Clump

See also: Grove, Plantation, Shrubbery, Thicket, Wood

History

The clump emerged as a garden feature in the eighteenth century in both England and America. The earliest treatises available in North America defined a clump as a group of seven or eight trees planted to form a single unit [Fig. 1]. The Complete Farmer (1769) stipulated that this grouping of trees was “without shape or order,” and Samuel Johnson (1755) referred to a clump as “a shapeless piece of wood.” Johnson, however, added that the feature was “nearly equal in its dimensions,” suggesting thatit was round in plan. Geographer Jedidiah Morse’s 1789 description of the “circular clumps” at Mount Vernon indicates that some Americans interpreted rounded, symmetrical groupings of trees as clumps.

English author Thomas Whately in 1770 provided an extensive discussion of clumps that was often cited by later treatise writers . He characterized a clump as a smaller version of a “close wood” or an “open grove. ” Unlike his predecessors, Whately insisted that a clump could be made of two trees and that the most agreeable form of it “extended rather in length than in breadth,” thus contradicting Johnson’s stipulation that a clump was “nearly equal in its dimensions . ” Whately’s argument that clumps should be irregular in form derived from contemporary debates in landscape gardening that cautioned against the artificial appearance of overly regularized forms. Inshort, irregularity suggested the desired quality of naturalness (see Landscape gardenin g and Modern style). To adhere to the new aesthetic of naturalness, clumps had to display both a variety of vegetation and forms according to the scenery in which they were placed.

The composition of clumps varied according to American treatise writers and observers. Bernard M’Mahon in 1806 was inclusive when he stated that clumps could be composed solely of trees or shrubs, or a mixture of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants. Ten years later, G. Gregory in his New and Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1816) suggested that clumps “of shrubs all of the same kind” created “good” effects. Clumps from a mixture of larger and smaller deciduous trees, such as the horse chestnut and red bud, were created at Monticello, as described by Thomas Jefferson (1807).

The arrangement of plant material within clumps was equally varied. An article in the 1833 volume of the New England Farmer recommended that “a proper system” be adopted in order to avoid “a heterogeneous mass, without meaning, without taste or design.” By contrast, American gardeners John Gardiner and David Hepburn, in the American Gardener ( 1 8 04), recommended the use of a graduated slope for such plantings.

Regarding the placement of this feature in the landscape, Whately distinguished between two modes. “Independent clumps,” considered “beautiful objects in themselves” could be used to “break an extent of lawn” or as a “continued line . . . of ground or of plantation.” “Relative clumps,” however, planted in relation to other garden features, could be used to create harmonies and contrasts, thus unifying the disparate parts of landscape garden into a single composition. Whately’s disparagement of artifice led him to regard independent clumps with suspicion because of their obvious artificiality. The best treatment of an independent clump, according to Whately, was the placement of “open” clumps (meaning that the plant material was well spaced) “at the point of an abrupt hill, or on a promontory into a lake or river,” where it served to focus the viewer’s attention. “Relative clumps” were more natural, according to Whately’s aesthetic, and a sensitive placement of them intensified the viewer’s visual experience of the garden by providing a succession of open and occluded views.

Thomas Jefferson, when writing in 1804 of his plan to create “advantageous catches of prospect” through the careful planting of clumps, was clearly familiar with Whately’s guidelines for “relative clumps.” This idea was especially apparent when Jefferson specified that he intended to break up his “canvas” of grove—“trimmed very high, so as to give it the appearance of open ground”—with “clumps of thicket, as the open grounds of the English are broken by clumps” of trees. Even in the 1830s when other garden styles, such as the gardenesque, were current, garden designers still envisioned clumps as a means to control access to a view, as in C. M. Hovey’s 1835 description in American Gardeners’ Magazine of Mansion House in Brookline, Mass. (see Gardenesque).

Several late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century American gardens exemplify the use of clumps according to Whately’s categories. Benjamin Henry Latrobe’s 1807 plan for the White House made use of planting features that corresponded to relative clumps, positioned to create a transition from the wood and garden [Fig. 2]. The notion that clumps could “relieve” the plainness of lawns or woods was found in C. M. Hovey’s description in the Magazine of Horticulture of Mrs. Pratt’s house in Boston (1850), which noted how clumps “broke” the monotony of the landscape. At Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., H.A.S. Dearborn (1831) praised how the clumps of trees and shrubs helped to diversify the “picturesque sheets of water.”

