building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

Washington’s life, the gardener prepared and sent a written report describing the
activities he had carried out himself, as well as those by his assistants. In April 1787,
Washington drew up a document, which established the rights and duties of the
gardener as he carried out his tasks. 209 However, the de‐stabilising element in the
project design remained the lawn, also known as the Bowling Green [Figure 92]. The
latter was bordered on one side by a large circular bed, fixed by the access road to
the house, and on the opposite side it ended in a small, low, wooden gate. The gate
opened on to a circular‐shaped road to enclose the gardens and lead any visitors to
the entrance of the house without crossing the more private areas. Beyond the
gate, there was a large meadow‐lawn, which continued to a rectangular cut in the
wood, as if a sort of avenue came directly from nature straight to the house. The
curved shaped of the Bowling Green did not stem from the English school of
gardening according to Norman T. Newton. However, we can doubtless consider it
an element, which would be introduced very clearly and formally into subsequent
projects to become the precise archetypal way of relating to the landscape. To give
an example, “dear Mount Vernon”, as Washington was accustomed to call his own
estate, was somehow the inspiration for landscape projects, which Thomas
Jefferson created with greater skills and greater creative results. Furthermore, the
lawn at Mount Vernon represented, perhaps unwittingly and despite the skilfully
concealed symmetry of its trapezoidal layout, the beginning of new picturesque
theories in America.
The landscape of Mount Vernon is a significant testimony of the transition of
colonial gardening practices to new, unexpected contributions, far beyond the
historic importance of the estate
On the other hand, American construction itself never slavishly followed the fashion
of architectural styles, on the contrary it adapted to the multiple technological and
material resources, which had been made available over time. The traditional
English wooden house in America was transformed into the floorboard
209 See FISHER, Robert B., The Mount Vernon Gardens, Mount Vernon, Virginia, The Mount Vernon
Ladies Association of the Union, 1960 and the article by SYKES, Meredith and STEWART, John
“Historic Landscape Restoration in the United States and Canada: An Annotated Source Outline”
published in Bulletin of the Association for Preservation Technology, Vol. 4, No. 3/4 (1972), pp.114‐
158
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