DOI Artikel:
Hunt, John Dixon: On the formation and conduct of garden history
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14576#0016
10
JOHN DIXON HUNT
or to bolster long-established idéologies (nationalistic, naturalistic or ecological) or to promote agendas where
available évidence is over-determined by ulterior motives (the fashionable invocation of "power" as a tool
of explication). And as the joke goes, it is not history that repeats itself, but historians who repeat each other1
That is one reason why my own history course tries to disrupt a merely narrative and teleological structure
for one that opts to look intently at a sélection of key moments (those moments certainly have their place in
an extended narrative, but do not dérive anything like ail their interest from such a narrative role).
Garden history has been growing and developing rapidly over the last 30 or 40 years. Work published
even ten years ago sometimes seems naïve or insufficient now, through no fault of the author's. The range of
the subject along with the sheer quantity of work now produced in the larger history of landscape has increased
by leaps and bounds. One must acknowledge here the considérable contributions - in both number and intel-
lectual thrust - that have emerged in Europe (France most prominently, but Italy also) from a whole range of
landscape architects, philosophers, geographers, and cultural commentators and historians of ail sorts. Not ail
of thèse have focused primarily on designed landscapes - larger cultural landscapes have been a subject of
particular interest, yet they provide a crucial context in which spécifie garden sites need to be studied12. Réc-
ognition of the ineluctably multi-disciplinary nature of garden historical enquiry, and the contributions to the
subject therefore from an increased number of specialists in other fields, make every new endeavour poten-
tially more challenging. However, we can now be confident that gardens are taken seriously, no longer the
subject of a passing nod by scholars whose main interest was the architecture of the adjacent villa or château!
We need more careful work on cross-territorial (international) and cross-cultural exchanges, including
the imitations of "primary" forms that necessarily modify their "sources" (e.g. the Chinese garden in Western
Europe). Too much garden history has developed within specifically national boundaries, partly because this
was how later garden design saw itself post-1800, but partly because to study the exchange between différent
cultures of course requires linguistic resources not always available to the historians. The focus upon major,
"canonical" sites (Versailles, Wôrlitz, Stowe, Central Park, etc) or upon a cluster of "national" style (Italian,
French, English, Dutch) dérives obviously from the abundance and availability of materials, but it needs to
be supplemented by some interest in the lesser, often "minor" examples. How do thèse latter, properly stud-
ied, re-write or re-map the historiés of the well established and famous examples? How does one include
vernacular gardens in historiés that generally privilège élite examples? What of the place of the urban garden
in the narrative of what tends to be largely rural sites? What is the relationship that historians need to track
between smali, limited garden spaces (for instance the suburban garden) and the much more studied larger
parks and estâtes - this is a thème that the 19th century particularly proposes? And the résurgence of interest in
local garden cultures (Scandinavian, Eastern Europe) also poses challenges to a previously centralized history.
Other hopes and proposais for study were advanced at a récent symposium on the future of British gar-
den history, and I resume some of thèse by way of conclusion, not least because they have a wider applica-
tion than that particular occasion required13. Situating the garden to be studied within both a régional and an
immédiate territorial context seemed of particular concern to the speakers; knowing, too, much more about
what actually happens on the ground, how and why estâtes were managed and how the garden, both in its
design and use, figured within the larger economy of rural or urban existence (farmland, woodlands, family
or civic rituals). It was also noted that the garden was increasingly attracting specialists from other fields -
but not now to work specifically in its history, but to invoke the historiés of garden and landscape to buttress
their own work in gender, women, post-colonial and imperialism studies. While that kind of attention is
gratifying to the garden historian, s/he will also be struck too often by the importation into those areas of
a very reduced and simplified type of garden history - for example, the assumption that some such entity as
the "eighteenth-century English garden" both existed and can be equated with the perpétuation of social,
" On the other hand, there is also too much "new" garden history being written that faits to acknowledge previous work
(I can only assume that those who do this have little access to académie libraries where such previous materials can be found). Or
is it the assumption that sińce garden history is so new, there can be nothing yet available to référence, or that the newness (still)
of the discipline absolves one from acknowledging previous pioneering work?
12 Examples are many, but to select one from my shelves: P.-F. Mourier, Les Cicatrices du Paysage: après la tempête,
essai d'écologie scientifique (Actes Sud - ENSP, Arles-Versailles 2000), meditating upon our understanding of landscape in the
aftermath of the double tempest of 1999 that destroyed masses of the French countryside.
