User's Guide

HEALD has several components accessed through the top menu bar: Project Introduction; Digital Approach; the three categories of Keywords, Places, and People under Browse, along with Finding Aid; Image Collection; and Bibliography (the latter of which is located under the “About” tab). Within each Keyword, Place, or People page, the user can further access images and primary and secondary references.

In addition, from the home page, it is possible to access three introductory essays (2010): The first essay, by Therese O’Malley, focuses on the history of places and design features and concepts, relating changing practices to the broader social and cultural currents of American landscape and garden history. Elizabeth Kryder-Reid, in the second essay, explores the textual sources for landscape history, examining both the history of the sources and the theoretical aspects of issues to be addressed when using documentary evidence for garden history. The third essay, by Anne L. Helmreich and Therese O’Malley, discusses the visual representation of the American landscape, including both the theoretical challenges of interpreting visual evidence and the history of landscape images in America.

Keywords: Each of the one hundred Keywords pages includes an interpretive essay that discusses the shifts in the term’s historical meaning and usage. The essay traces, where possible, the design history of each keyword, including its form, function, and materials, while it raises issues of the social and cultural significance of the landscape feature. It is followed by the primary documents, drawn from wide range of verbal sources, such as diaries, correspondence, travel accounts, garden treatises, dictionaries, legal records, advertisements, and periodical literature.

Text are subdivided into two categories to highlight the difference between common and prescriptive usage. “Usage” quotations contain the term in common language such as in letters, inventories, surveys or diaries, while “citations” contain generally published definitions, treatises and dictionaries. This dichotomy often reveals regional varieties and changes over time as a professional vocabulary evolves. Each primary source is identified by a short citation of the bibliographical reference with full citations in the endnotes and linked to the project bibliography.

Images provide visual evidence for each entry, and represent diverse media including paintings, prints, maps, textiles, drawings, and painted furniture and ceramics, appear throughout. Each image has its own object page that provides information about the artist, title, date, media, and source or repository. This feature in itself represents an unprecedented corpus of American garden imagery.

Fig. 1, Anonymous, “Plan of a Suburban Garden,” in A. J. Downing, ed., The Horticulturist 3, no. 8 (February 1849): pl. opp. p. 353.

The degree of certainty with which words may be associated with images varies, so throughout the Keywords pages of HEALD a concerted effort has been made to use the most secure associations possible. Each caption includes, along with the above information, an indication of how the image and term relate to one another. To this end, there are three designations used within the gallery of images: inscribed, associated, and attributed. An “inscribed” image incorporates the word or is directly related to it through a key or an immediately accompanying text such as a caption or a description of the site published with the image. For example, The Horticulturist published a “Plan of a Suburban Garden” (taken from “an elaborate French work”) with an accompanying article which describes the features of the site using the letters on the plan as orientation points [Fig. 1].

Fig. 2, Daniel Wadsworth, “Monte Video, Approach to the House,” in Benjamin Silliman, Remarks Made on a Short Tour between Hartford and Quebec, in the Autumn of 1819 (1824), pl. opp. p. 16.

An “associated” image is related to the term less directly by a contemporaneous description of the feature or an inscribed image of the same feature. For example, two engravings of Monte Video are published in Benjamin Silliman’s Remarks Made on a Short Tour between Hartford and Quebec, which includes a description of the site, specifically commenting on the lake and the tower, both visible in one of the prints [Fig. 2]. A range of certainty exists in linking an image with an associated text.

Fig. 3, John Izard Middleton, “Greenhouse,” 1813.

The third category, “attributed” images, are those for which there are no inscribed terms or associated texts [Fig. 3]. Identification of the garden features visible in these images is based on our study of comparative examples. The problems with interjecting modern identifications are not inconsequential and are discussed in more depth in the essay on visual representation of the landscape, but these attributed images offer the opportunity to include a range and variety of works not otherwise accessible. In this category are imaginary, allegorical, or instructive images that are often revealing of principles of landscape design and representation, even if they are not records of executed designs. Also in this category are naïve art and textiles, often by unknown artists, as well as lesser-known images from painted furniture, ceramics, and wall murals.

Information about an image relationship to the category of inscribed, associated, or attributed is also available on the image file page and exportable as an RDF format.

People and Places: Throughout the database, a selection of people and place names are hyperlinked to their own pages. The pages for People provide brief historical essays on a range of individuals of particular note or interest in which their relation to the theory and practice of early American gardens and landscapes design is discussed. The Place pages include historical essays on a selection of gardens or landscapes, in which key features, events, or associated figures are discussed. How the site evolved over time and, when possible, a statement of the site’s current condition, and geographic coordinates are included. The essays for both People and Place pages are followed by citations and a gallery of images related to the subject of the page. Other resources include links to relevant external websites and maps when appropriate.

An Overview section at the top of each of the People and Places pages is exportable as an RDF format.

Finding Aid: This general search option assists in both browsing by categories of form and function and also locating a term for which the reader has an illustration but no name. In the case of the latter, the entries for “plant-keeping structure” or “water feature” direct the reader to specific types of garden structures such as orangery, hothouse, and conservatory, or to types of water features such as basin, canal, fountain, and pond.

Image Collection: This section is made possible by the implementation of the Semantic Web (see Semantic HEALD), and constitutes a direct point of access to visual content. Images appear in a grid with no text. By hovering over an image, a small caption appears. Users can refine the image search and/or selection by operating the filters at the top of the page and choosing between dates (by using the timeline slider), keywords, people, and places. Icons on the top right corner of each image indicate whether the image has an association with a person or a place with a dedicated page. All the images have an association with at least one keyword.

Bibliography: The extensive bibliography comprises all published and manuscript sources used in this project. It was built with Zotero, a free, open-source reference software that can manage bibliographic data and related research materials. In many cases it links to digitized editions of the primary sources. Furthermore, the user can add the source to one’s own personal Zotero library.

Taken as a whole, the HEALD website provides both an overview and in-depth resource of key terms, places in public, private, and institutional realms, and a wide array of people—designers, gardeners, writers, patrons, artists, theorists, professionals, and amateurs—that together contribute to a rich and vibrant picture of a significant chapter in the history of American garden and landscape design in the colonial, early national, and antebellum periods.