Border

History

Because William Cobbett believed that American readers were unfamiliar with the term border, he included a footnote defining it in the American edition of William Forsyth’s treatise about fruit trees (1802). Nevertheless, earlier eighteenth-century American accounts and depictions of gardens evince a relative degree of familiarity with what Cobbett described: a ten-foot-wide space, used for growing espaliered fruit trees, situated between a walk and a wall.

In the broadest sense, borders indicated clearly defined spaces in which plant material was grown, a concept that was common in American usage. Less frequently, “border” was a term used to designate edging of beds, such as those made from boards. The term “plate-bandes,” found in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century European treatises and referring to the borders used alongside “broidery” parterres, was not commonly used in colonial or federal America.

The use of border to refer to a specific area of the designed landscape devoted to the display of plants and trees changed little during the period between 1600 and 1850. Yet several different, albeit related, meanings of border are found in the American context. A border could refer to the demarcated, outer edge of a discrete and often relatively large garden feature, such as a parterre, lawn, or grass plat [Figs. 1 and 2]. A.-J. Dézallier d’Argenville (1712) employed this sense of border while counseling readers to enclose parterres to protect the plants within. George Washington, in 1785, requested that several apricot and peach trees be moved to the borders of his grass plats. The Encyclopaedia, or A Dictionary of Arts, Sciences and Miscellaneous Literature (1798) recommended three-to four-foot borders for the outer boundary of a gravel walk surrounding a lawn.

The use of borders as boundaries and enclosures is closely related to their use along the edges of walks, a common practice throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Lining the edges of walks with borders, which were often three- to four-feet wide, created an elongated space that could accommodate a greater variety of plant material than could beds, which were often limited in diameter for ease of maintenance. In 1807, Thomas Jefferson described his garden at Monticello in a letter and a sketch, with just such an argument for borders, allowing him “to indulge” in a “variety of flowers” [Fig. 3]. The 1832 plans for Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass., likewise included ten-foot borders filled with shrubs, perennials, and bulb flowers. George William Johnson, writing in 1847, cautioned against overly narrow borders that would convey a sense of “meanness” to the scene as opposed to the “grandeur” of an ample border.

Borders could frame walks, avenues, or drives (as at Rosewell, on the York River, Va. [Fig. 4]; the Lilacs, the residence of Thomas Kidder in Medford, Mass.; and Mount Auburn Cemetery), or they could skirt walls, espaliers, shrubberies, or other related structures (as at the Woodlands and Peale’s Museum in Philadelphia, Pa. [Fig. 5]; and the Elias Hasket Derby House in Salem, Mass. [Fig. 6]). Johnson, in fact, pointed to these uses when defining border in his 1847 dictionary. There he noted that, in addition to offering extensive space for the display of plants, framing borders also acted as screening devices, to cloak walls, for example.

The notion of a border as a bank raised around a garden, as described by Samuel Johnson (1755) and echoed by Noah Webster (1828), seems to have been little-documented in American garden design. No descriptions or depictions of this practice have yet been identified.

Plant material within borders varied widely. Fruit trees, dwarf trees, specimen trees, shrubs, and perennial and annual flowers all appear in descriptions of borders. Borders could also house vegetables, especially when placed within the confines of a kitchen garden (see Kitchen garden). As discrete units set within a larger garden complex, borders were useful for separating different kinds of plant material, as at Lemon Hill in Philadelphia, where borders of pinks and other flowers enclosed squares that were planted with vegetables and fruits.

A general shift, however, can be detected in the arrangement of plants within flower borders, from the “judicious” mixing that allowed individual specimens to be highlighted in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries to the use of masses of plants to create broad swatches of color by the mid-nineteenth century. William Hamilton’s border at the Woodlands corresponds to the latter type in his desire to display a great variety of plants while maintaining “distinctions of the sorts.” Jefferson, less interested in curious exotics, used his border to grow “handsome” or “fragrant” plants, and his 1811 letter to Bernard M’Mahon indicates that he had hoped to grow plants recognized then as “florist’s flowers,” plants appreciated for the unique beauty of their blossoms. By contrast, Jane Loudon (1845) and Joseph Breck (1851) both advocated massing plants and choosing plants for a constant display of color rather than for the flowers’ unique qualities. Throughout this shift, the notion of arranging plants in graduated rows from lowest to highest appears to have remained relatively unchanged. See, for example, the recommendations of English treatise writer Richard Bradley (1719–20) and Jane Loudon (1845).

-- Anne L. Helmreich