Flight from Gardens Spanning Regions: Appreciating Landscape at a Regional Scale

Abstract

Warren Manning (1860–1938) was a landscape architect and an American Society of Landscape Architects founding member. His work covers a broad spectrum: he worked on small residential lots as well as large regional plans. This article examines how a landscape architects’ involvement in regional planning affected the ways they viewed landscape. It uses as primary sources Manning’s writings that capture general perceptions of landscape: how it is understood, appreciated, and reconfigured into garden, city, or regional proposals. As the size of Manning’s commissions grew he distanced himself from the immersive qualities of gardens, yet he sought a vantage point that captured immediate impressions of regions. He discovered this vantage point through flight.