Gardens, history and the designer: contributions to historiography

摘要

In accounts of garden history, the garden itself, its physical attributes and spatial organization, is often strangely absent. The focus instead often appears to be on attributing meaning derived from literary and artistic references or historical precedents. I argue that the primary text is the garden itself, and that a failure to account for its physicality — where it exists or has existed in three dimensions — deprives the historian of potential analytical and interpretive opportunities. This paper argues for a place in garden history for analysis of the kind that landscape designers engage in, derived from the design process, and involving both site analysis and design analysis.