Two things animate me. The first actually came second, and the second first. As an undergraduate, I studied philosophy, and that remains to this day my keenest interest.
But before that, when I was a teenager, I worked after classes let out for the day at the Armstrong Garden Centers on San Fernando Boulevard in my hometown of Glendale and on Foothill Boulevard in La Cañada Flintridge (left) just down the street from my high school.
The son of the old lady across the street from us on Cleveland Road was dating the manager of Armstrong’s, and after my father insisted a teenaged boy should learn what it means to work, our neighbor convinced her to give me a part-time afterschool job there. Initially, my job was to water all the plants (flowers, shrubs, and trees) which, if I arrived around 3:30 in the afternoon, would keep me busy until sundown.
It was an easy job, but it could get rather boring – so as I was watering a plant, one day I’d read its little card (name, light & water requirements, growth & flowering characteristics, etc.), and then the next day while watering it I would recite the plant’s name, light & water requirements, growth & flowering characteristics, and so forth from memory until I had learned every plant in the nursery. Candy, the manager, overheard me “talking to myself” one day and was so impressed she let me work sales with customers on the weekends. I genuinely loved it, and I trace my interest in ornamental horticulture today back to those days — my first proper job.
My professional career involved neither philosophy nor horticulture, but I continue to pursue these dual interests, and to combine them.
Gardening was never meant to look pretty in its earliest form. The oldest known type of horticulture is referred to as forest gardening — early planting was mainly done for practical reasons: to grow herbs or vegetables, or flowers that were cultivated for religious and medicinal purposes. Gardens didn’t become a form of creative or aesthetic display until the 13th century, due to the emergence of an upper class with leisure time to enjoy them. That said, the earliest recorded archaeological evidence of aesthetically designed gardens not planted with a practical purpose in mind dates only as far back as the 15th century in Egypt and was based on a garden at Thebes which belonged to a high court official and included the use of many plants, pieces of advice on cultivation, and instructions on sowing, planting, and grafting of trees.
It wasn’t until the following century that the ideas behind gardening changed. Europeans began to cultivate gardens both for food and for beauty, we begin to see lawns of grass and raised flowerbeds used to decorate the surrounding land; the flourishing society allowed for increased leisure time. Throughout history, gardens have taken on different roles, between functional and aesthetic. The word ‘garden’ itself refers etymologically to an enclosure, and establishes the first use of a garden by farmers who needed to cultivate vegetables both for food and to sell/trade; as plants needed more watering and specialized care, such early gardens tended to be located near the farmer’s house, enclosed to prevent livestock from eating the plants. But by the 16th century, people started to build walls and raised flowerbeds around their lawns and homes to provide privacy; monasteries planted and tended gardens as a means of seclusion allowing monks to meditate fenced off from “the world.” During Roman antiquity, ornamental horticulture reached its pre-medieval peak — Roman gardens were regarded as places of tranquility, allowing one to seek refuge from the busyness and noise of urban life. Fast forward to the 16th century and gardens begin to take on the creative form of art when individuals started to have the luxury of time to manage gardens — the wealthy classes began to have an interest in horticulture and the designing of gardens. The more elaborate the planning and execution of the gardens, the better it reflected on the social status of a family; in the modern-day context, a garden adds curb appeal to a property, increasing its perceived overall value.
And we begin here to see the development of the two primary types of modern garden and how they each are influenced by a philosophy of life: the French Garden and the English Garden. The jardin à la Française (or “garden in the French manner”) drew its inspiration from the Italian Renaissance garden. King Charles VIII imposed it after traveling to Italy in 1495; he gathered Italian artisans and landscape architects to design a French garden after seeing how gardens could represent the ideals and virtues of a time in history. The key features of a formal French garden would be its symmetrical and orderly arrangement, a bending and taming of nature to conform to humanity’s will. The most famous example of the French gardening style would be the Gardens at Versailles constructed by landscape architect André Le Nôtre in the 17th century. The Gardens at Versailles covered 150,000 hectares of land and showed how peace and order came through man ruling over nature.
In 1718, an English Garden designer, Stephen Switzer, wrote in Ichnografia Rustica that a garden is, “open to all View, to the unbounded Felicities of distant Prospect, and the expansive Volumes of Nature herself.” He examined the costs and expenses of a formal garden and called forth a better alternative to gardening, to the benefit of individuals and society. This would ultimately transform the gardens of England as many started to appreciate a more natural and relaxed idea of gardening and the view that rather than bend nature to our will, we ought to find ways to appreciate it as it manifests itself. Hence, English Gardens were more natural, eschewing strict geometric features, giving rise to what the French called Jardins Anglais and the Germans called Englischer Garten. It was Roy Porter who best captured the essence of English gardens by stating that the critical enlightening concept was nature itself; the English gardens relied heavily on rectilinear patterns and non-uniform shaping of trees, seeking to portray the diversity of life and its capability to enthuse bold and creative ideas. The English garden was thus rooted (a pun, yes?) in the principle of humanity cooperating with nature.
The most notable men behind the designs of English Gardens were William Kent and Lancelot “Capability” Brown. William Kent was an architect-turned-gardener who was eventually employed by the English royal family of the day to design their palace gardens; in Kent’s work, one could see undulating trees between serpentine walkways; though he included some straight walks in his designs, irregular woodland stands out as the central part of the garden.
Lancelot “Capability” Brown worked as assistant to William Kent before embarking on his own career as one of the most influential figures in 18th century landscape design. Brown designed parks and gardens as if they grew organically out of their surroundings without human intervention or management. He often transformed yards with a belt of trees surrounding the whole estate; a random assignment of trees, serpentine walks with massive lawns and irregularly shaped lakes with an occasional bridge. An example of this type of creation can be found at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
As a good rule of thumb, if you’re looking to plant a garden and want a specific look, remember these basic pointers. French gardens are very geometric; at their center should be some sort of façade and the landscape should emanate outward in an orderly fashion from that. If, like me, you take a more humble approach to nature that acknowledges and finds beauty and purpose in its sometimes messy, irregular diversity, you’re after an English garden.
English by heritage and temperament, I am a philosopher who fancies himself a horticulturist, or perhaps I am really just a horticulturist who fancies himself a philosopher.
“Horticulturist” is a rather grand way of saying gardener, and since everything sounds better in Latin, let’s leave it at Philosophus hortulanus esset or “The philosopher would be a gardener.”