building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

legal and commercial documents compared to the private correspondence of
Thomas Butler (1785‐1847), one of the greatest sugar and cotton plantation owners
in the territories of Mississippi and Louisiana [Figure 14].
Turner describes the interest in the flower gardens of the Butler family, in particular
of the women, and outlines the choices which demonstrate an awareness of and
attention to the creation of The Cottage landscape. She lingers on the documents
which are a witness to the owner’s research and purchase of ornamental and fruit
plants. Moreover, the results obtained suggest that, although there were certainly
differences in the agricultural crops and in the specific varieties of plants in the
Southern States, ornamental horticulture in Mississippi and in Louisiana could
compare with practice in the Northern and Eastern States 37 .
The well‐known landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted (1822‐1903), left us a
significant description about life in the plantations and their landscapes. At the end
of the 1850’s, Olmsted made a series of voyages in the Cotton Kingdom of America,
leaving a detailed, sophisticated report, packed with naturalistic, botanical and
agricultural observations, measurements and detailed architectural comments on
the buildings. Olmsted’s experiences describe and compare the organizational
features of the agricultural businesses in various States, and naturally they also
investigate the botanical and naturalistic aspects of the gardens and the sections of
the land he crossed:
In the afternoon, I left the main road, and, towards night, reached a
much more cultivated district. The forest of pines still extended
uninterruptedly on one side of the way, but on the other was a
continued succession of very large fields, of rich dark soil ‐ evidently
reclaimed swamp‐land ‐ which had been cultivated the previous year, in
Sea Island cotton. Beyond them, a flat surface of still lower land, with a
silver thread of water curling through it, extended, Holland‐like, to the
horizon. Usually at as great a distance as a quarter of a mile from the
road, and from half a mile to a mile apart, were the residences of the
planters ‐ white houses, with groves of evergreen trees about them; and
between these and the road were little villages of slave‐cabins. My
directions not having been sufficiently explicit, I rode in, by a private
See also TURNER, Suzanne L., The Gardens of Louisiana: Places of Work and Wonder. Co‐author with
A. J. Meek, photographer. Baton Rouge and London: LSU Press, 1997.
37 This statement contrasts, as the author says, with the thesis of HENDRICK, Ulysses Prentiss, A
History of Horticulture in America to 1860, Oxford University Press, 1950
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