building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

luxuriant urban or country house parks [Figure 105]. Basically, Loudon proposed
cemeteries which confirmed American progress in landscaping for this particular
area. However, many events and editorial initiatives, which encouraged garden
culture, took place during the years prior to the rural cemetery movement.
After the appearance in America of the book by McMahon, one of the most popular
publications on gardens was The Practical American Gardener, 238 of an “Old
Gardener”, published in 1819, whereas the New England Farmer, published in
Boston by Thomas Green Fessenden (1771‐1837) in 1822, was one of the first
magazines to dedicate a great deal of space to horticultural problems. This
magazine later became a tool linked to the organisation of associations, which had
gardening as its minimum common denominator.
Beginning with the Agricultural Museum (1810), magazines in the sector became
increasingly numerous. 239 In 1819, John S. Skinner, a famous lawyer and editor from
Baltimore, began to print the American Farmer, which he only gave up after ten
successful years of sales to dedicate himself to the Journal of Agriculture (1845‐48).
In Boston in 1835, J.E. Teschmacher published the Horticultural Register and
Gardener’s Magazine, with coloured illustrations. In the same year, Fessenden
began a work devoted to the popular sericulture, entitled Fessenden’s Silk Manual
and Practical Farmer. These publications were conceived in the same way as today’s
specialist magazines, full of advertising publishing nurseries, associations and stores
specialised in the sale of agricultural tools. They offered informative sections,
theoretical essays and space for reviews by publishing companies in the sector.
In New England, Boston was the town which, at the time, was to become the
benchmark for cultural initiatives linked to agricultural practices and to the
landscape. In 1829, the Boston Horticultural Society, later to become the
Massachusetts Horticultural Society, was founded on the model of homonymous
English associations. As we have already seen, its lands provided the necessary
space to develop and manage Mount Auburn Cemetery, for which the association
had been the prime mover.
238 OLD, Gardener, The Practical American Gardener, Baltimore, Fielding Lucas Jr., 1819
239 See MOTT, Frank Luther, A History of American Magazines: 1741‐1850, Harvard University Press,
1930
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