Cherokees at Wilton House and garden, 1762

Those of you who know me personally may be surprised that I haven't blogged much about Wilton, being that it usually looms large in my garden history conversations.

The first garden history essay I ever wrote was about the seventeenth century gardens at Wilton House, it became my first publication in the field and my latest article, just out in the current issue of Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, revisits Wilton and its designer once again. I can hardly bear to pass through Salisbury on the train without stopping, drawn back to the landscape where Philip Sidney wrote his Arcadia and his sister Mary welcomed that man Shakespeare, where Isaac de Caus made a fountain of three rainbows and carried out Inigo Jones' noble remodeling scheme, and where in 1736 Robert Morris and the 9th Earl, the architect earl, made the Palladian Bridge that remains the best feature of the park, its other glories being long since gone.


I know Wilton's history rather well. So I was surprised to discover a new bit of information via my own home-town and its wonderful Gilcrease Museum, home to the world's most comprehensive collection of art and artifacts of the American West, including those of Native Americans.

It seems that in 1762, three Cherokees visited the gardens of Wilton House.

They were Stalking Turkey, Pouting Pidgeon and Mankiller, and they had come to London to discuss the prospects for a lasting peace with King George III in the company of one Lt. Henry Timberlake, whose memoirs provide the only account of the visit. They had their portraits painted by Reynolds and Parsons (the portraits are at the Gilcrease), visited the pleasure gardens at Vauxhall and Ranelagh, and received a whirlwind tour about the country, with Wilton House as one of the stops. Timberlake's account is sparse:

We stopped at Exeter, where the Indians were shewed the cathedral, but, contrary to my expectation, were as little struck as if they had been natives of the place.

They were much better pleased the next day with Lord Pembroke's seat at Wilton, till they saw the state of Hercules with his club uplifted, which they thought so dreadful that they begged immediately to be gone.

The Hercules would have been the impressive specimen above, a 'colossal' which is engraved in James Kennedy's 1768 Description of the Antiquities and Curiosities in Wilton House. According to James it was in the Great Hall at the time, not the garden, but the Cherokee guests would most certainly have been taken there as all visitors were, something in the manner of the 1776 engraving below.

Next time I am at Wilton, crossing the Palladian bridge, I'll imagine them there.


[Lithograph of the three Cherokees, 1762, From the collection of Gilcrease Museum, GM 3576.429]

If you're in the area of the Gilcrease, an exhibit about the delegation runs through the end of the year.

Toronto Gardens?

Just flagging up that I'll be in Toronto in a couple of weeks for a conference...any garden suggestions? I'll make sure to visit the music garden (above) designed by Julie Moir Messervy in conjuction with cellist Yo-Yo Ma, but would love to hear of others my readers could recommend.

I could do this! Wood Slice Mosaic Paving

Simply set in sand at the Portland Flower Show earlier this year. Originally observed and photographed by katyelliot; found via materialicious.

Japanese Dish Gardens

[Meiji era woodblock print of a dish garden from Fuji Arts]

A comment by reader chookie on the post of the Kingsnorth garden in miniature sparked a search for information on Japanese dish gardens, a variant of the bonsai for which there was a minor mania in early twentieth century America. Their popularity was likely due to the Japanese Pavilion at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, which was the first exposure of many Americans to Japanese art and architecture, and created a sensation that influenced the likes of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Instructions for Japanese dish gardens were printed in newpapers and magazines, and some can be found online. My favorite is the advice from a 1914 article in the NYT, reproduced above.

The origins of the dish garden are obscure, at least in English-language documentation, but I think the c. 1848 scenes I posted some time ago as bonsai would more accurately be dish gardens, since they include a complete tableau rather than simply a specimen tree.

A 1921 House Beautiful article by Marion Brownfield notes that "celebrated Japanese artists have designed prints especially to be copied for these toy gardens, and that the making of them is an artistic hobby, equally popular with the gentle upper-class ladies of Tokyo, great statesmen, poets, and writers"

And she elaborates on the use of snow scenes: "White powder is sometimes used for a snow scene, as snow-capped Fujiyama, the sacred mountain of Japan, is a favorite scene to carry out in a Japanese landscape garden – large or small. "

Also available online is a 1920 article from American Forestry, which asserts that the origin of the dish garden was as a model for landscape architects: "For several centuries the leading landscape gardeners of Japan have made miniature models of their work so their customers might see how the proposed gardens would look; very much in the same way an American architect will make a prospective drawing of a house, except in this case the garden is made perfect in every detail, except that it is in miniature. "

"For a number of years an annual contest or exhibit of these toy gardens has been held in the city of Kioto, at which the leading landscape gardeners of Japan exhibit their work. A great demand has grown up among the tourists who visit the land of the cherry blossom for copies of these miniature gardens to take back with them to America. In response to this growing trade demand, one of the large Japanese nurseries has opened a branch near New York City, where one of their expert garden designers devotes his entire time in constructing miniature gardens for the American public."

