Publications and Resources

Inspired by Nature: The Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago’s West Side by Julia S. Bachrach and Jo Ann Nathan.  (Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, November 2007) 160 pages, paper, 978-0-9794125-0-9, $25.00 US.

One of the nation’s most stunning and intriguing botanical havens, the Garfield Park Conservatory will celebrate its one-hundredth anniversary in 2008. Often referred to as “landscape art under glass,” Jens Jensen’s revolutionary design is a poetic interpretation of his beloved Midwestern landscape as it was in prehistoric times. The tropical plantings, water features, and stonework were in shocking contrast to the showy displays of typical Victorian hothouses, and his Conservatory quickly became one of the region’s most captivating attractions.

The Conservatory is also at the center of a larger story: how nature, urban design, and horticulture helped to shape one of Chicago’s most interesting neighborhoods. As early as the 1870s, architect and engineer William Le Baron Jenney began the verdant tradition of Chicago’s West Side by designing its seminal park and boulevard system. Today gardening and the greening movement are a catalyst for reviving this vital part of Chicago.

Published in honor of the centennial, Inspired by Nature blossoms into a living history that looks to the future, and covers everything from the history of the conservatory and Garfield Park to the revival of the surrounding community. Along with historical essays, archival photography and plans, as well as contemporary color photography by Brook Collins, Inspired by Nature also features vignettes by Chicago Public School students, who write about their experiences as members of the Garfield Park Community. A reflection of the passionate interest and partnerships behind the Garfield Park revival, as well as a celebration of nature’s important role in people’s lives, Inspired by Nature is an essential publication for anyone with an interest in Chicago history, urban parks and communities, and the botanic splendor of the Garfield Park Conservatory.

The Authentic Garden: Five Principles For Cultivating A Sense Of Place by Claire E. Sawyers.  (Timber Press, December 2007) 288 pages, 300 color photos, Hardcover, 978-0-88192-831-0, $34.95 US.

What makes a garden “authentic”? For American gardeners, this question can be vexing. Because America is a comparatively young nation, it hasn’t had much time to develop an indigenous garden style. Gardeners have therefore tended to turn to other national traditions—such as Italy’s, Japan’s, or England’s—for inspiration. The unhappy result of this piecemeal stylistic borrowing has been the creation of gardens that bear no relationship to local landscapes and history, and that have no connection with our daily lives.

Claire Sawyers, director of the Scott Arboretum of Swarthmore College since 1990, shows how this tendency can be reversed: how we can create gardens that are both deeply rooted in their surroundings and deeply satisfying to their creators and
owners.  Drawing on her knowledge of a vast array of American and foreign gardens, she identifies five principles that help instill a sense of authenticity:

1. Capture the sense of place
2. Derive beauty from function
3. Use humble or indigenous materials
4. Marry the inside to the outside
5. Involve the visitor

Practical and inspiring, The Authentic Garden will enable the reader to make a garden that is true to a specific time, place, and culture; to capture and reflect an authentic spirit so that the garden, in turn, will nurture the spirit of those who cherish and dwell in it.

Landscape Legacies: Created Space from the Prehistoric to the Present, by *Nancy Pollock-Ellwand and Susan M. Preston. ( University of Toronto Press, 2005) CD-ROM 0-80203-705-4, $113.00.  

Landscape Legacies is a multimedia survey of designed environments, from Prehistoric times to the eighteenth century Picturesque Movement. It traces the evolution of the Western European landscape tradition, including influences on it from other traditions.

Nancy Pollock-Ellwand and Susan M. Preston build on the reader's knowledge of landscape history to develop the ability to critically view all historical interpretations of landscape, including the text. The huge sweep of time represented in this work is presented chronologically and thematically in the belief that to understand any landscape today, it is necessary to understand its past and its legacy.

(CD-ROM Requirements: Windows 95/98/2000/NT, 16Mb RAM, 50 Mb Hard disk space, 16 bit colour display.)

The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation by David Grayson Allen.  (Northeastern University Press/University Press of New England, December 2007) 328 pp., Cloth, 1-55553-679-4, $50.00 US.

A contextual history of Massachusetts’ Olmsted National Historic Site.
"Whether it's the Emerald Necklace in Boston, Central Park in New York City, the Capitol Grounds in Washington, D.C., or countless other beautiful urban parks in cities across America, we have Frederick Law Olmsted to thank for his magnificent creative vision and achievements.  He understood the link between cultivating nature and civilizing humanity.  He invented the art of landscaping and was responsible for bringing public green space into our urban centers.  In this important book, David Grayson Allen expertly analyzes the intensive modern effort championed by the Olmsted National Historical Site to encourage landscape preservation nationwide and breathe new life into Olmsted's brilliant legacy for future generations."—Edward M. Kennedy, United States Senator.  

Sites Unseen: Landscape and Vision by Dianne Harris and D. Fairchild Ruggles.  (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007) 336 pages, Hardcover, 978-0-82294-308-2, $60.00 US; Paper, 978-0-82295-9-595, $26.95 US.

