Art History and Garden History: The Joys of the Countryside

C. C. L. Hirschfeld. Theory of Garden Art , Ed. and trans. Linda B. Parshall (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Pp. ix + 504. $59.95 cloth.

Roy Strong. The Artist and the Garden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000). Pp. 288. $50.00 cloth.

These two enjoyable and informative books explore the meaning and purpose of the garden, the making of actual gardens, and, in Roy Strong's case, the history of the garden in art. A garden involves many things: earth, plants, labour, money, taste, beauty, the vicissitudes of life. Both C. C. L. Hirschfeld writing in the 1770s, and Roy Strong writing in the year 2000, take us into gardens of the past, but reading them one feels firmly tied to the present. For whatever the differences between gardens then and now, there is something timeless and compelling about both the mystery and the tangible existence of a garden. As Hirschfeld wrote, "Who is not familiar with those joys of the countryside sung by poets of all centuries, often praised by philosophers, often wished for oneself?" (147).

Hirschfeld's Theory of Garden Art, published in its original German edition in five volumes from 1779 to 1785, is an important German contribution to the theory of garden design. It has never before been translated into English, and Linda B. Parshall's edition reveals it to be a delightful book, well worth reading for specialists, general readers, and present-day gardening enthusiasts. The book has been produced in a pleasing format, and is part of the distinguished series Pennsylvania Studies in Landscape Architecture, overseen by John Dixon Hunt. Linda B. Parshall has carefully abridged the five volumes of the Theory of Garden Art, with representative selections from each volume and dozens of black and white illustrations.

C. C. L. Hirschfeld was a university teacher of aesthetics rather than a landowner or garden designer himself, but as Parshall points out, his strength is as a theorist. He had an eye for beauty and a respect for nature, and he often uses the well-known phrase "the genius of the place" (378). Hirschfeld favoured the less formal English garden of the eighteenth century over what he regarded as the more artificial French garden. The English, he writes, are gardeners and farmers; the French, he adds derisively, are decorators (439). While Hirschfeld often expresses his disgust for ornamentation and excess in a garden, he does stress the importance of appropriateness. Depending on size and location, some gardens can include statues, artificial ruins, or fountains. There are different kinds of gardens, such as royal, noble, and urban, different locations, and different regions of the world, and all of these factors must be taken into account when planning a garden so it suits the character of the person and the place. Small gardens, for instance, should not "attempt to imitate larger ones in their wealth of buildings, since nothing is less tolerable than a place supposedly dedicated to the beauties of nature which is then overburdened with art objects" (277). This is sound advice for today's home gardeners tempted by the many knickknacks at their local garden centre.

Above all, the garden artist must spend time studying nature (140). Hirschfeld himself made several tours of gardens in Germany and Switzerland and hoped that Germany would develop a garden style appropriate for its own climate and landscape, rather than simply trying to imitate the popular French or English styles. He criticized those who design a garden without examining the site "looking only at paper and never at the land" (206). He was attentive to the natural surroundings and worried about the fashion for cutting down mature trees:

[one should] avoid unnecessary destruction of the natural objects found at garden sites. Many people believe that before they can begin planting, they must remove everything nature has allowed to grow; . . . It is a sort of crime when a tree that...