what was the first thing that attracted you to the subject of horticulture and botanical history?
for me, nature, landscape and plants have always been a vehicle to talk about politics, science and culture, empire, so it’s really just a window into a topic that interests me. I am not a practical gardener. I’m not even very interested in the horticultural aspect of this at all. if you think about planting an oak tree, for example, you know you’ll never see it grow to maturity, but that makes doing so a real affirmation of your belief in the future and future generations. so I think gardening is an emotional way of dealing with your environment. and if you look back you can see how societies have developed through the gardens they created. so that’s what attracted me. Coming to Britain from Germany like I did, you suddenly realize this is a garden-obsessed nation. everyone thinks that digging flower beds is great entertainment and to a foreigner it seems like a rather strange hobby. In trying to understand this English obsession, I realized that the whole theme of empire is incredibly important because, through the plants that the English had in their gardens in the 18th century, for example, they showed their reach to the rest of the world.
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“if you plant an oak tree, you know you’ll never see it grow to maturity, which makes doing so a real statement of your belief in the future and future generations.”
I studied design history at the royal college of art, which involved looking at a man-made object and trying to make a story out of it – the idea that a 17th century chair could tell you the story of every part bottom that had sat on it. through that you get to a very good history of mankind. but the furniture and architecture are static. while gardens are also man-made, another element enters them in the form of nature. gardening becomes an investment in something beyond one’s own life, putting one’s cultural beliefs into something that will be sustained in perpetuity. i think it was joseph addison who said in the 18th century, ‘you build a house and by the time the house is finished, it falls into disrepair. you plant a garden and it gets better and better.’ and each generation adds something to it, you can change it very easily. we think instant gardening is a late 20th century invention, but it was in the 18th century that people brought fully grown trees to express something.
Was there a particular book that piqued your interest? Your first choice is Landscape by Simon Schama & memory.
books like landscape & the memory came after i got interested, but it was a book that expressed in black and white the hunch i had: it was there, so beautifully presented, because simon schama has this talent for taking little stories and placing them in a larger context. I read it a long time ago, but the chapter that has stayed with me most vividly is the one on the mountains. describes the journey that humanity has undertaken in relation to its perception of the mountains, which began as something really horrible and terrifying, so that at the beginning of the eighteenth century the tourists who crossed the alps lowered their blinds so as not to see the horror of the mountains mountains. they would literally be blindfolded. then in the late 18th century there’s the whole idea of the sublime, that you find god in the mountains as an amazing and glorious expression of god’s power.
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then there is the chapter on teutenwald, the idea of barbaric nature seen from the Roman world of the classical order. when we look at the change in the relationship between man and nature, that’s what really interests me. if you look at the medieval garden, the hortus conclusus, close the door to nature. nature is a scary thing so you put up walls and you create this little manicured paradise and then with industrialization and more people moving to the city, more people losing their direct relationship with nature, suddenly nature is celebrated in its wild state. so you have the ha-ha, for example, where instead of putting up a wall to protect your garden, you dig a ditch. you have the same security because the cattle cannot enter but you can look at the whole landscape: you invite the desert into the garden. and it is a continuous process. in a very simple way you could see how people respond to threats to the environment by planting wild grasses in their gardens. I have found landscape & I recall one of the most extraordinary cultural history books I have ever read and it certainly seems to be one that has given all sorts of hares a run.
Another book of choice is Tim Richardson’s The Arcadian Friends, which is about perhaps Britain’s most eminent landscape gardener, Ability Brown.
Well, I see it a little differently. for me the arcadian friends is a brilliant book because richardson does two things. for one, he actually removes the brown ability of the green throne from him. It really is inexplicable how Brown has become the hero of the British landscape garden when, in fact, he destroyed many landscapes. he must have been a very good promoter of the services he provided to achieve that status. so i love the book for its relentless demolition of brown ability, because it really pisses me off a lot. so that’s a big part of its appeal. but what he does so brilliantly, unlike any other garden historian I know, is that he doesn’t just look at beautiful landscaping and plants. he really understands that in the 18th century the landscape garden was a canvas to express your political beliefs. it has two elements. he explains the difference between a Whig and a Tory garden and also brilliantly shows how landscape was the only way disgraced politicians could express their power. he begins with the glorious revolution, saying that before all gardens imitated French gardens. He then discusses how after the Whigs in Britain invited William III to the throne, instigating a constitutional monarchy, French gardens can no longer be tolerated because they express French absolutism. these French gardens have avenues running through the landscape. everything is formal. there is this corset of patterns that you impose on nature. here I am, the king: I can subjugate. After the glorious revolution they stop pruning their trees and it becomes a symbol of freedom, at a time when England was seen as the seat of freedom.
this is the time when britain is about to become an imperial power. How does horticulture reflect that colonialism and that expansionism?
the empire becomes really important when it comes to garden plants. you have someone like joseph banks who sees the royal botanic garden at kew as the engine of colonial growth, the repository of empire. his idea was to bring potentially lucrative plants from all the colonies to england, test them, propagate them, experiment with them at kew and then send them to other colonies. for example, it was the idea of the banks to bring tea plants from china to india, although it is not until 40 years later that it finally works. but let me give you an example as well of how banks used their horticulture to project values in visual form. in the gardens of stowe house that he designed there are temples in the gardens that are literally a manifesto of his political beliefs. you have a ‘temple of modern virtue’ and a ‘temple of ancient virtue’, which is built like this flawless classical temple with statues of all the greek thinkers in it, because banks and his friends believe that the roman and greek republics represented virtuous civilization.