The aesthetic concerns of Whately and his contemporaries were complemented by the material advantages that clumps offered. As Charles Marshall wrote in 1799, clumps of four or five fenced-in forest trees provided an excellent resource for timber. Americans who cleared away trees for their homesteads presumably perceived the advantage of leaving standing clumps of trees for later use as construction or heating materials, as indicated in P. Campbell’s 1793 description of the Catskill Mountains.

Several treatise writers, however, condemned clumps. British designer Humphry Repton, while acknowledging that groups of trees were important elements in landscape design, argued that “formal” clumps of trees of equal height surrounded by a fence for their protection were ugly deformities because of their sameness. In one of his earliest writings (1836), American designer A. J. Downing declared the clump to be perfect. By the time he wrote his treatise (1849), he confessed that experience had taught him that the clump was the product of an amateur ornamental planting. He judged trees of the same height that were planted equidistant from one another in a circular form as overly artificial [Fig. 3]. Like Repton, Downing instead recommended arranging trees in irregular patterns in order to achieve “variety, connexion, and intricacy.”

-- Anne L. Helmreich

Texts

Usage

• Washington, George, 2 March 1785, describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. (Jackson and Twohig, eds., 1978: 4:97)

“Planted the remainder of the Ash Trees—in the Serpentine walks—the remainder of the fringe trees in the Shrubberies—all the black haws—all the large berried thorns with a small berried one in the middle of each clump—6 small berried thorns with a large one in the middle of each clump—all the swamp red berry bushes & one clump of locust trees.”

• G., L., 15 June 1788 [?], in a letter to her sister, Eliza, describing the Woodlands, seat of William Hamilton, near Philadelphia, Pa. (quoted in Madsen 1989: 19)

“[The walks were] planted on each side with the most beautiful & curious flowers & shrubs. They are in some parts enclosed with the Lombardy poplar except here & there openings are left to give you a view of some fine trees or beautiful prospect beyond, & in others, shaded by arbours of the wild grape, or clumps of large trees under which are placed seats where you may rest yourself & enjoy the cool air.”

• Morse, Jedidiah, 1789, describing Mount Vernon, plantation of George Washington, Fairfax County, Va. ([1789] 1970: 381)

“the lands in that side are laid out somewhat in the form of English gardens, in meadows and grass grounds, ornamented with little copses, circular clumps and single trees.”

• Campbell, P., 9 April 1793, describing the vicinity of the Hudson River in New York (p. 287)

“On the east side I could see the country to be pretty closely inhabited, each farm having a clump of wood by it for fuel.”

• La Rochefoucauld Liancourt, FrançoisAlexandre-Frédéric, duc de, 1796, describing Drayton Hall, plantation of John Drayton, Charleston, S.C. (1800: 2:438)

“We stopped to dine with Dr. DRAYTON at Drayton-hall. The house is an ancient building, but convenient and good; and the garden is better laid out, better cultivated and stocked with good trees, than any I have hitherto seen. In order to have a fine garden, you have nothing to do but to let the trees remain standing here and there, or in clumps, to plant bushes in front of them, and arrange the trees according to their height. Dr. Drayton’s father, who was also a physician, began to lay out the garden on this principle; and his son, who is passionately fond of a country life, has pursued the same plan.”

• Hamilton, Alexander, c. 1801–4, describing possible planting methods for Hamilton Grange, estate of Alexander Hamilton, New York, N.Y. (quoted in Lockwood 1931: 1:263)

“some laurel should be planted along the edge of the shrubbery and round the clump of trees near the house.”

• Jefferson, Thomas, 1804, describing improvements for Monticello, plantation of Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville, Va. (quoted in Nichols and Griswold 1978: 111)

“The ground between the upper and lower roundabouts to be laid out in lawns & clumps of trees, the lawns opening so as to give advantageous catches of prospect to the upper roundabout.. . .

