Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium Series in the History of Landscape Architecture

This wide-ranging collection of essays charts the history, scope, and spread of Dutch garden art during the seventeenth century. A group of scholars, mostly Dutch, surveys what has been called the “golden age” of Dutch garden design. Essays discuss the political context of William’s building and gardening activities at his palace of Het Loo in the Netherlands; the development of a distinctively Dutch garden art during the seventeenth century; country house poetry; and specific estates and their gardens.

The study of garden history has grown rapidly over the last twenty years. This collection of essays explores the issues, methods, and approaches that students in landscape architecture have developed during that period to cope with the expanding subject of gardens and their history.

Regionalism has become a much-discussed design issue for landscape architects in recent years. Increased mobility, uprootedness, and the pace of change in an increasingly technological society have contributed to interest in this concept, which places value on cultural continuity in local areas. This approach to garden design attempts to capture the spirit of the place, the plant material, and symbolic qualities that define a region’s natural and cultural character. These essays lay the foundation for examining regionalism in American garden design. The organization of the papers is by geographical area, covering the West Coast, the Midwest, the South, and New England.

John Evelyn (1620-1706), an English virtuoso and writer, was a pivotal figure in seventeenth-century intellectual life in England. The contributors to this volume approach Evelyn and his work from diverse disciplines, including architectural and intellectual history and the histories of science, agriculture, gardens, and literature. They present a rich picture of the "Elysium Britannicum" as one of the central documents of late European humanism.

Places of Commemoration examines commemorative sites of different character, including gardens, landscapes, memorials, cemeteries, and sites of former Nazi concentration camps, detailing the ideas behind the creation of memorials and monuments and the struggles over the narratives they present.

The papers presented in this volume range from proposals for new design approaches, historical analysis of the relationship between the practice of landscape architecture and environmentalism, to the theories of early practitioners of landscape architecture imbued by an environmentalist outlook.

Essays in this volume explore this complex framework of relationships the diverse settings of Britain, France, Biedermeier Vienna, and renaissance Genoa. The volume confirms that gardens were objects of conspicuous consumption, but also challenges the theories of consumption set forth by Thorstein Veblen and Pierre Bourdieu, and explores the contributions of gardens to major cultural changes like the rise of public opinion, gender and family relationships, and capitalism.

Baroque Garden Cultures proposes a new approach to the study of baroque gardens, examining the social reception of gardens as a means to understand garden culture in general and exploring baroque gardens as a feature of baroque cultures in particular.

Studies of rituals in sacred gardens and landscapes offer tantalizing insights into the significance of gardens and landscapes in the societies of India, ancient Greece, Pre-Columbian Mexico, medieval Japan, post-Renaissance Europe, and America. Each section of this book is devoted to a different form of agency, together revealing a profound cultural significance of gardens previously overlooked by studies of garden style.

Breaking with the idea that gardens are places of indulgence and escapism, these studies of ritualized practices reveal that gardens in Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean have in fact made significant contributions to cultural change.

This book highlights the religious, artistic, political, and economic consequences of horticultural pursuits, exploring the roles of peasants, botanists, horticulturists, nurserymen and gentlemen collectors in these developments, and concluding with a reflection on the future of horticulture in the present context of widespread environmental devastation and ecological uncertainty.

The present renewal of garden art demands a new approach to garden aesthetics. This book considers exceptional creations around the world and proposes new forms of garden experience using a variety of critical perspectives.

From mirroring the true reality of God in Sufi Persia to the enjoyment of fictitious identities in Rome or present-day Granada, the ways of imagination in gardens are infinitely varied. This book explores how gardens could be imagined, and also how they could be used to trigger the imagination by very different cultures in Japan, China, Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Italy, Spain, and Israel.

This book unites new information and surprising results from the last fifteen years of garden research, at a remove from the clichés of Orientalism. Garden archaeology reveals the economic importance of Judean gardens in Roman times and the visual complexity of gardens created and transformed in Moorish Spain. More contemporary approaches unravel the cultural continuities, variations, and differences between gardens in the Middle East since Roman times and in the Islamic world.

Italian gardens have received more attention from historians than perhaps any other garden tradition. This volume presents eight richly illustrated essays by established and emerging scholars that suggest striking new directions, both quantitative and methodological, for future research.

This illustrated volume examines how the natural world is transformed through the creative use of language. Its contributors do not assume that there is an opposition between nature and culture, but rather emphasize that forms of language are embedded in our understanding and appreciation of the natural environment across cultures and time periods.

Whether threatened by habitat destruction or climate change, many wild animals have failed to thrive in the company of humans. The essays in Designing Wildlife Habitats explore how landscape architects and garden designers are drawing on the insights and practices of conservation ecology to create productive ecosystems and promote biodiversity.