The Flowering of the Landscape Garden:
English Pleasure Grounds 1720-1800
University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1999
Penn Studies in Landscape Architecture, John Dixon Hunt, series editor

The park of lawns, trees, and serpentine lakes in a picturesque composition of greens has long been viewed as the enduring achievement of eighteenth-century English landscape art. Yet this conventional view of the picturesque style ignores the colorful flowers and flowering shrubs that graced the landscape garden of the Georgian era.

While the book is primarily devoted to the historical reconstruction of the formal and horticultural characteristics of "theatrical" shrubberies and flowerbeds, it also aims to animate the world of the eighteenth-century pleasure ground. Mark Laird shows how the unwritten lore of planting design was passed down by generation after generation of gardeners and discusses the interaction of landscape designer, client, nurseryman, land agent, and gardener in modifying and transforming the geometric layouts of previous generations. He traces the development of planting design theory and practice from Batty Langley to Capability Brown and William Chambers, and demonstrates how an English mania for flowering shrubs and conifers from eastern North America helped create the distinctive planting forms of the Georgian pleasure ground.

Laird offers readers a wealth of visual and literary materials--from contemporary paintings, engravings, poetry, essays, and letters to more prosaic household accounts and nursery bills--to revolutionize our understanding of the English landscape garden as a powerful cultural expression. Through his original watercolor reconstructions of planting forms and through delightful descriptions of seasonal change and sensuous effect, he makes the gardens come alive, thus recognizing both the palpable qualities and aesthetic sophistication of eighteenth-century planting design.

"Every once in a while an academic book on the subject of landscape history turns out to be in a class of its own, a 'classic' as it were. The Flowering of the Landscape Garden . . . reads as smoothly as a good novel, explains as rationally as a textbook, and delights as easily as a walk though Painshill Park."
  — Landscape Architecture

Laird's training as a landscape architect, garden conservator, and historian gives the book remarkable breadth and depth. It is a benchmark work, uniquely bridging the gap in landscape history between design and planting and horticultural studies.

"Laird's work over the past fifteen years has done much to dispel our misconceptions about the role and significance of flowers and shrubs in the English landscape garden. He has forged a new narrative which shifts the focus away from parkland to the more intimate surroundings of the house."
  — Times Literary Supplement

The Flowering of the Landscape Garden must be recommended as an important contribution to garden studies. It is a treasure-house of interesting illustrations and quotations, many of them hitherto hidden in archive rooms. It shows the eighteenth century landscape garden in the making, and at closer quarters than ever before. In short, it makes historic gardens really come to life, and this is perhaps the highest praise that can be won by a book of this kind.
  — Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes

"Laird's work is not just a library product but a hands-on appreciation and ongoing dedication to his subject."
  — English History Review

The Formal Garden: Traditions of Art and Nature
Mark Laird, photographs by Hugh Palmer
Thames and Hudson, London, 1992

Mark Laird's long association with gardens conprises a unique blend of practical experience (as landscape architect and adviser on the conservation and restoration of historical sites) with historical research (at Dumbarton Oaks, the Institite of Advanced Architectural Studies, York, and Chelsea Physic Garden, London). In addition to his work as a historic landscape consultant he is Review Editor of the Journal of Garden History.

Hugh Palmer has contributed to Town and Country, Harpers and Queen, Country Life, and The World of Interiors, as well as to numerous books both popular and specialized, including Trellis and Garden Ornament. He lectures on garden photography in Britain and the United States.