Old World Influences in the New World

• Early american gardens reflected the European origin of the settlers
• English influence was predominant, as exemplified by Williamsburg
• Horticultural explorers introduced plants from South America, Africa and the Orient by the late 1700's.
• Commercial nurseries become well-established

• A Colonial Garden in Williamsburg, Virginia

  -arrangements are formal, controlled, and highly structured

  -simple topiaries and clipped hedges

  -extensive use of bulbs, exotic plants, and ornamental flowers

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  At right: The gardens at the Governor's Mansion in Williamsburg, VA.

  
  

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  Thomas Jefferson

  No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. I am still devoted to the garden. But though an old man, I am but a young gardener.

  -1743 - 1826

  -Developed landscape gardening as a fine art in the US

  -Such gardening was influenced by European traditions, but was independent enough to set its own course

  -Monticello, his estate in Virginia, is a premier example of the new American use of the landscape

  -Demonstrated how 'a nation of farmers could live in a setting uniting utility and profit (growing crops & livestock) with beauty and pleasure (ornamental gardens)'

  -See an excellent site on Jefferson & Monticelo from the University of Virginia.

  
  

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  Andrew Jackson Downing

  -1815 - 1852

  -Best known for 'Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening'

  -Editor of the popular magazine The Horticulturist

  -Created American landscape gardening and influenced country life in every aspect

  -Stood for 'the simple, natural, and permanent as opposed to the complex, artificial, and emphemeral'

  -'Greatest single figure in the history of American horticulture.' (arguably)

'In North America there was little commercial Horticulture before the opening of the nineteenth century.'

'The earliest writings on American plants were by physicians, and naturalists who desired to exploit the wonders of the newly discovered hemisphere.'

'The colonial ornamental gardens were unlike our own in the relative poverty of plants, in the absence of the landscape arrangement, in the rarity of greenhouses, and the lack of smooth-shaven lawns (for the lawn mower was not invented till this [19th] century. These gardens were of two general types: the unconventional personal garden, without form but not void, in which things grew in delightful democracy; the conventional, box-bordered, geometrical garden, in which things grew in most respectful aristocracy.'

'The opening of the nineteenth century may be taken as a convenient starting point for a narrative of the evolution of American Horticulture. At that time Horticulture began to attain some prominence as distinct from general agriculture, and the establishment of peace after the long and depleting war with England had turned the attention of the best citizens afresh to the occupation of the soil. The example of Washington, in returning to the farm after a long and honorable public career, no doubt exerted great influence.'

Continue on to the Industrial Revolution and the Rise of Science.