Thus the New York Times article; for those who couldn't afford the purchase! The grainy pictures included with the American Forestry article (below) may be examples from such a Japanese nursery of miniatures.

(more info in an 1892 article in the Atlantic Monthly, courtesy of Google Books)

Garden History Quote of the Week

"Democrats favored the formal European approach while Republicans opted for the picturesque English style."

from a discussion of the highly politicized process of selecting a design for Central Park, as described in Witold Rybczynski's "A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Century".

Ah, for a time when political parties argued over preferred landscape styles....

And the outcome?

"The six Republicans, together with the reform Democrat Andrew Green, all cast their votes for the same project: Greensward.

Vaux and Olmsted had won."

[vintage postcard images of Central Park from my files; original source unknown]

The Viele Map

"In connection with this brief account of the origin of the Central Park, it seems appropriate here to notice the topographical atlas of the city of New York, prepared under the direction of General Egbert L. Viele, exhibiting the elevations and depressions of the island and the old water-courses. This map was first exhibited and described in a paper read by Mr. Viele before the Sanitary Association of the city in 1859. He gave a rapid account of many small streams which formerly existed in the lower part of Manhattan Island, but which had been filled up as the city grew. Many of these streams had produced swampy places, and he declared that five of the little parks in the city—St. John's, Washington, Tomp- kins, Madison, and Gramercy—were located entirely or in part in swamps created by these streams. Some of the streams which ran through Central Park have been utilized or smothered."

I'm always interested in things just off the center....small towns outside of big ones, second-place entries, moons, also-rans. In the story of Central Park, the also-ran was Egbert Ludovicus Viele (1825-1902), whose entry in the design contest lost out to that of Olmsted and Vaux. Such a rosey-blowsy name sits uncomfortably on an old Civil War general who was close to Abraham Lincoln (read his remembrances of Lincoln here); an engineer who created the "Sanitary & Topographical Map of the City and Island of New York", now known simply as the Viele map. As in "I've got water on my site, get me a copy of the Viele map!" which according to the New York Times has been heard at the Central Library. From a patron wearing hip waders.

Viele's map is a beautiful document, highly detailed, fancifully colored, 'long as a Buick' according to one admirer, and still consulted in engineer's offices across Manhattan. According to a document by a colleague on deposit at the New York Public Library, Viele constructed the map from older pre-development maps and his own surveys and overlaid it with the city's current streets; gathering the watercourse information soon before it would have been lost forever under the new city fabric of bricks and mortar.

"In essence, the map shows Manhattan as the watery idyll it once was. On the map, Minetta Stream runs under Washington Square. Uptown, near First Avenue and 103rd Street, water pools and collects in a large pond. A creek zigzags under the intersection of Broadway and 25th Street." (Stephen Kurutz, NYT)

Viele made the map out of concern for proper sanitary practices, having seen so many die in the War for its want and believing, as most did at the time, that "nearly one half the deaths occurring on the earth are caused by fevers in different forms, and that the principal cause of fever is a humid miasmatic state of the atmosphere, produced by the presence of an excess of moisture in the ground from which poisonous exhalations continually arise, vitiating the purer air." He may have been wrong about the miasmas, but proper drainage did in fact eliminate stagnant breeding sites for the mosquitoes and bacteria that we now know caused many nineteenth century deaths.

Modern retellings of the complex and twisting route to the construction of Central Park invariably cast Olmsted in heroic halo, with Viele as mustachioed villian (he eventually sues, claiming that Olmsted and Vaux plagiarized some of his own ideas). But his map, delicate in pink and green with designations of Marsh and Meadow, humanizes him, and New York's structural engineers continue to bless his name.

Above images are from the David Rumsey map collection; there is also a version at the New York Public Library site. The map is accessible from Google Earth, "allowing anyone with free time on their hands to figure out whether or not their apartment is built over what used to be a fetid marsh", as seen at ecotone projects.

Garden History image of the week...Kingsnorth Gardens, Folkestone in miniature

From the Science and Society Photographic Archives, originally published in the Daily Herald in the 1950s:

‘Mr and Mrs Grace of Kingsnorth Gardens, Folkestone have made a model of Kingsnorth Gardens, one of Folkestone's main beauty spots, which is just opposite their house. They have faithfully reproduced the gardens in miniature - complete to the smallest detail, including tiny trees, curving paths, fences, gates, lawns and even tiny fountains which actually play.'

I actually think this is a lovely idea...Versailles, anyone?

Garden History image of the week...Victorian plant markers

From a sale of Victoriana (including some garden items) by Simon Chorley auctioneers. I must start saying that my plants were 'found in Highnam wood'.

