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History of Early American Landscape Design

Pond

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See also: Lake

History

The terms pond, lake, and, to a lesser extent, “pool,” were used to describe still-water features in garden settings in American landscape writing. Distinctions between them were not consistently made in dictionaries, treatises, or usage examples, and several of these sources used them synonymously. William Bartram, for instance, used the terms “lake” and “pond” interchangeably when describing Lake George, Ga., in 1791. Nehemiah Cleaveland, in his 1847 guide to Greenwood Cemetery in Brooklyn, N.Y., was also undecided as to whether the bodies of water of “different size and shape” were either small lakes or ponds. A. J. Downing (1849) suggested that the terminology differed from British usage because of the abundance and scale of America’s natural waterways: “many a beautiful, limpid, natural expanse which in England would be thought a charming lake, is here simply a pond.” The first American edition of the Encyclopaedia (1798) stated flatly that “A pool and a pond are the same.” Noah Webster (1828) was clear in his distinction between a pond and a lake, with the latter being larger, and between a pond and a pool, but even Webster noted that the term “pool” was “used by writers with more latitude.” He also defined pool as “a small collection of water in a hollow place, supplied by a spring, and discharging its surplus water by an outlet. It is smaller than a lake, and in New England is never confounded with pond or lake. It signifies with us, a spring with a small bason or reservoir on the surface of the earth.” [1]

Despite this ambiguity, it is clear that ponds were a common element in the American landscape throughout the colonies in the period under discussion. Their construction method was determined more by setting and function than by chronological or regional patterns. Garden ponds were created by damming streams, capturing natural springs, or capitalizing on existing ponds [Fig. 1]. George William Johnson’s A Dictionary of Modern Gardening (1847) detailed the method of “puddling” ponds with clay to improve their retention of water, and J. C. Loudon (1826) illustrated several methods of constructing ponds or cisterns [Fig. 2]. [2] Downing’s lengthy discussion about the “Treatment of Water” went into detail about the excavation of a “piece of artificial water,” the placement of islands, and the planting and arrangement of banks. [3] In one of the few examples where artificial materials are specified in the description of a site, a Charleston property was advertised in 1768 with two fish ponds “neatly bricked in.”

Ponds in gardens were used for a variety of practical uses, ranging from ice harvesting to stocking fish and waterfowl, from irrigating gardens to supplying fountains, and from fire fighting to wetting dusty roads. The terms “horse pond,” “dam pond,” “mill pond,” “fish pond,” and “ice pond” reflect these functions, but their usage does not preclude the perception that these still-water features were integral to the garden design. At Crowfield, on the Ashley River, Eliza Lucas Pinckney (1743) reported that the fish ponds were disposed to “form a fine prospect of water from the house.” Ponds were also valued as a source of water for the garden and for creating specialized habitats [Fig. 3]. Rev. Manasseh Cutler reported in 1787 that the Bartram Botanic Garden and Nursery near Philadelphia contained an “artificial pond [with] . . . a good collection of aquatic plants.” Treatise writers and nurserymen such as James E. Teschemacher (1835), Robert Buist (1841), and Charles Wyllys Elliott (1848) advocated the same practice of creating ponds to take advantage of the many swamp plants unique to America.

In addition, ponds were associated with recreation; they were used for swimming, angling, boating, skating, and even a miniature “Atlantic” for children’s toy schooners, as described by Rev. Nehemiah Adams in 1842.

In landscape design theory, the configuration of a pond depended on its context. Downing argued that the shape of a pond must conform to its surroundings with geometric shapes suitable for architectural or flower gardens while irregular lines were recommended in picturesque or modern-style gardens. [4] In keeping with the monumentality and geometric regularity of the city plan, elliptical ponds were proposed for the Columbian Institute in Washington, D.C. Irregular ponds described by H.A.S. Dearborn in 1831 as “small ponds and morasses converted into picturesque sheets of water” were a major element of the naturalistic design at Mount Auburn Cemetery [Fig. 4]. Ponds were recommended particularly for soggy, low areas, although Edward Sayers (1837) and Downing (1851) cautioned strongly against building a pond unless it had a water supply year-round. Treatise writers also suggested ways to enhance existing natural ponds by planting along the banks. Sayers, for example, praised “drooping willows and trees of a pendulous habit for shade” and others admired the effects of lilies and water plants. C. M. Hovey (1839) offered an example of pond plantings gone awry at the Elias Hasket Derby House in Salem, Mass., where the thirty-year old buckthorn hedge had grown to an impenetrable eight-foot barrier around the small fish pond. Treatises also suggested the addition of bridges in order for the pond or lake to appear as a river, and even adding elaborate ornaments such as a mount (as at William Middleton’s Crowfield), a fountain (as at Charles Willson Peale’s Belfield), or a grotto (as at Henry Pratt’s Lemon Hill). Jane Loudon (1845) argued that a pond’s appeal, like a lawn’s, lay in its expanse of unbroken space, and she suggested that if any islands were to be added that they should be kept near the shore. The term “lake” generally connoted a larger-scale feature than that of a pool or pond, although, as noted above, the term “pond” was used interchangeably with that of “lake” in several descriptions. As indicated in the Horticultural Register (1836), the term “lake” signified a dignity that the smaller scale of a pond could not match. Lakes fulfilled a variety of functions in the garden, serving, for example, as a habitat for fish and water fowl, a source of ice and irrigation water, and, in garden design, a natural mirror and animating element. Their scale made them suitable for swimming and boating, as evidenced by the boating and bathing houses found along the shores of many.

Bodies of standing water, whether called ponds, lakes, or pools, provided many of the same visual effects, and writers praised the associations of coolness and the animating quality that water brought to a garden. [5] As Downing noted, animation might come from the sparkle of the reflecting sun, the movement of wind on the water, or from the sound of a fountain or a stream feeding the pond. Water was prized, as Abercrombie (1817) noted, as a natural mirror reflecting the surrounding vegetation or, as at the carefully placed pond at Monticello and in a painting of an unknown site [Fig. 7], the house itself. Bodies of water not only sustained fish for sport and food, but, as Humphry Repton (1803) advised, they also attracted waterfowl and other animals and thus enhanced visual and aural interest of the garden. Downing (1847) praised the effect of contrasting water features, such as the rush of the waterfall at Blithewood, on the Hudson, juxtaposed with the still waters of the lake, “so full of the spirit of repose.”

-- Elizabeth Kryder-Reid

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Notes

  1. Noah Webster, “Pool” entry, An American Dictionary of the English Language (New York: S. Converse, 1828), n.p., view on Zotero.
  2. A cistern generally referred to a receptacle built to collect and retain water, either from a stream, spring, or rainfall. Similar receptacles that collected ground water were called wells. Both cisterns and wells, ubiquitous features, were sometimes incorporated into landscape designs by placing them at intersections of walks or by ornamenting them with well heads, plantings, or other decorative treatments.
  3. A. J. Downing, A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1849), 347–67, view on Zotero.
  4. Ibid., 366–67, view on Zotero.
  5. Ibid., 348,view on Zotero.

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