Nature and Ideology:
Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century
edited by Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn
for Contents and Electronic Texts
This volume explores the broad range of ideas about nature reflected
in 20th-century concepts of natural gardens and their ideological
implications.
A possible definition-nature is ideology-suggests that nature
can be seen as a systematic scheme of ideas held by particular
social, political, and cultural groups and that what we define
as nature is a human intellectual construct. Historical and contemporary
concepts of natural garden design then provide evidence of different
concepts of nature underlying these varied design approaches.
The desire to produce a natural garden design has fascinated
many professional and lay garden designers, and the various contributions
in this volume investigate their use of earlier ideas of natural
gardens and their relationship to the immensely rich model that
nature offers. The work of early twentieth-century natural garden
advocates is discussed in its relevance for contemporary design
approaches.
These ideas of natural garden design helped shape much of twentieth-century
landscape architecture in both the United States and Europe and
the ideologies underlying various concepts of natural gardens
show how political, economic and social developments influenced
design programs and decisions.
Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History of Landscape Architecture,
18
1997 284 pages 127 illus. 8 1/2 x 11 inches 0-88402-246-3 WONA
$50.00