Anne Roberts, Feir Mill Designs

A modern garden artist who worked in the tradition of Thomas Wright until her recent death was Canadian Anne Roberts, whose Toronto design studio Feir Mill created summerhouses, pavilions, temples, gazebos and distinctive architectural pieces from freshly gathered timbers in the 'rustic tradition' for a client list that included Woody Allen, Martha Stewart, and Steve Jobs.

Unlike Wright, who designed for woodland glade and rocky outcrop (and created them where they did not naturally exist), Anne's work settles comfortably into flat open spaces.

Ontario, like my own native Oklahoma, is prairie land.

Thomas Wright, Arbours and Grottos

I've just walked back from the library with my latest treasure.

One of the benefits of working for a university is the ability to get almost anything through interlibrary loan, and after a bit of effort, my wonderful librarians have obtained a copy of Thomas Wright's "Arbours and Grottos" for me. The facsimile, as only a few copies of the original are known to exist. If you have deep pockets, vol.1 "Arbours" is available at Ursus books for $7,500, which is also one of the only on-line sources for its images. Even the facsimile version has become expensive enough that many libraries won't loan it out. If you happen to see one at a boot-sale, snap it up.

Considered one of the first 'pattern-books' for garden landscapes, Wright's "Arbours and Grottos" shows constructs in an ornamental rustic style we now tend to associate with the Victorian period, though he wrote in 1755. And his own title for the work was much more grand; it was a 'Universal Architecture'.

Wright wasn't just being decorative. His utilization of rough wood elements was an embodiment of the Vitruvian principle that architecture is an imitation of nature--a return to the tree trunks from which stone columns were derived, an attempt at the re-integration of the built environment with its natural roots that architects still seek to achieve. Modern eco-architects like to think they're doing something new.

So do physicists, and Wright was both. Much like super-string theorists today, Wright wanted to develop an integrated and orderly theory of the universe. Unlike them, he expressed his ideas in landscapes with celestial references in addition to writing "Universal Vicissitudes of the Seasons" (1737), "Synopsis of the Universe, or the visible World Epitomized" (1742), and "An Original Theory or New Hypothesis of the Universe" (1750) in which he posited the first theory of the Milky Way.

Wright continues to be far better known as an astronomer and mathematician than as a designer, and his landscapes survive only in remnants: at Halswell House in Somerset, ruined grottos are extant (and being preserved), but a Druid House similar to those in the 'Arbours' volume lasted through the centuries only to be felled for its wood in the 1950s.

Wright's design for a garden barge, intended so that Frederick Prince of Wales could travel the Thames in floating sylvan style, was alas never built.

(bigger image available at the Columbia Library Special Collections site)

The first shall be last and the last shall be first,

and the winner of the Garden Bench giveaway is one Long Haul Trucker, who sent in a comment a mere 2.5 hours before the contest ended! That's randominity for you...congratulations LHT, and I'll be in touch.

Thanks to everyone who entered, and most especially those of you who 'delurked'. The pleasure of the contest for me was seeing who more of my readers are. I wish I could give you all a garden bench and a quiet garden history chat upon it.

'til then,
your gardenhistorygirl

Garden Bench Giveaway!

I have heretofore resisted requests for advertising on the blog, but how could I say no to giving away something to my readers? All you have to do is leave a comment telling me which of the below benches you would most like to receive:

Renaissance Double Bench (C-1320)

Parquet Double Bench (C-1020)

Parquet Triple Bench (C-1030)

Windmere Double Bench (C-1420)

The benches are provided by teakwickerandmore, purveyors of patio furniture.

I do have to know your email address to get in touch with the winner; if you don't have a public blogger identity, you can either leave your email address in the comment (use a coded form like name [at] emailservice [dot] com), or if you're not comfortable with that email it to me privately. But you still have to leave a comment as to which bench you would like!

Apologies to all my international readers, but the bench can only be shipped to a US address.

The giveaway will be open through the weekend; until Sunday May 3 at 12:00 midnight my time (USA Central).

Enjoy!

P.S. I neglected to specify that one winner will be selected at random when the contest closes. (Someone thought everyone got a bench...sorry about that!) One name picked out of a hat. I'll use my nice straw garden hat with the black ribbon.

Seeking a publisher

Can I say that the nanobattery encyclopedia article has gone to the editor? Yes, and with relief. But it seems that my garden history writing is not as in demand as my scientific writing (though it is infinitely more tedious) because I arrived home to two rejection letters. Author friends tell me that this is not very many, really, but still, I have decided to put it into the ether of the internet and the hands of my readers: if anyone out there is (or knows) an agent or publisher who would like to hear more about a book on Art Deco gardens, Gatsby's gardens, the mostly lost gardens where F. Scott Fitzgerald went to parties and Josephine Baker danced and Man Ray took pictures, gardens of jazz and blue and speed and light, just get in touch.

