Fragments of a Poetic of Gardens

Abstract

The renewal of a dialog between landscape design and garden history demands a renewal of the questions and methods of garden history. This essay studies how garden reception and garden creation interact. It considers three main issues: first, it explores the domain of cultural expectations framing the engagement with a garden shared by users and creators at a given time—the poetical texture of gardens; second, the role of garden creation in exploiting, expanding or subverting this shared frame of expectations; and third, it proposes an approach—garden pragmatic—to study the broader interactions between garden creation and reception on the one hand, and social and cultural change on the other.

The question of intersubjectivity—how do we share our sense and experiences of the world with others, and how do we transform them—is at the root of all the little stories—the fragments of a poetic of gardens—that propose new directions for garden history. Many of these stories have been presented during the last 15 years at symposia at Dumbarton Oaks where the author is presently the director of Garden and Landscape Studies. The general philosophy however had never been presented until the Fall 2004 when he published his “Essais de Poétique des Jardins.” They were never made explicit at Dumbarton Oaks where each story only played its part in the theme of the symposium. Yet the whole course of ideas presented here results from these many exchanges with other scholars. This is why many footnotes make explicit references to their works. So, following the lead offered by this text or choosing a personal route, each reader may access many different voices that make garden history at present into a lively resource for pondering about the role of landscape creation in a multicultural world. These fragments of history are written to stimulate the designer’s imagination, not to outline the course landscape design should follow.