A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
A platform for research: civil engineering, architecture and urbanism
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan's The London Town Garden tackles a neglected topic from a variety of new viewpoints. Previous studies, he argues, have variously side-stepped the phenomenon of Georgian urban gardening or equated the rise of middle-class gardening with suburbanisation. Now this book vividly brings to life the small metropolitan garden as a physical, convivial and symbolic space in the period 1700 to 1840. The author qualifies any typological ambitions in the preface: 'The town garden was an exercise in personal expression and was to that extent idiosyncratic; it was not usually contrived to exhibit fashionable taste, and lagged well behind the flush of landscape improvements which transformed the English countryside. It evolved slowly and independently, subject to the attention of determined amateurs and energetic gardeners' (p. xi). This assertion rightly identifies the elusiveness of vernacular; yet, at the same time, it raises difficult questions of taste in relationship to class and consumption, questions that are only partly answered in the course of this work. Does the town garden evolve autonomously and capriciously? Is it part of a trickle-down process of social emulation? Or does it serve, with its back and a front aspect, purposes other than conspicuous consumption?1
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan's The London Town Garden tackles a neglected topic from a variety of new viewpoints. Previous studies, he argues, have variously side-stepped the phenomenon of Georgian urban gardening or equated the rise of middle-class gardening with suburbanisation. Now this book vividly brings to life the small metropolitan garden as a physical, convivial and symbolic space in the period 1700 to 1840. The author qualifies any typological ambitions in the preface: 'The town garden was an exercise in personal expression and was to that extent idiosyncratic; it was not usually contrived to exhibit fashionable taste, and lagged well behind the flush of landscape improvements which transformed the English countryside. It evolved slowly and independently, subject to the attention of determined amateurs and energetic gardeners' (p. xi). This assertion rightly identifies the elusiveness of vernacular; yet, at the same time, it raises difficult questions of taste in relationship to class and consumption, questions that are only partly answered in the course of this work. Does the town garden evolve autonomously and capriciously? Is it part of a trickle-down process of social emulation? Or does it serve, with its back and a front aspect, purposes other than conspicuous consumption?1
The London Town Garden, 1700–1840
Laird, Mark (author)
Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes ; 23 ; 366-369
2003-10-01
4 pages
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
Unknown
The London town garden : 1700 - 1840
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