The Spirit of Place
By Bruce Turley
Reprinted from The Understory, June–July 2004
I came across this passage (thanks to Marcie Lee) from Frederick Law Olmsted, the father of landscape
architecture.
From the book, Frederick Law Olmsted, Designing the American Landscape, by Charles E. Beveridge and Paul Rocheleau:
Dame Nature is a gentlewoman. No guide's fee will obtain you her favor, no abrupt demand; hardly will she bear questioning, or direct, curious gazing at her beauty.
To illustrate his views, Olmsted
compared the effect of a common wildflower in a bank of mossy
turf with that of a gaudy hybrid of the same genus. The hybrid
was rare and would attract immediate attention, he said, but
the former, while we have passed it by without stopping,
and while it has not interrupted our conversation or called for
remark, may possibly, with other objects of the same class, have
touched us more…
This single comparison summed up
the difference of intent, design, and effect between the horticulturist
and gardener on the one hand and the landscape architect on the
other.
In Olmsted's judgment, the truth
of his design concepts required the rejection of much gardening
practice of his time. The mid-nineteenth century saw a revolution
in horticulture that introduced hundreds of new flowers and shrubs.
At the same time many plants and trees began to be imported from
Japan, China, and other distant parts of the world. The result
was the development of highly decorative displays of exotic flowers
and plants. By the 1890's he complained that almost everywhere
& most in the newest work, the landscape end is confused
with & subordinated to other ends—Japanese ends.
Olmsted
objected to much of the specimen planting and flower-bedding
by gardeners of his time because it went against the spirit
of place
and thus against his perception of good taste.
His main criterion for tastefulness was that a design element
should be fitting
and proper in its setting, not
clashing and incongruous.
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