building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

The prospects and developments of the rural cemetery were also carefully studied
in England by John Claudius Loudon (1783‐1843), one of the greatest landscape
designers of the first half of the nineteenth century and disseminator of the ideas of
Capability Brown. Loudon was, above all, a prolific author of publications on
horticulture, gardening, agriculture and botany, in which he developed a precise
idea of how to treat the landscape. He was probably one of the first to combine the
architectural problem with gardening problems, and understood how the project
design of a landscape required multiple aspects to be taken into careful
consideration. For this purpose, in 1833 he was to write The Encyclopedia of
Cottage, Farm and Villa Architecture, a collection of over 1,400 pages, containing
approximately two hundred illustrations of rural architecture and the descriptions
of numerous styles to be used depending on the situation. He intended his works to
illustrate the advantages of having a method of project design, which differed from
the geometric models and which was an evolution of the picturesque design: “[…] is
the gardenesque style, characterised by distinctness in the separate parts when
closely examined, but, when viewed as a whole, governed by the same general
principles of composition as the picturesque style, the parts, though not blended,
being yet connected” 230 . The most rapid vehicle for his ideas was the publication of
the Gardener’s Magazine and register of rural and domestic improvement, printed
in London from the beginning of 1826 until his death. The first issues discussed
various topics, from a horticultural point of view to give practical advice for “[…]
improving the knowledge of gardeners” 231 understood “[…] as an art of design and
taste” 232 . These were publications known and read by those in the trade on both
sides of the ocean. From his very first writings, Loudon bore in mind the originality
of the social role of landscape gardening and the landscape architect. As time
passed, he not only contained his use of these terms, but he also defined the
creative contribution of the discipline and the purposes of entertainment of the
park:
230 LOUDON, John Claudius, The Gardener’s Magazine and register of rural and domestic
improvement, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1843, p. 166
231 Ibid., p. 3
232 Ibid., p. 5
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