(Teaser images below)

Oh, and if you need, say, a nano-solar cell made I can do that for you too.

Stanway

We had some car trouble and were late getting out to Stanway, so by the time we arrived there was no one in the courtyard and you never notice how many doors there are on a house like that until you’re not sure which one to open.

Hilary had told us that when she couldn’t find him, she simply walked around shouting “Wemyss!” until he stuck his head out of some window but even for this American (who doesn’t hold with the whole ‘your lordship’ business…it offends my democratic sensibilities) that seemed a bit indecorous. At least on first meeting. But it would have been a sight, especially if the window was one of those painted metallic gold to reflect the red-gilt color of Stanway’s Cotswold façade. I’ve never seen a more beautiful stone.

We were there for the landscape, not for the house, though I soaked up all of it I could when after perusing maps and speculating about the significance of various clumps of trees we went through to the kitchen for tea. It’s a proper house, Stanway, with pale floors and dark paintings and newspapers scattered about the twin settees with pagoda canopies, and the uneven stone and settling oriel window a Jacobean pile should have. Some of England’s stately homes have been renovated until they’re pickled. At Stanway, you can still feel the house breathing.

Charles Bridgeman (1690-1738), ever orderly, had a fondness for lakes like soup bowls, and it is likely he who installed the circular water atop the hill behind the temple. A telling sign of the movement toward naturalism in the English landscape can be seen in William Kent’s conversion of a similar lake Bridgeman had made at Claremont:

Bridgeman on the left, Kent on the right.

At Stanway, Charles Bridgeman’s successor in the landscape was not Kent but most likely Thomas Wright (1711-1786), ‘wizard of Durham’, astronomer, mathematician, architect and garden designer , with a fondness for Shapes of Significance like triangles and pyramids. Which is why we were there, my garden history pal Judy being something of an expert on Wright. He (if he it was) added the cascade, so that with the opening of a sluice gate water from the lake streamed down the hill to a canal at its base.

The waterworks had been treated roughly over the years, and were re-excavated by the present Earl Wemyss, who once ran up the hill and struggled to open the sluice gate so Princess Margaret could see the cascade (she remained unimpressed). Not all owners of historic properties are interested in their landscapes, an exasperating but unchangeable part of practicing garden history. You can’t make someone care. But Stanway is in good hands.

On returning home

I always seem to pay a price for my vacations...the nanobattery encyclopedia article lies on my desk unfinished, the scanning electron microscope must be fired back into life, and the garden is speckled with spring weeds. I keep part of my prairie plot unmowed, and rampant self-seeding into the flower beds is the result.

But I will procrastinate on it all, for just one more afternoon, to tell you what-I-saw-in-London and savor it again myself.

Down a busy street in Richmond, a sign painted on a brick wall beckons with the promise of something special this way. Past the narrow alley the landscape opens up onto the Petersham meadows, and down the lane is a nursery straight out of a Merchant Ivory film set.

In addition to impossibly beautiful garden ornaments and handmade candles smelling of 'Marie Antoinette's Dreams' there is a restaurant (expensive) where the waitresses wear wellies and a cafe (reasonable) for lunching outside. Petersham nurseries is in danger of losing its planning permission due to the increasing vehicle traffic; visit by public transport if you can. Instructions for supporting their application for permanent planning permissions are on their website.

Stumbled upon in central London, next to the old city walls, the herb garden of the Worshipful Company of Barbers, with useful information about how to stay awake in church

We were on our way to the Barbican, actually, whose water garden by Chamberlin, Powell and Bon far-off garden historians will someday study as a quintessential example of a 1970s landscape:

And that great lady, Kew was wearing a couple of new necklaces. The treetop walkway:

and the new Sackler bridge by John Pawson with its sublime curve: this is minimalism I can believe in.

More about the rest of my trip later; for now it is on to an interlude of weeding and an evening of writing about nanobatteries.

Runnymede

I am back in London with friends, garden friends who take me nice places. Last visit we went to Runnymede, and I've been meaning to post about it since the China trip, actually, when I saw the rockwork garden floors of the sort that inspired Geoffrey Jellicoe's pathway in which 60,000 granite setts surge like a crowd toward the memorial stone.

Runnymede is, of course, a much wider landscape than the small section devoted to the memory of John F. Kennedy. But the memorial garden has often been in my thoughts as one of the most emotional landscapes I have visited, and not just because of its attachment to a slain American president of whom I have no first-hand memory.

It does its job as a landscape extraordinarily well, leading both foot and eye in a gentle manner that only suggests a response, but elicits a greater one than gardens that are far more imposing in their purpose.

