building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

with specific transformations of the landscape carried out by the Indians, confirms
this hypothesis 203 .
However, the common feature of the first interventions of landscape gardening in
America appears to be the use of the lawn 204 as the central area in garden
composition and the privileged viewpoint of the architecture. The lawn is the
natural space, which acts as counterpoint to the building. It encourages the
discovery of the surrounding garden and offers views in perspective of both. In the
architecture of the colonial period, the layout of the gardens envisaged simple,
geometric shapes 205 , many of the plants used came from England and the
architecture reflected a style which came to be known as Georgian Colonial, with
differences in the use of materials between North and South. The preparation of
the plantation landscape, especially in Virginia along the James River, saw the first
changes and began to give a major role to the lawn in front of the owner’s villa. The
gardens and house of the plantation owned by Colonnel John Tayole (1721‐1779) at
Mount Airy, Richmond County, near Warsaw, Virginia (1758‐62) [Figure
89]represent the landscape at the stage, which was to lead to new elements of
design to define the landscape. The architecture of Mount Airy was undoubtedly
inspired by the Vitruvius Scoticus 206 by William Adam (1689‐1748) and by other
English sources, and it was probably the first Neo‐palladian building to be built in
the United States. The gardens of the house follow geometric shapes, however, we
find a large rectangular lawn directly linked with the architecture according to a
previous experiment in the Westover plantation at Charles City County, Virginia
(1730s).
203 See: SQUIER, Ephraim George, and DAVIS, Edwin Hamilton, Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi
Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys and Explorations, Washington,
Smithsonian Institution, 1848, and the essay by KENNEDY, Roger, “Jefferson and the Indians”,
Winterthur Portfolio, Vol. 27, No. 2/3 (Summer ‐ Autumn, 1992), The University of Chicago Press, pp.
105‐121, mentioned in a previous note about Poplar Forest Plantation.
204 See TEYSSOT, George (ed.), The American lawn, New York, Princeton architectural press;
Montreal, Canadian Centre for Architecture, 1999
205 See NEWTON, Norman T., Design on the Land. The Development of Landscape Architecture,
Cambridge, Massachusetts, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971, pp. 246‐251
206 The name Vitruvius Scoticus (Scottish Vitruvius) recalls the title of the previous book Vitruvius
Britannicus, or the Brithish Architect (1715‐25), the major work published by Colen Campbell (1676‐
1729). The Vitruvius Britannicus was a famous book containing engravings of English buildings by
Inigo Jones and Sir Christopher Wren, Campbell himself and other architects.
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