Sites Unseen challenges conventions for viewing and interpreting the landscape, using visual theory to move beyond traditional practices of describing and classifying objects to explore notions of audience and context.  While other fields, such as art history and geography, have engaged poststructuralist theory to consider vision and representation, the application of such inquiry to the natural or built environment has lagged behind.  This book, by treating landscape as a spatial, psychological, and sensory encounter, aims to bridge this gap, opening a new dialogue for discussing the landscape outside the boundaries of current art criticism and theory.  As the contributors reveal, the landscape is a widely adaptable medium that can be employed literally or metaphorically to convey personal or institutional ideologies.  Walls, gates, churchyards, and arches become framing devices for a staged aesthetic experience or to suit a sociopolitical agenda.  The optic stimulation of signs, symbols, bodies, and objects combines with physical acts of climbing and walking and sensory acts of touching, smelling, and hearing to evoke an overall “vision” of landscape.  Sites Unseen considers a variety of different perspectives, including ancient Roman visions of landscape, the framing techniques of a Moghul palace, and a contemporary case study of Christo's The Gates, as examples of human attempts to shape our sensory, cognitive, and emotional experiences in the landscape.


News from the Library of American Landscape History

A Genius for Place Caps Banner Year for LALH
Robin Karson’s long-awaited book, A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era, is slated for publication in early December by the University of Massachusetts Press. A Genius for Place will be the fifth title released by LALH in 2007, capping the organization’s fifteenth anniversary year.

In this beautifully illustrated volume, Karson traces the development of a distinctly American style of landscape design through an analysis of seven country places created by some of the nation's most talented landscape practitioners––from the naturalistic wild gardens of Warren Manning to the mysterious “Prairie style” landscapes of Jens Jensen to the proto-modernist gardens of Fletcher Steele. Analyzing these designs in context with one another and against the backdrop of the professional and cultural currents that shaped larger projects—such as parks, campuses, and planned communities—Karson creates a rich and comprehensive picture of the artistic achievements of the period. Handsome black-and-white images by landscape photographer Carol Betsch illuminate the transporting spirit of these country places today, while hundreds of drawings, plans, and historical photographs bring the past to life.

2007 VIEW Available Online
Download the annual LALH magazine at www.lalh.org/view.html.

Olmsted Site Book Published
Please note that the book, The Olmsted National Historic Site and the Growth of Historic Landscape Preservation, which was mentioned in our summer newsletter and written by David Grayson Allen has been published.

LALH and its publishing partner, University of Massachusetts Press, are finishing production on two books coming out this fall: Silent City on a Hill: Picturesque Landscapes of Memory and Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery by Blanche M. G. Linden and Book of Landscape Gardening (1926 edition) by Frank A. Waugh (1869–1943).

Silent City is the long-awaited, expanded edition of the author’s classic work on America’s first rural cemetery, with a new introduction by William C. Clendaniel, new color photographs by Richard Cheek, and new black-and-white photographs by Carol Betsch.

Waugh’s book, part of the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series, brings back into print the ideas and principles promulgated by this early advocate of landscape design and conservation, who also was a serious photographer, accomplished flutist, and, later in life, a master printmaker.  In 1902 Waugh established and headed the Department of Landscape Gardening at Massachusetts Agricultural College, now the University of Massachusetts Amherst, just two years after Harvard launched the country’s first such program.  Linda Flint McClelland, a historian for the National Park Service, has written the new introduction.

The Book of Landscape Gardening, one of more than twenty books Waugh wrote on a wide variety of subjects, was issued in three editions over twenty-seven years.  The third and most popular 1926 edition, revised to be "suitable for a homeowner’s fireside reading,” as McClelland observes, attracted new readers among new suburban homeowners in the decade following World War I and featured new photographs, many of which Waugh took.  The changes in this final edition reflect, in McClelland’s view, “Waugh’s strong belief that ‘the fundamental principles on which landscape architecture rests do not change’ and the power to improve the American landscape and to preserve what is already beautiful must be given to ordinary people."

New Library of American Landscape History Titles For Spring 2007
Spring 2007 will see the publication of two new LALH books. Due out in March, Catherine Howett’s A World of Her Own Making: Katharine Smith Reynolds and the Landscape of Reynolda tells the story of the young wife of R. J. Reynolds and her vision for a progressive, model community in Winston-Salem, N.C., that would emphasize health, modern technology, mixed-crop scientific farming, education, and rural beauty in the early years of the twentieth century.

Howett’s book will be followed in June by Mission 66: Modernism and the National Park Dilemma, by Ethan Carr, an assistant professor in the department of landscape architecture and regional planning, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The book chronicles the major federal program known as Mission 66, which reshaped the national park system between 1956 and 1966. At a cost of $1 billion, the program created new visitor centers, campgrounds, utilities, and many other park facilties and expanded the park system with new national recreation areas and national seashores. Both will be published by University of Massachusetts Press in association with LALH. Check www.lalh.org for updates.

New Towns for Old Rolls Off the Press
Library of American Landscape History (LALH) is celebrating the release of a new edition of John Nolen's classic work in American town and city planning, New Towns for Old (1927). Published by the University of Massachusetts Press in association with LALH, the new edition ($39.95, cloth) enriches Nolen's original text with a new introductory essay by architect and writer Charles D. Warren. Additional illustrations, an index, and Nolen's never-before-published project list are also included.

Researchers Launch Warren H. Manning Project
The first phase of a two-volume publication on landscape architect Warren Henry Manning (1860–1938) is under way. Horticulturist, landscape architect, town and city planner, and author, Manning began as an assistant in the office of Olmsted, Olmsted, and Eliot and went on to found his own office from which he created more than 1,700 projects throughout the U.S. For more information about the Manning book, visit www.lalh.org/whatsNew.html. To get involved with research, contact Jane Roy Brown, Director of Educational Outreach: jroybrown@lalh.org or (413) 549-4860.

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