Jellicoe did indeed conceive the memorial as a journey, a procession, a pilgrim's progress, that starts in an unmowed meadow and leads through a stile gate, up a hill under heavy tree cover, to a glade at the top where the white memorial stone floats wraith-like under a single tree, an American scarlet oak that is distinctively different from the many English oaks in the wider park. It turns blood-red in autumn.

From here, Jacob's ladder steps go to the crest of the hill where two platforms (one for a king, one for a queen) look out over the valley that birthed the Magna Carta.

But though the view is lovely this part of the monument (the platforms) is I think less effective, simply because it lacks the bumpy, organic granite setts that provide the essential texture in what is basically a modernist landscape. Jellicoe insisted that the setts be laid in a random, flowing pattern in which each block appears to have an individual character, likening them to people at a football match to help his masons understand what to do. Without them, the memorial would still be a masterful layout of space, but soulless. Power to the people.

Vintage Gardens and Gardeners on Flickr

The study of garden history can be inadvertently elitist, simply because the documentation of gardens of the wealthy is comparatively so extensive. Other than the odd photos or family accounts that make their way into archives, there are few sources for records of the gardens of a more average sort; those by people not wealthy or significant enough to have their gardens documented outside the family.

So the flickr photoset 'Vintage Gardens and Gardeners', administered by lovedaylemon, is an invaluable garden history asset. Period books and magazine show what advice was being given as to garden design, but photos are the essential evidence for how gardens were actually decorated, planted and used.

The photoset is a wonderful record of tools and implements, dress and manner, not just how gardens were planted but how they were used. And the faces, beaming out from their beautiful and personal landscapes, which are clearly treasured, make me teary.

I can't say enough about the value of this archive. If you have family or found photos of vintage gardens and gardeners, I would urge you to post them with this flickr set (include as much information about location and date as you know). Let them become a part of garden history. Garden historians everywhere will thank you!

From the top, an elaborate Victorian parterre in a style often associated with a much grander house than that pictured. Families in what was probably their favorite place in the garden: a woven willow summerhouse in the first photo and a sunny bench in the second.

And finally, a topiaric Adam and Eve...note the apple in Eve's hand and the serpent rearing his ugly head. I wonder if they were inspired by Pope's description?

[all photos from the group admin, lovedaylemon]

Unexpected Garden

Contemporary topiary of the urban guerilla variety by Madrid based artist SpY, via itsnicethat.

Map Regressions, Time Travel and the Mikhailovsky Garden

The Summer Gardens and the Mars Field. A project of architect J-B. Leblond, 1716-1717

The general layout of the Mikhailovsky Garden and the Labyrinth Garden by architect F.B. Rastrelli, 1750

The Third Summer Garden and its surroundings according to the third General Layout of St. Petersburg. Copied from an 1820 layout, prior to the renovations below.

The Mikhailovsky Garden according to K.I. Rossi’s report layout, 1822

Map regressions are a standard tool of the garden historian. They're like time travel really--all the historical geographical records are assembled and registered to definite landmarks so that changes in the landscape features over time become visible.

This isn't easy; much of the information is incomplete at best. Some 'maps' may be only hand-drawn sketches without scale or compass markings. A map of a neighboring property or an old photograph might show only a piece of the garden. Government documents often mark roads and bridges and bodies of water, but no garden features. Textual descriptions can be hard to relate to facts on the ground. And registration of features, especially in amateur maps, can be inaccurate.

Royal gardens are better documented than most, however, and it is the lucky garden historian that ends up with as complete a record as the series above, for the Mikhailovsky gardens in St. Petersburg, originally laid out by architect J.B. Leblond for Peter I in 1716-1717.

Any garden historian worth their salt could put the series of maps above in relative order from earliest to latest, but I was surprised to discover their actual dates of construction (as listed above). Each layout lags about fifty years behind adoption of the same styles in England, an expression, perhaps of the literal and symbolic distance of the Tsars from the cultural centers of Europe. The small, disconnected geometric gardens in the first map are in the manner of the seventeenth century, not the eighteenth, and by 1750 the English landscape was already well on its way to the open and sweeping style not seen in the Mikhailovsky garden until 1820. (Note especially the naturalization of the bodies of water)

This is of interest to garden history, but map regressions are often prepared in anticipation of a garden restoration and so the problem in the twenty-first century becomes which garden to recreate?

It is a serious question in historic landscapes, which have multiple layers of time and meaning. Often, the most recent style is the easiest one to which to return. Traveling further back in time could require the removal of the top layers--layers that might include mature trees, or extant landscape features like ponds to which contemporary visitors have become attached.

Rarely, though, a connection to some serious historic event, or the need to provide the proper setting for a significant piece of architecture, make the return to a more distant time an appropriate choice.