13 The expanded texts of the présentations were published in SHGDL: see note 1 above.
JOHN DIXON HUNT
or to bolster long-established idéologies (nationalistic, naturalistic or ecological) or to promote agendas where
available évidence is over-determined by ulterior motives (the fashionable invocation of "power" as a tool
of explication). And as the joke goes, it is not history that repeats itself, but historians who repeat each other1
That is one reason why my own history course tries to disrupt a merely narrative and teleological structure
for one that opts to look intently at a sélection of key moments (those moments certainly have their place in
an extended narrative, but do not dérive anything like ail their interest from such a narrative role).
Garden history has been growing and developing rapidly over the last 30 or 40 years. Work published
even ten years ago sometimes seems naïve or insufficient now, through no fault of the author's. The range of
the subject along with the sheer quantity of work now produced in the larger history of landscape has increased
by leaps and bounds. One must acknowledge here the considérable contributions - in both number and intel-
lectual thrust - that have emerged in Europe (France most prominently, but Italy also) from a whole range of
landscape architects, philosophers, geographers, and cultural commentators and historians of ail sorts. Not ail
of thèse have focused primarily on designed landscapes - larger cultural landscapes have been a subject of
particular interest, yet they provide a crucial context in which spécifie garden sites need to be studied12. Réc-
ognition of the ineluctably multi-disciplinary nature of garden historical enquiry, and the contributions to the
subject therefore from an increased number of specialists in other fields, make every new endeavour poten-
tially more challenging. However, we can now be confident that gardens are taken seriously, no longer the
subject of a passing nod by scholars whose main interest was the architecture of the adjacent villa or château!
We need more careful work on cross-territorial (international) and cross-cultural exchanges, including
the imitations of "primary" forms that necessarily modify their "sources" (e.g. the Chinese garden in Western
Europe). Too much garden history has developed within specifically national boundaries, partly because this
was how later garden design saw itself post-1800, but partly because to study the exchange between différent
cultures of course requires linguistic resources not always available to the historians. The focus upon major,
"canonical" sites (Versailles, Wôrlitz, Stowe, Central Park, etc) or upon a cluster of "national" style (Italian,
French, English, Dutch) dérives obviously from the abundance and availability of materials, but it needs to
be supplemented by some interest in the lesser, often "minor" examples. How do thèse latter, properly stud-
ied, re-write or re-map the historiés of the well established and famous examples? How does one include
vernacular gardens in historiés that generally privilège élite examples? What of the place of the urban garden
in the narrative of what tends to be largely rural sites? What is the relationship that historians need to track
between smali, limited garden spaces (for instance the suburban garden) and the much more studied larger
parks and estâtes - this is a thème that the 19th century particularly proposes? And the résurgence of interest in
local garden cultures (Scandinavian, Eastern Europe) also poses challenges to a previously centralized history.
Other hopes and proposais for study were advanced at a récent symposium on the future of British gar-
den history, and I resume some of thèse by way of conclusion, not least because they have a wider applica-
tion than that particular occasion required13. Situating the garden to be studied within both a régional and an
immédiate territorial context seemed of particular concern to the speakers; knowing, too, much more about
what actually happens on the ground, how and why estâtes were managed and how the garden, both in its
design and use, figured within the larger economy of rural or urban existence (farmland, woodlands, family
or civic rituals). It was also noted that the garden was increasingly attracting specialists from other fields -
but not now to work specifically in its history, but to invoke the historiés of garden and landscape to buttress
their own work in gender, women, post-colonial and imperialism studies. While that kind of attention is
gratifying to the garden historian, s/he will also be struck too often by the importation into those areas of
a very reduced and simplified type of garden history - for example, the assumption that some such entity as
the "eighteenth-century English garden" both existed and can be equated with the perpétuation of social,
" On the other hand, there is also too much "new" garden history being written that faits to acknowledge previous work
(I can only assume that those who do this have little access to académie libraries where such previous materials can be found). Or
is it the assumption that sińce garden history is so new, there can be nothing yet available to référence, or that the newness (still)
of the discipline absolves one from acknowledging previous pioneering work?
12 Examples are many, but to select one from my shelves: P.-F. Mourier, Les Cicatrices du Paysage: après la tempête,
essai d'écologie scientifique (Actes Sud - ENSP, Arles-Versailles 2000), meditating upon our understanding of landscape in the
aftermath of the double tempest of 1999 that destroyed masses of the French countryside.
13 The expanded texts of the présentations were published in SHGDL: see note 1 above.