at the time, robert walpole was the prime minister and was criticized by the country’s whigs for being corrupt, for having too much power, for being too close to the court. So Banks deliberately builds a “temple of modern virtue” as a ruin to show how badly modern virtue has gone, and to nail it down, he puts up a headless statue of Walpole in modern dress. we have forgotten how to understand this language: we see the building as a pretty ruin, but to the aristocratic visitor of the time all these things would be understood as political satire. that effect starts at the garden gate, where you have to choose between the path of vice and the path of virtue, which is the choice of hercules, so they’re taking greek myths, putting them in the garden and applying them to modern politics. everyone understands it. when john adams and thomas jefferson go to stowe they speak of the garden in this way, and they love it because they see in it an expression of freedom: in fact, they go a step further in interpretation, seeing in it symbols of depraved england and virtuous america .
We’ve talked about how the trade in plants and attempts to spread them throughout the empire presents a benign view of colonialism. In America, of course, Jefferson and Adams saw a very different side. Is that your main interest in the founding brothers of Joseph Ellis, or is it more of an interest in how you structure the story?
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ellis wrote this little book, founding brothers, which he won a pulitzer for, I think. and it’s very bold and brave because what it does by looking at the immediate aftermath of the American Revolution is, instead of writing a huge 700-page book, it just gives you seven events that will tell you everything you need to know. so, in terms of narrative structure, it’s a great book. One example he takes, which he titles ‘The Dinner,’ is a dinner hosted by Thomas Jefferson for James Madison and Alexander Hamilton in June 1790. At the time, Madison and Hamilton were completely at odds about two things: One is the financial plan. what hamilton is proposing as secretary of the treasury, what has to do with the very close financial and commercial ties with britain, and what madison, as a planter of virginia, hates. Then, on the other hand, there is the big question of where the new capital of America will be. the northern states want it somewhere like philadelphia or new york which have trade ties, and the southern states don’t want that because right now the 13 states are just growing from being a war alliance and they’re worried that the states united it will become a mercantile country instead of an agrarian republic. So there is an ongoing fight between the two men and Jefferson brings them together for this dinner with lots of French wine and good food cooked by the French chef and they come to an agreement whereby Madison agrees to accept Hamilton’s financial plan, if he agrees. accept the capital will be in the middle of nowhere, a place that will become washington dc. so what ellis does is take this moment and turn it into a narrative device.
Other events include the duel between aaron burr and hamilton, the friendship between adams and jefferson, washington’s farewell speech, which really turns him on. I think it’s a brilliant way to get into the big story: through small moments. I think there are paradigms in these kinds of moments that we can only see in hindsight and it’s a very effective way of telling a story.
and a new example of how horticulture plays a role in defining the new united states is jefferson’s own garden. Can you say anything about that and how he represents it in his own writing, in his notes on the state of virginia?
jefferson does something really interesting. Monticello is a garden that celebrates the American landscape, which becomes incredibly important after the Revolutionary War when Americans, lacking the poetry and castles of the old world, are desperately trying to prove that things are better in the world. the new World. and the landscape becomes one way of doing it, because the towering trees and vastness of the continent are genuinely more spectacular. so what jefferson does is he puts his garden on top of a mountain overlooking 60 miles of virginia, but not only does he create a sublime garden, he also incorporates, right in the center of the garden, a 1,000 foot orchard long and has the best view in the entire garden. so it combines beauty and utility, which I think really makes the difference between the English garden and the American garden. the English is more neat with pretty bushes and with the kitchen garden hidden behind the walls. and, because the garden is on a mountain, the approach to it is also important. imagine coming to monticello from washington in the 18th century. for three or four days you are riding through the virginia forest, the roads are horrible, you have to ford rivers, it is really difficult. You finally arrive at Jefferson’s gate, expecting a straight path that leads to a mansion, but what does he do? he leads you down winding roads, taking much longer than he should, and when people complain, he tells them it’s the rule of the desert. he is one of the first Americans to do that, not to see the forest simply as an obstacle to settlement: unlike the colonialists, who simply get rid of the forest because they want their fields there. so to me monticello is a celebration of the new america; this young, strong and prosperous nation that feels comfortable with its own environment.
In his writings, Jefferson himself is very explicit about the importance of the American landscape in terms of patriotism. thus, for example, he says to the american painter john trumble: come and paint this landscape before a bumbling european does it. And, you know, when Jefferson takes a tour of England’s gardens, the first thing he notices is that they’re full of imported American trees.
From the grandeur of Monticello and the great American sights, the latest book she has chosen is A Little History of the English Garden by Jenny Uglow.
i think jenny uglow is an absolutely wonderful writer. Her book, The Moon Men, was an important book that ushered in a very interesting form of group biography, where you don’t have to start with birth and end with death, but you can pick and choose the best parts. I once heard her explain that the biography of a group is like an opera: some people sing solos and others in duets, while others appear only in the chorus. I think it’s a good metaphor and I was tempted to choose that book. but in the end I opted for this because of the gardening theme. uglow’s writing is very light but without losing any of the weight of the research. Like Schama and Ellis, it’s very good at picking out stories that reveal larger things and is a nice, galloping ride into why the English are so obsessed with gardens, which is very much the foundation of the nation. I think it’s just a lovely tale of English history told through plants, and the absolutely crazy people who, for example, spend their time inviting hermits to settle in their gardens. and she does it with such self-confidence, beginning with the Romans and reaching our days. she leaves out whole parts but leaves out the parts that are pretty boring. and she writes very attractively.
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