All photos by Frances Benjamin Johnston via the Carnegie Survey of the South, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division. Click the pictures to enlarge.
Wormoloe Plantation, Savannah, Georgia, 1939 or 1944.
York Hall, Yorktown, Virginia, ca. 1930s.
Wakefield, Westmoreland County, Virginia, 1931.
Redesdale, Richmond, Virginia, 1926 or 27.
Sherrill Inn, Hickory Nut Gap, North Carolina, 1938.
While researching Dr. Seuss the other day, I realized why this acacia tree on our street had so grabbed my attention back in November.
Go, Dog. Go! by P.D. Eastman was one of my favorite books as a child; I was always surprised by the dog party at the end. [Click here for the image.]
During one of my landscape design classes, another student recalled a lecture by a famous landscape artist (I think it was Martha Schartz) who said that the garden we really want is the one that reflects the places we knew before the age of five. I don’t know how accurate her paraphrase was, but the idea is something to think about. And the landscapes of our early years will have to include those we saw night after night in storybooks.
I imagine the earth when I am no more:
Nothing happens, no loss, it’s still a strange pageant. . . .
Yet the books will be there on the shelves, well born,
Derived from people, but also from radiance, heights.
Seuss, aka Theodor Seuss Geisel (1904-1991), took the art of Surrealism and the architecture of Antonio Gaudi, combined them with childhood memories of early cars and machinery in New England and then the flora of his adult home in southern California, and created the famous illustrations for his over sixty books. (His Green Eggs and Ham is the fourth best-selling English-language children’s book of all time.)
His strange plants and landscapes — tops of mops, spikes, and feathers; elongated, twisty trunks; improbable angles, odd hills and rocks — form a visual vocabulary that we all understand and use routinely. These are just a few of the many, many snapshots I found by typing in “Dr. Seuss” and searching Flickr.com.
Photo by Randy Robertson, labeled “Dr. Seuss Plant Silhouette.” All three photos via Flickr.com, under CC license.“Dr. Seuss Bush” by Shawn Henning.“Dr. Seuss Trees” by Allan Ferguson.
A 2010 article from the News Tribune in Tacoma, Washington, has a list of plants that also look Seuss-y, here. Among others, they recommend weeping sequoia, Nootka cypress, and contorted hazelnut.
If you want to visit a Dr. Seuss-style landscape, the blog SPOTCOOLSTUFF has 10 “Places That Look Dr Seuss-ish” around the world, here.
ADDENDUM: Today is also the NEA’s Read Across America Day, here. And The Washington Post is calling for Seuss-inspired verse about current events, here.
Look closely at the lower right corner: the huge Chateau d’Amboise has a ‘little yard’ — cortil in Old French — and a side door.A closer look.At the top.Another view of the chateau.The chapel.
A west window of Thomas Jefferson’s Poplar Forest revealing a view of the curtilage. Photo by Jack E. Boucher, via Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Curtilage –a piece of ground (as a yard or courtyard) within the fence surrounding a house. Origin: Middle English, from Anglo-French curtillage, from curtil garden, curtilage, from curt court. First known use: 14th century. — Merriam-Webster Dictionary
A bit more: a cortil was ‘little yard’ in Old French: cort + il (diminutive suffix). A ‘cortile’ (in English, in architecture) is an internal courtyard of a palazzo.
As a legal term, curtilage means the land immediately surrounding a residence that “harbors the intimate activity associated with the sanctity of a man’s home and the privacies of life.” In U.S. law, it is important for dealing with cases involving burglary, self defense, and unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment.
I came across the word while reading the website of Poplar Forest, Thomas Jefferson’s second home and getaway (I remembered something about it after Apartment Therapy posted a slideshow of presidential retreats). Its curtilage originally included an octagonal house (possibly the first in America), orchards, ornamental and vegetable gardens, and slave quarters. It was surrounded by a ‘snake’ or ‘worm’ stacked-rail fence, as well as fields of tobacco and wheat.
Because little visual evidence of Jefferson’s plantings remain, the 61-acre area is being reconstructed through archeology and research of his papers. Letters do indicate that a sunken garden behind the house contained “lilacs, Althaeas, g[u]elder roses, Roses, and clianthus.”
At Poplar Forest, Jefferson was working from a concept of “an ornamental villa retreat within an isolated agricultural setting.” He was thinking of ancient Roman villas, as they were reinterpreted in the 16th century by Andrea Palladio.
The estate is located in Forest, Virginia, near Lynchburg.
Belmont, Falmouth, Virginia, late 1920s.
Wormoloe Plantation, Savannah, Georgia, 1939 or 1944.
York Hall, Yorktown, Virginia, ca. 1930s.
Wakefield, Westmoreland County, Virginia, 1931.
Redesdale, Richmond, Virginia, 1926 or 27.
Sherrill Inn, Hickory Nut Gap, North Carolina, 1938.
Gardiner Booth, Alexandria, Virginia, 1930s.
Reveille House, Richmond, Virginia, 1936.
enclos*ure 