In the Mikhailovsky garden, a reconstruction project carried out by the State Institute of Architecture in St. Petersburg in 2001 returned the garden to its most recent designed layer, the naturalistic English landscape park of 1822. Its map will someday serve to mark the layer of the twenty-first century for a garden historian of the future.

The Leopold Bench: Updated

a contemporary color and setting for the aforeposted Leopold bench, by De Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop

Langston Hughes' Children's Garden, Harlem, 1955

From The Life of Langston Hughes, by Arnold Rampersad, found at cityfarmer

"In the backyard at 20 East 127th Street, (Mr. Langston’s home) where the lawn in the summer of 1954 was dense and green, a gardener named Mr. Sacred Heart, a follower of the evangelist Father Divine, planted some flowering shrubs. In front of the house, at Langston’s request, someone planted Boston Ivy that crept up the walls and eventually luxuriated, so that everyone knew in which house on the street had lived the poet Langston Hughes. But most of the patch of earth beside the front steps, about six feet square, was barren from years of trampling by neighbourhood children, who had little time for flowers. Langston decided to rescue it, and teach the children a tender lesson at the same time. He named the plot their garden.

From Amy Spingarn’s home upstate in Dutchess County came nasturtiums, asters and marigold. Under his supervision, aided by Mr. Sacred Heart, each child chose a plant, set it, and assumed partial responsibility for weeding and watering the garden. On a picket beside each plant was posted a child’s name. Proud of the garden, which flourished, and prouder still of his children, Langston was photographed at least once beaming in their midst."

How could you go wrong with a gardener named Mr. Sacred Heart?

Cupid in the Garden

From the previously posted English Emblem Books project comes this selection from the Emblemata Amatoria of Philip Ayres (1638-1712) which utilizes several garden motifs, including the symbol of a sunflower turning its head to the sun. Ayres was a minor English poet and a friend of Dryden's, and though not his equal in verse, the Emblemata of Love is uniformly charming.

The last picture shown is "The Powerfull Attraction" :

Where e're shee be, the difstance nere so great
mounted on sighs, thither my winged soul
does take its flight, and on her motions wait,

True as magnetick needle to its pole.

Happy Valentine's Day!
arcady

Char Bagh

Dividing a walled garden into equivalent quadrants is a natural geometric impulse, and the resulting four-square form appears in the garden history of most cultures.

The 'Char Bagh' (meaning, literally, 'four gardens'), though of Persian origins, has become most closely associated with the Mughal empire, an Islamic dynasty that ruled between 1526 and 1858 in territories now divided among Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kashmir, and northern India. The beautiful image above is a leaf from a Mughal manuscript now in the collection of the British Museum, c. 1590.

Most ancient gardens are metaphors for Paradise,and the Char Bagh is no exception, as perhaps best described in the mysterious volume of Sir John Mandeville's travels into the East, c. 1370:

"And this Paradise is enclosed all about with a wall...and in the most high place of Paradise, even in the middle place, is a well that casteth out the four floods that run by divers lands. Of the which, the first is clept Pison, or Ganges, that is all one; and it runneth throughout Ind or Emlak, in the which river be many precious stones, and much of lignum aloes and much gravel of gold. And that other river is clept Nilus or Gison, that goeth by Ethiopia and after by Egypt. And that other is clept Tigris, that runneth by Assyria and by Armenia the great. And that other is clept Euphrates, that runneth also by Media and Armenia and by Persia. And men there beyond say, that all the sweet waters of the world, above and beneath, take their beginning of the well of Paradise, and out of that well all waters come and go."

In an arid climate the ideal of heaven as a well-watered and verdant oasis was of special importance, and the quadrants of the Char Bagh are most often divided by canals (if large) or rills (if small) representing those four rivers of Paradise. The quadrants themselves are generally, but not always, symmetrical, and may be filled with loose, informal plantings that sometimes take on additional symbolic significance--cypresses for death, almond trees for life.

The ultimate example is perhaps the garden of the Taj Mahal, its quadrants centered upon the great mausoleum, resting the departed beloved in a vision of paradise. [drawing, c. 1750, from the collection of the Arthur M. Sackler gallery at the Smithsonian]

Mughal gardens have been the object of much scholarly research in recent years, being (arguably) the most active area of garden history research during the 1990s, and resulting in an excellent website on the subject at the Smithsonian.

Hanging Gardens of Rock City, 1970

Photo collage, touched with green crayon, by Liliane Lijn, who 'imagined a utopia of green walkways across the rooftops of Manhattan'.

Found at the British Museum, see a larger version here.

Update: Thanks to reader Martha for letting me know that this is part of a series by Lijn, and can be seen on her website, which is full of interesting work.

Quincunx

"Quid [illo] quincunce speciosius, qui, in quamcumque partem spectaveris, rectus est?"

