The study of landscape design is essentially a study of human culture; the way people shape their environment reflects a sense of their place in the world. Traditionally western landscape design has veered between the Classic and Romantic traditions, pitting European formality against English naturalism. During the twentieth century however, these stylistic polarities gave way to new concerns as designers looked increasingly to the historical, political and cultural context of their sites. As the New World was often in the forefront of this movement, this Gardens Trust four-lecture series on American Moderns will examine key landscapes from the two continents, exploring the designs which pushed the boundaries of the profession by pioneering new approaches, reflecting new philosophies and challenging assumptions about the form, use and meaning of landscape. You may purchase tickets for the entire series through Eventbrite for £16, or individual sessions costing £5, at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/american-moderns-tickets-670807291667 Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

Week Two on November 21 is Guided by Nature. Inspired, perhaps, by the Aboriginal people whom they largely eradicated, Americans appear more inclined than their European forebears to accommodate rather than eradicate nature. From the Transcendentalist writers and Hudson River painters of the nineteenth century to the Nature poets and photographers of the twentieth century, Americans often find in their wilderness a manifestation of the divine. This lecture will examine the work of such mid-century designers as Frank Lloyd Wright, Lawrence Halprin, Richard Haag and Isamu Noguchi, to demonstrate how they attempted to evolve a new relationship with the natural world. In such varied projects as private retreats, urban parks and obsolete industrial sites, these designers drew design ideas from nature while working with natural processes to construct their effects.

Speaker Katie Campbell is a writer and garden historian. She lectures widely, has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham universities; she writes for various publications, and leads art and garden tours. Her most recent book, Cultivating the Renaissance (Routledge, 2021) , explores the evolution of Renaissance ideas and aesthetics through the Medici Tuscan villas. Her previous book, British Gardens in Time (Quarto, 2014), accompanied the BBC television series. Earlier works include Paradise of Exiles (Francis Lincoln, 2009), looking at the late nineteenth century Anglo-American garden-makers in Florence, Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design (Frances Lincoln, 2006) and Policies and Pleasaunces (Barn Elms, 2007), a Guide to Scotland’s Gardens.