With its sumptuous color plates, comprehensive scope, and fascinating text, this ground-breaking international history of the garden as an art form is easily the most ambitious and rewarding work of its kind. Beginning with the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, this book skillfully uncovers the evidence of gardening through the art, history, and literature of these early sites of culture, as well as later findings of archaeology. It then takes us farther afield into the later civilizations of Islam and Mughal India, reveals the important contributions of Italy and France, China and Japan, lingers in the incomparable gardens of England, and finally transports us to the New World.
Structured around themes of the international exchange of aesthetic ideas and the exciting saga of the study, cultivation, and distribution of plant life, the book's progression is both chronological and geographic; each chapter identifies and discusses the major design and horticultural contributions made to garden history in each period and by each society. Although there have been numerous garden histories, there has never been one of this historical and global scope, a history that is solidly based in the author's vast learning, both in the worlds of literature and art as well as gardening, and graced by is masterful prose. Another factor that differentiates this comprehensive history from the others is its final section, which explores the dramatic impact on Europe of the discovery in 1492 of a new continent with its own unique flora and fauna, which led to the openingof a fresh chapter in science. The author develops this section of the book through an extensive coverage of the history of garden culture in the Western Hemisphere, beginning with the worldwide exchange of new plant discoveries starting in the seventeenth century as European plantsmen scoured the world for exotic additions to the plantings in fledgling botanical gardens. Beginning with what is known of colonial American gardens and the extraordinary efforts in this century to reconstruct them at such sites as Mount Vernon, Monticello, and especially Williamsburg, the author leads us through the accomplishments of New World gardeners, including those of South America and Mexico, ending up with a survey of the newest international developments in gardening.
From ancient Persia to the modern private estates of Europe and North America, gardening has been one of the most consistent signs of a great civilization and the most visually absorbing expression of culture.
Other Details: 301 illustrations, 253 in full color 356 pages 9 7/8 x 9 7/8" Published 1999
was the first artist, the gardener was surely the second as he asserted his humanity over the landscape in order to harness and redirect nature's unstable energy through his efforts.
At one level, gardening is about striving to find some rational if not ideal accommodation with nature in a rather one-sided match of forces, since nature's own laws are ultimately beyond our control. The natural cycle of life and death can endow a garden with a feeling of melancholy even when it is at its brief moment of triumph. Most gardeners prefer not to dwell on this flaw in nature's character but turn to the simple, underlying human faith common to all gardeners, that the dead seed we put in the ground will in fact spring to life the next season in the mystery of reproduction.
Five thousand years ago, the ancestor of modern corn could not be distinguished from other wild grasses growing in the highlands of Mexico. No one could have imagined that the tiny seeds of this puny weed held the possibility of producing food for millions of people. But through close collaboration with nature, adapting to her laws, the Mayans discovered how to increase the size of the grass by selection and breeding until it reached a mighty stalk of modern corn. In the process, they learned that as much as they depended on this mysteriously altered grain, the plant itself was dependent on them. Because of the construction of its ear, protected by tight husks, corn cannot seed itself. It would be extinct if man did not take a hand, unwrap the cob, and plant the seed each spring. Through this ritual of collaboration it is understandable why corn has entered the theology of the Mayan people. It is also an example of early biological manipulation that would later form the foundation of all of our advanced garden horticulture.
In Japan, the cultivation of rice over thousands of years has helped to shape the countryside into a vast complex of gardens. Rice culture has been embued with a spiritual meaning equal to that of corn in the highlands of Mexico and Central America. Just as the Great Inca turned the first furrow for the planting of corn with a golden plow, so the emperor of Japan executes the primal gesture of the ruler as gardener-cultivator by entering the imperial rice paddy each spring to plant rice, a symbol of the nation's historic dependence on the success of the annual crop.
Aside from the metaphysics of princely horticulture, royal gardens and parks have been established as manifestations of earthly political power in every civilization. Social order emerges with the concentration of power and ceremony in the hands of a ruler. Hierarchy imposed on chaotic, formless nature as a new way of organizing the world was a visible element of the mystique of kings. The theme of the garden as a tool of statecraft runs deep, as we will see, throughout the long history of gardening. Ancient literature takes it for granted. Renaissance rulers, from upstarts in Tuscany to the kings of France, adopted gardening as a link to the Golden Age of Alexander the Great.
Contemporary love of gardening in this urban century is a phenomenon that has spread widely, even though the threads that connect it with its historic roots are lost to all but the specialist. Even the simplest form of gardening is a particular kind of human experience that hints at a long and glorious past, both material and spiritual, but a sense of this continuity seems to elude us.
Gardening, as J. B. Jackson has reminded us, continues to "satisfy the aspirations of everyday existence . .. work that has quality and measure, capable at best of humanizing a small fragment of nature." When gardens with their sticks and stones and leaves of nature do rise above honest craft and are recognized as works of art, they become a part of the continuous process that all art shares. The antecedents that shape our appreciation of gardens include not only the historical past but the common biological heritage of our five senses, which have hardly changed since prehistory. A part of the garden's art is in its ability to stimulate our sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. But the use of our sensual apparatus has been greatly impaired in this century because of our isolation in an increasingly hostile, unnatural environment. If nature as we have known it is not hopelessly and absurdly irrelevant and if we are able to return our environment to its once stable condition, then the stimulating proximity of nature may also return the art of the garden to a place of honor. The account of the garden's past that follows is intended to help restore some of its universal significance by encouraging us to recognize the extraordinary diversity of gardening throughout history and its ability to humanize a small but essential fragment of our existence.