"What is more beautiful than the well-known quincunx which, in whatever direction you view it, presents straight lines?"

It is snowing today, and I am contemplating the garden, whose basic lines are much more visible with a blanket of white covering distracting details. The parts of the garden that are too bare become all too obvious, and the northwest corner seems suddenly barren. I think it needs a quincunx. Perhaps of possumhaws.

Once alerted to their presence, the modern reader might see fractals everywhere; alchemist/physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605-1682) saw quincunxes. Not just in gardens, or in orchards, where they were and still are a traditional planting formation, but in Roman battalions and the crowns of the ancients, in the tail of the beaver and the scales of fishes and the skin of man (look closely at the skin on the back of your hand...it's there).

He believed that the quincunx had been the shape of the garden of Eden (with the tree of life in the center), the plan upon which Noah planted his vineyards, and the favored arrangement of Cyrus the Younger of Persia, who was both a leader of armies and a tiller of the soil. He wrote a book about it; the Gardens of Cyrus (available online, though I've yet to wade through it myself).

"The doctrine of signatures – the belief in naturally occurring symbols in plants and minerals which have been set there by God to indicate their medicinal properties – had been vigorously revived first by the Paracelsian medics of the sixteenth century, and taken up more generally by various theological writers, particularly in Italy in the seventeenth, who studied signatures as religious messages...For Browne, however, the quincunx, a kind of signature, has no exact meaning of this kind but rather functions more generally, in the sheer weight of instances, as a joyful reassurance of God's watchfulness, design, and purpose in the world. Browne is not attempting to mysticise the quincunx beyond recognising in its variety and ubiquity the wonder of the creation."

[source: The Literary Encyclopedia]

Browne was one of the 'first favorites' of the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and since it is late here and the snow is still falling I will leave you with his words on the subject, far more elegant than mine, and go off to contemplate the possumhaws:

"But it is time for me to be in bed, in the words of Sir Thomas, which will serve you, my dear, as a fair specimen of his manner.—' But the quincunx of heaven—(the Hyades or five stars about the horizon at midnight at that time) —runs low, and 'tis time we close the five ports of knowledge : we are unwilling to spin out our waking thoughts into the phantasmes of sleep, which often continueth praecogitations, —making tables of cobwebbes, and wildernesses of handsome groves. To keep our eyes open longer were but to act our Antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia.' Think you, my dear Friend, that there ever was such a reason given before for going to bed at midnight ;—to wit, that if we did not, we should be acting the part of our Antipodes! And then ' the huntsmen are up in America.'—What life, what fancy !—Does the whimsical knight give us thus a dish of strong green tea, and call it an opiate! I trust that you are quietly asleep—
And that all the stars hang bright above your dwelling, Silent as tho' they watched the sleeping earth !
S.T.C. 1804

Inspired by Nests...

...one of the true delights of the garden.

the photography of sharon beals

indoor-outdoor chair by gaspardlive



pavilion in Berlin

children's playswing gerard moline for droog

stick play pavilion by Martin Environmental Design

and it is of course impossible not to think of Andy Goldsworthy...

I could do this! The Leopold Bench

Aldo Leopold's Sand Country Almanac is, along with Thoreau's Walden, a classic in American ecological literature. In it, Leopold (1887-1948) --who founded the field of Wildlife Ecology, was instrumental in establishing the first official "wilderness area" in the United States (the Gila National Forest), and helped to create The Wilderness Society--recorded the passage of seasons as he and his family renovated what was a worn out, depleted farmstead on sandy river soil. It is now considered one of the earliest examples of an ecological restoration.

On weekends away from Aldo's post at the University of Wisconsin, they planted native trees and flowers and noted the doings of animals and birds and slowly remodeled the chicken coop (which was filled with frozen manure when they first got the farm) for human habitation; it is now the only chicken coop on the National Register of Historic Places. It is still called simply 'the Shack', and the site is preserved by the Aldo Leopold Foundation. Tours are available May through October.





(photo from the digitized collection of Leopold's papers at the University of Wisconsin)


That's the bench on the right. They're still common in America at church camps and summer cabins, and only require a few simple cuts. I'm no carpenter, but I think even I could do this. Recommendations gleaned from the internet are to alter the plan slightly by using a four foot board for the seat (more room for a companion!) and utilizing a wider board for the seat. We're bigger people, on average, than in the thirties.




Simple instructions available at the US government's EPA site. In the spirit of Leopold, make it from recycled lumber if you can.

Helvetica in the Garden

The PBS special on the typeface Helvetica that aired this week made me think about text in the garden; here, a 2007 temporary crossword puzzle installation by studio msk7 at the Berliner Gendarmenmarkt.

photos by msk7 and Gertrude K. and derSven via flickr

The fantasmic topiary of Pearl Fryar

“Gardening books will tell you that some of these things in my garden can’t be done, but I had never read them when I got started. Not knowing ahead of time that something is supposed to be impossible often makes it possible to achieve. I didn’t have any limitations because I really didn’t know anything about horticulture. I just figured I could do whatever I wanted with any plant I had.”