“The canvas at large must be Grove, of the largest trees, (poplar, oak, elm, maple, ash, hickory, chestnut, Linden, Weymouth pine, sycamore) trimmed very high, so as to give it the appearance of open ground, yet not so far apart but that they may cover the ground with close shade.

“This must be broken by clumps of thicket, as the open grounds of the English are broken by clumps of trees. plants for thickets are broom, calycanthus, altheas, gelder rose, magnolia glauca, azalea, fringe tree, dogwood, red bud, wild crab, kalmia, mezereon, euonymous, halesia, quamoclid, rhododendron, oleander, service tree, lilac, honeysuckle, brambles.”

• Latrobe, Benjamin Henry, 17 March 1807, describing the White House, Washington, D.C. (Colonial Williamsburg Foundation)

“In removing the ground, it would certainly be necessary to go down in front of the colonnade to the level of about one foot below the bases of the Columns but, it will certainly not deprive this colonnade of any part of its beauty to pass behind a few gentle Knolls and groves or Clumps in its front, and much expense of removing earth would be thereby saved.”

• Jefferson, Thomas, 16 April 1807, describing Monticello, plantation of Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville, Va. (1944: 334)

N. E. S. E. S. W. N. W. Clump Clump Clump Clump

13. Paper mulberries 2. 2. 5. 4 6. Horse chestnuts 3 3 2. Taccamahac poplars 1 1 4. purple beach 2 2 2. Robinia hispida 1 1 2. Choak cherries 1 1 3. Mountain ash. —— —— 1 2 Sorbus Aucuparia 2. Xanthoxylon 1 1 1. Red bud 1

• Jefferson, Thomas, November 1812, describing Poplar Forest, property of Thomas Jefferson, Bedford County, Va. (quoted in Chambers 1993: 75, 77)

“[Planted] clump of Anthenian & Balsam poplars at each corner of house. intermix locusts, common & Kentucky, red-bud, dogwoods, calycanthus, liriodendron.”

• Dearborn, H.A.S., 30 September 1831, describing Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Mass. (quoted in Ward 1831: 48)

“the small ponds and morasses converted into picturesque sheets of water, and their margins diversified by clumps and belts of our most splendid native flowering trees, and shrubs, requiring a soil thus constituted for their successful cultivation.”

• Hovey, C. M., February 1835, “Calls at Gardens and Nurseries,” describing Mansion House, country estate of Thomas H. Perkins, Brookline, Mass. (American Gardeners’ Magazine 1: 73)

“There are several large clumps of the above [Pinus Stròbus, Abies canadénsis, balsamífera, and Alba] which serve to break the view of the garden from the mansion.”

• Kirkbride, Thomas S., April 1848, describing the pleasure grounds and farm of the Pennsylvania Hospital for the Insane, Philadelphia, Pa. (American Journal of Insanity 4: 348)

“The remainder of the grounds on this side of the deer-park is specially appropriated to the use of the male patients. In this division is a fine grove of large trees, several detached clumps of various kinds and a great variety of single trees standing alone or in avenues along the different walks, which, of brick, gravel or tan, are for the men, more than a mile and a quarter in extent. The groves are fitted up with seats and summer houses, and have various means of exercise and amusement connected with them”

• Hovey, C. M., February 1850, “Notes on Gardens and Gardening in the neighborhood of Boston,” describing the residence of Mrs. Pratt, near Boston, Mass. (Magazine of Horticulture 16: 53)

“The landscape for a considerable distance is ornamented with, and broken by, individual trees, clumps, and masses of cedars and pines, which, in summer, must have a fine effect, when contrasted with the lighter foliage of the deciduous trees.”

• Watson, John Fanning, 1857, describing the residence of William Bingham, Philadelphia, Pa. (1:414)

“The grounds generally he had laid out in beautiful style, and filled the whole with curious and rare clumps and shades of trees; but in the usual selfish style of Philadelphia improved grounds, the whole was surrounded and hid from the public gaze by a high fence.”

• Watson, John Fanning, 1857, describing Wilton, property of Joseph Turner, near Philadelphia, Pa. (2:478)

“Wilton, the place once of Joseph Turner, down in the neck, was the nonpareil of its day. . . . Every possible attention was paid to embellishment, and the garden cultivation was superior. The grounds had ornamental clumps and ranges of trees.”