Hawthorns and Hemlocks: The Return of the Sacred Grove

Abstract

Rarely has the inextricable link between horticultural developments and the emergence of landscape design in America been given due consideration by chroniclers of landscape history. Yet it was essentially the interest in ornamental horticulture by prominent plantsmen, “country gentlemen,” lesser known nurserymen, practicing agriculturists, and even anonymous farmers that served as a fulcrum in the implementation and acceptance of landscape design as both a legitimate and desirable profession in the United States. A series of developments during the first decades of the nineteenth century accelerated the interest in the aesthetic potential inherent in the constituents of the natural environment. Andrew Jackson Downing served as the medium through which both the aesthetics and the more practical aspects of “designing” the land were funneled and synthesized.