In the 1980s, Pearl Fryar and his wife went looking for a new home in Bishopville, S.C., and after being spurned by a neighborhood that feared an African American couple wouldn't keep up their yard, he set his sights on being the first black recipient of the local garden club's Yard of the Month award. Utilizing plants salvaged from the dump of the local garden center, Pearl began cajoling them into fantastic organic shapes, often working at night under spotlights until he had three acres of a walkable, three-dimensional garden work of art where, it has been said, "Dr. Seuss meets Salvador Dali".

When he started, he didn't know what 'topiary' was, and had no training in either art or horticulture, which was all to the good.

Bishopton has taken him to its heart now, his sculptures line Main Street, and you can ask anybody in town where the topiary garden is. In the best tradition of art, his topiary work has gone viral, spreading through classes at the local college and mentoring of young people and other folks in town are now sculpting their own hedges. What must be the best-landscaped Waffle House in the country has granted the Fryars free meals for life in exchange for his wizardry in their streetscape. The “Pearl Special” is one scrambled egg, grits, and toast.




There is now a book and a DVD about Pearl Fryar's topiary art (and a NYT article), and he has installations at the Phillip Simmons garden in Charleston (Simmons is another outsider artist worthy of your attention, a blacksmith whose work is now being preserved), and the South Carolina State Museum has accessioned mature works, transplanted from his garden, into their permanent collection. Pearl's home garden has been designated a Preservation Project of the Garden Conservancy.

Much more information at the south carolina tourism site, and an account of a personal visit to Fryar's garden here.

According to Pearl's official website "All are welcome and if you find me at home, I’ll stop whatever I am doing to visit with you and tell you about my work and why I create topiary sculpture." If you go, you'll be in good company; Rosemary Verey visited Mr. Fryar at home twice, but she died in 2001 before he could accept her invitation to walk the royal grounds with Prince Charles. What a garden meeting that would have been!

Alexander Pope's Catalogue of Greens, 1713

By the eighteenth century, the English garden was tending towards the natural (though it was not yet a 'natural' we would recognize as such), and topiary fell distinctly out of fashion. Alexander Pope's satire on the subject is well-known, but I will repeat it here anyway for those of you who perhaps have not seen it, and for those who have, it never fails to delight. So clever, that Alexander.

For the benefit of all my loving countrymen of this curious taste, I shall here publish a catalogue of Greens to he disposed of by an eminent Town- Gardiner, who has lately applied to me upon this head. He represents, that for the advancement of a politer sort of ornament in the Villa's and Gardens adjacent to this great city, and in order to distinguish those places from the meer barbarous countries of gross nature, the world stands much in need of a virtuoso Gardiner, who has a turn to Sculpture, and is thereby capable of improving upon the ancients of his profession, in the imagery of Ever-greens. My correspondant is arrived to such perfection that he also cutteth family pieces of men, women, or children. Any ladies that please may have their own effigies in Myrtle, or their husband's in Horn-beam. He is a Puritan wag, and never fails, when he shows his garden, to repeat that passage in the Psalms, 'Thy Wife shall be as the fruitful Vine, and thy Children as Olive-branches round thy table.'

I proceed to his catalogue.

Adam and Eve in Yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the Tree of Knowledge in the Great Storm; Eve and the Serpent very flourishing.

Noah's ark in Holly, the ribs a little damaged for want of water.
The Tower of Babel, not yet finished.

St. George in Box; his arm scarce long enough, but will be in a condition to stick the Dragon by next April.

A green Dragon of the same, with a tail of Ground- Ivy for the present.

N. B. These two not to be sold separately.

Edward the Black Prince in Cypress.

A Laurstine Bear in Blossom, with a Juniper Hunter in Berries.

A pair of Giants, stunted, to be sold cheap.

A Queen Elizabeth in Phyllirea, a little inclining to the green sickness, but of full growth.
Another Queen Elizabeth in Myrtle, which was very forward, but miscarried by being too near a Savine.
An old Maid of honour in Wormwood.
A topping Ben Johnson in Laurel.

Divers eminent modern Poets in Bays, somewhat blighted, to be disposed of a pennyworth.
A quick-set Hog shot up into a Porcupine, by being forgot a week in rainy weather.
A Lavender Pigg, with Sage growing in his belly.
A pair of Maidenheads in Fir, in great forwardness.

(accompanied by Pope's drawing of Twickenham church, as seen over the naturalized treeline of his own garden, from the library of grandee Horace Walpole and now in the collection of the Yale University Library.)