A compendium of eleven essays is the published artifact of the Studies in Landscape Architecture Symposium held at Dumbarton Oaks in 1994. Nature and Ideology: Natural Garden Design in the Twentieth Century is an ambitious attempt to explore nature as a cultural construct, and to explain how garden and landscape architectural designs have given form to various notions of “natural” over time. It provides thought provoking discourse concerning the ideological use of “nature” in natural garden design, and how these designs elaborate particular social, economic, political, philosophical conditions. The authors substantiate their points with original sources that range from professional drawings to printed material and personal correspondences.

With an introduction by editor Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, the contributing essays by Stephen Jay Gould, Craig Clunas, Jost Hermand, Daniel Joseph Nadenicek, Anne L. Helmreich, Robin Karson, Virginia Tuttle Clayton, Jan Woudstra, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Gert Gröning and Anne Whiston Spirn emphasize early 20th century design (although many of the essays address the 19th century as a pretext). It is interesting to see how the editor’s charge to “...elucidate the ideologies underlying various concepts of natural gardens and the way in which political, economic, and social development affected twentieth century ideas about gardens” is met differently by the authors.

Reflecting upon Nature and Ideology, several notions concerning natural garden design surface. The first, and perhaps obvious one, is that natural garden design employs plant material that is considered “native” to the location of the garden. This “native” material is sometimes already existing on the site. If native plants are installed, they are composed in a way that attempts to conceal the synthetic act of design. In other words, the plant composition obscures the fact that the garden was designed. Typically, this concealment of a conscious design and the use of native plants render the cultural act of garden design as “natural.”

But, as all authors have noted, natural garden design gives regional and/or national identity to its creators, promoters, and consumers. This compendium of essays draws from a broad range of geographical areas, and scholars found that natural garden design always defines some essentializing moment of identity. As W.J. T. Mitchell notes, landscape is a process that forms social and subjective identities. Natural garden design is an emblem of identity, and these identities are typically formed in opposition to others—a point made eloquently by Clunas.

Natural garden design helped to identify an American aesthetic in opposition to European aesthetics and formally composed gardens. It gave three-dimensional form to Romanticism in opposition to rapid industrialization. Natural garden design provided readily consumable images to a growing bourgeois class in opposition to aristocratic control. It helped define middle-class American values in opposition to a growing immigrant population and a new wealthy population. Natural garden design became a scientific approach for Dutch gardeners in opposition to romantic notions of design. It helped fabricate a link between race and nature to promulgate National Socialism in Germany. Providing identity—whether national, regional, economic, or political—is the way natural garden design works as a cultural system.

Nature and Ideology is a valuable resource for academics in landscape architecture, garden history, and cultural studies. It provides traditional histories of lesser known landscape architects and gardeners. The book has some striking black and white reproductions of plant compositions, although the duplication of images across essays and even within the same essay is bothersome. But most importantly, Nature and Ideology offers excursions into the more controversial aspects of landscape architectural and garden design. While this debate is not always welcome, it is certainly relevant.

Susan Herrington is an assistant professor of landscape architecture at Iowa State University.