Bed

History

Definitions of bed, ranging from Ephraim Chambers’ Cyclopaedia entry of 1741 to George William Johnson’s discussion of 1847, indicate that the word generally referred to, as the latter wrote, “the site on which any cultivated plants are grown.” As spaces for growing plants, beds were the basic building blocks of most kitchen and flower gardens, as well as parterres (see Flower garden, Kitchen garden, and Parterre).

As seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century treatises and dictionaries explain, beds could be raised above the surface of the ground through the addition of extra soil or manure to distinguish them from surrounding walkways or turf and to allow better drainage and ease of maintenance. Edgings of organic or inorganic materials also helped to shore up the raised surface as well as to establish the bed’s outline.

Treatise writers distinguished between different types of beds, each with a specific function, composition, and placement—such as hot bed, cold bed, kitchen bed, nursery bed, or flower bed.1 The form and techniques of making specialized utilitarian beds, such as hot beds, changed little over the centuries. Oblong and rectangular forms were favored for utilitarian beds because such shapes allowed easy maintenance— especially when intersected by walkways. They were well suited to the general practice of subdividing kitchen gardens into squares or rectangles [Fig. 1]. In contrast, the shape and arrangement of ornamental flower beds changed dramatically between 1700 and 1850 [Fig. 2].

At the end of the eighteenth century, treatise writers such as Charles Marshall and Bernard M’Mahon dismissed the ancient style of flower gardens and its predilection for beds shaped in imitation of scroll work or embroidery (see Ancient style). They advocated oblong or square beds framed with boards and separated by walks or alleys. David Huebner’s watercolor of 1818, House with Six-Bed Garden, is a stylized representation of the rectangular form of bed described by these two authors [Fig. 3].

In addition to specifying the form of beds, M’Mahon (1806) also provided specific instructions for the arrangement of flowers within beds, separating bulbous from herbaceous plants for ease of maintenance. (This tradition of separating flowers into individual beds can be traced back to at least the eighteenth century, when British florists advocated such planting practices.) M’Mahon did, however, allow for mixing species in order to ensure continuous blooms. Evidence indicates that separating plant types by bed was practiced in nineteenth-century America, as at Monticello.

During the second half of the eighteenth century, another pronounced shift in flower bed design developed in England, from geometric rectilinear beds to circular or irregular oval (or kidney-shaped) beds. The latter beds were sometimes planted in concentric circles with plants arranged according to height, from lowest at the edges to highest at the center of the bed.2 These practices, adopted in America, are well documented at Jefferson’s plantation, which vividly illustrates the growing preference for oval or curved beds. Jefferson originally proposed rectangular beds to be encompassed by twin pavilions [Fig. 4], but eventually he built oval beds [Fig. 5]. This oval shape was repeated in the beds located along the serpentine walk extending from the pavilion arms. While it is not known how the plants were arranged within these outlying beds, Jefferson noted that oval beds permitted him a greater variety of flowers, as compared to his strict arrangement by species in the beds nearest the house. Monticello also demonstrates how beds might be interspersed throughout the grounds, particularly along walkways, underneath windows, or outside doorways.

The accounts of treatise writers and observers of the American landscape confirm that circular or oval beds became the fashion in the first half of the nineteenth century [Fig. 6]. In the May 1835 issue of Horticultural Register, James E. Teschemacher proposed situating oval beds, filled with herbaceous flowers arranged in graduated rows, in front of the house. Like Jefferson, Teschemacher also envisioned punctuating walks with beds tucked along the curves of the walk and set into the turfed lawn. In 1840, C. M. Hovey declared that circular beds set in the front lawn was the new mode, an observation attested to by such sites as the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., and the Hudson River estates of Montgomery Place and Highland Place.

While the pseudonymous Londoniensis, writing in October 1850 in the Magazine of Horticulture, insisted that circular beds were universally adopted in the United States, alternate forms of bed designs also proliferated. The Magazine of Horticulture, in February 1840, for example, proposed that beds be arranged in knot patterns for a flower garden featuring annuals; it also described A. J. Downing’s employment of “arabesque” beds set into the lawn of his garden, as well as circular and irregular oval-shaped beds.

In his 1849 treatise on landscape gardening, Downing provided a cogent explanation for the proliferation of different forms of bed designs at mid-century. He argued that different styles of gardens required different forms of beds. The architectural garden employed beds in the shape of circles, octagons, and squares, set off by edgings of permanent or semi-permanent material; the irregular garden featured beds “varied in outline” cut into the turf; the French garden relied on beds executed in “embroidery” designs and separated by grass or gravel walks; and the English flower garden utilized patterned beds of “irregular curved designs” (also known as arabesques) cut into the turf. Each corresponding style of garden and bed required different types of plants; for example, the French or embroidery garden employed “low-growing” herbaceous plants that allowed the design to be rendered distinctly. Moreover, each style was suited for a particular location. For example, the irregular garden was ideal for picturesque or rustic settings distant from the house, while the architectural garden was intended to be placed near the house, where it could be viewed from the windows.

Closely related to the issue of the shape of beds was that of how the feature might be edged. Treatise writers, from around 1700 to 1850, debated repeatedly whether beds should be edged with semi-permanent materials, such as boards and tile, or living materials, such as boxwood (see Edging). In general, the aim was to achieve the appearance of neatness, no matter what the shape, style, or planting arrangement of the bed. While questions of form, technique, and style of beds preoccupied the design profession, the social significance of flower beds was also considered. At least two treatise writers, Teschemacher (1835) and Walter Elder (1849), explicitly linked flower beds to women. Teschemacher recommended that women, probably from middle or upper classes, should supervise the arrangement of plants by color because of their presumed training in domestic arts and decoration. Elder, however, suggested that women were best suited to the task of weeding flower beds, similarly linking femininity and domestic order.

-- Anne L. Helmreich