Designing the Garden of Geddes: The master gardener and the profession of landscape architecture

The influence of Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) on the landscape architecture profession has been widely acknowledged, but there is no critical review of the nature of this influence on theory and practice. Geddes appears to have been the first person in Britain to adopt the term landscape architect to denote a profession in the American sense as someone who dealt with city planning, civic design and parks systems. This profession seemed to encompass his wide ranging interests, providing a suitable vehicle for his transdisciplinary approaches, but which he later transferred to that of town and regional planning. His approach to understanding landscapes was to study towns and regions from a cultural, ecological and economic perspective in a systematic way of survey, analysis and design. Geddes’s methods were gradually adopted by the landscape architecture profession, and purely Beaux Arts-architectural approaches phased out. By tracing contemporary references, this paper highlights key individuals who helped to promote his ideas in the landscape architecture profession then and now, and shows how his enduring influence and longstanding impact have to do with the systematic approach and methods he set forth. Today similar approaches are being promoted by other professions, but with a different perspective, and suggests that rather than various disciplines setting up silos, trying to defend their territories, with climate change and food security looming it is timely to promote more integrated approaches. This is well in line with Geddes’s ideas who not only encouraged interdisciplinarity, but also warned against inadvertent specialisation

Fruit cultivation in the Royal Gardens of Hampton Court Palace, 1530-1842

While Hampton Court Palace was occupied by the royal family, fruit cultivation formed an integral part of horticulture. This paper reveals that it was not only integral to the gardens but also had an important symbolic function. The collection of fruit at Hampton Court was a leading reference collection, new trends were set here, new varieties were cultivated and new techniques of cultivation were developed. While it was generally recognized as such, it was compromised during a reorganisation of the functions of the gardens of the various royal palaces around London in 1842. Until then, fruit culture at Hampton Court was justly celebrated, and this case study investigates for the first time how over a three-hundred-year period societal change affected and shaped new fashions of consumption and cultivation. As such this paper alters our thinking about the role fruit had within society and how it was an indicator of social and political change

The history and development of groves in English formal gardens

This chapter explores how when Antoine Dézallier d’Argenville published his La Theorie et la Pratique du Jardinage (1709) it became the main source of reference on the topic; it was translated into English and German and there were pirated editions in the Netherlands. This book clearly categorized types of layout and planting, providing a vocabulary for contemporary garden design, including parterres and groves, recognizing and describing six different types of groves. This treatise clearly had an influence on later gardens, but it has also since been recognized as summarizing earlier trends. This chapter investigates the effect of this treatise in England. By identifying types and trends in the design of groves before the date of publication and afterwards it investigates innovation in the design of these features

‘Thoroughly Chinese’: Revealing the plants of the Hong merchants’ gardens through John Bradby Blake’s paintings

John Bradby Blake’s paintings should be admired for their sophisticated arrangement of accurate botanical features and vivid colouring, but they have a greater significance than just their artistic value. They not only represent a range of plants previously unknown to the west, but the majority also reveal a range of plants grown in the gardens of Chinese in Guangzhou (Canton): therefore they provide a precious insight into a thus far relatively neglected topic in Chinese garden history, namely the cultivation of plants in gardens. This paper identifies one of the gardens from which the plants depicted might have come, and looks at how plants were used and appreciated in their Chinese context

Reviving traditional burial rituals with feng shui: changing landscapes in China

For centuries feng shui structured the practice of burial in China, only to be prohibited during the People’s Republic when it was declared illegal. With the Reform and Opening-up policy after 1978, feng shui practices have surreptitiously been revived. This paper explores these burial rituals and the way they are impacting on the landscape, both physically and socially. After providing some historical context to indicate how burial was practised prior to the Republican era, this paper explores how feng shui has been revived after 1978. With case studies from Zhejiang province, the work of two practitioners is followed, one in a rural area, and the other in an affluent city. In this region cremation of remains has become the norm since 1997, yet feng shui burial has continued to be practised. While feng shui is possible within public cemeteries, plots in the countryside are also common. With increasing wealth and mobility, the option of feng shui burial is now available to many, which can cause conflicts raising questions as to the need for legalisation of the practice and regulatory policies