1838, Clarendon Press,
Oxford 1970. M. Kelsall, The Iconography of Stourhead, "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes", 46 (1983),
pp. 133 143. I have explored the différent perspectives and analyses of historians on Stourhead in Stourhead Revis ited & the pursuit
of meaning in gardens, SHGDL, 26 (2006), pp. 328-341.