With its sumptuous color plates, comprehensive scope, and fascinating text, this ground-breaking international history of the garden as an art form is easily the most ambitious and rewarding work of its kind. Beginning with the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome, this book skillfully uncovers the evidence of gardening through the art, history, and literature of these early sites of culture, as well as later findings of archaeology. It then takes us farther afield into the later civilizations of Islam and Mughal India, reveals the important contributions of Italy and France, China and Japan, lingers in the incomparable gardens of England, and finally transports us to the New World.
Structured around themes of the international exchange of aesthetic ideas and the exciting saga of the study, cultivation, and distribution of plant life, the book's progression is both chronological and geographic; each chapter identifies and discusses the major design and horticultural contributions made to garden history in each period and by each society. Although there have been numerous garden histories, there has never been one of this historical and global scope, a history that is solidly based in the author's vast learning, both in the worlds of literature and art as well as gardening, and graced by is masterful prose. Another factor that differentiates this comprehensive history from the others is its final section, which explores the dramatic impact on Europe of the discovery in 1492 of a new continent with its own unique flora and fauna, which led to the openingof a fresh chapter in science. The author develops this section of the book through an extensive coverage of the history of garden culture in the Western Hemisphere, beginning with the worldwide exchange of new plant discoveries starting in the seventeenth century as European plantsmen scoured the world for exotic additions to the plantings in fledgling botanical gardens. Beginning with what is known of colonial American gardens and the extraordinary efforts in this century to reconstruct them at such sites as Mount Vernon, Monticello, and especially Williamsburg, the author leads us through the accomplishments of New World gardeners, including those of South America and Mexico, ending up with a survey of the newest international developments in gardening.
From ancient Persia to the modern private estates of Europe and North America, gardening has been one of the most consistent signs of a great civilization and the most visually absorbing expression of culture.
Other Details: 301 illustrations, 253 in full color 356 pages 9 7/8 x 9 7/8" Published 1999
was the first artist, the gardener was surely the second as he asserted his humanity over the landscape in order to harness and redirect nature's unstable energy through his efforts.
At one level, gardening is about striving to find some rational if not ideal accommodation with nature in a rather one-sided match of forces, since nature's own laws are ultimately beyond our control. The natural cycle of life and death can endow a garden with a feeling of melancholy even when it is at its brief moment of triumph. Most gardeners prefer not to dwell on this flaw in nature's character but turn to the simple, underlying human faith common to all gardeners, that the dead seed we put in the ground will in fact spring to life the next season in the mystery of reproduction.
Five thousand years ago, the ancestor of modern corn could not be distinguished from other wild grasses growing in the highlands of Mexico. No one could have imagined that the tiny seeds of this puny weed held the possibility of producing food for millions of people. But through close collaboration with nature, adapting to her laws, the Mayans discovered how to increase the size of the grass by selection and breeding until it reached a mighty stalk of modern corn. In the process, they learned that as much as they depended on this mysteriously altered grain, the plant itself was dependent on them. Because of the construction of its ear, protected by tight husks, corn cannot seed itself. It would be extinct if man did not take a hand, unwrap the cob, and plant the seed each spring. Through this ritual of collaboration it is understandable why corn has entered the theology of the Mayan people. It is also an example of early biological manipulation that would later form the foundation of all of our advanced garden horticulture.
In Japan, the cultivation of rice over thousands of years has helped to shape the countryside into a vast complex of gardens. Rice culture has been embued with a spiritual meaning equal to that of corn in the highlands of Mexico and Central America. Just as the Great Inca turned the first furrow for the planting of corn with a golden plow, so the emperor of Japan executes the primal gesture of the ruler as gardener-cultivator by entering the imperial rice paddy each spring to plant rice, a symbol of the nation's historic dependence on the success of the annual crop.
Aside from the metaphysics of princely horticulture, royal gardens and parks have been established as manifestations of earthly political power in every civilization. Social order emerges with the concentration of power and ceremony in the hands of a ruler. Hierarchy imposed on chaotic, formless nature as a new way of organizing the world was a visible element of the mystique of kings. The theme of the garden as a tool of statecraft runs deep, as we will see, throughout the long history of gardening. Ancient literature takes it for granted. Renaissance rulers, from upstarts in Tuscany to the kings of France, adopted gardening as a link to the Golden Age of Alexander the Great.
Contemporary love of gardening in this urban century is a phenomenon that has spread widely, even though the threads that connect it with its historic roots are lost to all but the specialist. Even the simplest form of gardening is a particular kind of human experience that hints at a long and glorious past, both material and spiritual, but a sense of this continuity seems to elude us.
Gardening, as J. B. Jackson has reminded us, continues to "satisfy the aspirations of everyday existence . .. work that has quality and measure, capable at best of humanizing a small fragment of nature." When gardens with their sticks and stones and leaves of nature do rise above honest craft and are recognized as works of art, they become a part of the continuous process that all art shares. The antecedents that shape our appreciation of gardens include not only the historical past but the common biological heritage of our five senses, which have hardly changed since prehistory. A part of the garden's art is in its ability to stimulate our sight, touch, taste, smell, and hearing. But the use of our sensual apparatus has been greatly impaired in this century because of our isolation in an increasingly hostile, unnatural environment. If nature as we have known it is not hopelessly and absurdly irrelevant and if we are able to return our environment to its once stable condition, then the stimulating proximity of nature may also return the art of the garden to a place of honor. The account of the garden's past that follows is intended to help restore some of its universal significance by encouraging us to recognize the extraordinary diversity of gardening throughout history and its ability to humanize a small but essential fragment of our existence.
Gardens through History: Nature Perfected Gardens
356Gardens through History: Nature Perfected Gardens
356Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780896599192 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Abbeville Publishing Group |
Publication date: | 10/28/1991 |
Pages: | 356 |
Product dimensions: | 10.26(w) x 10.20(h) x 1.63(d) |