“What can you say about a country whose two most important contributions to the history of landscape consist of the front lawn and the wilderness park? One safe conclusion would be that this is a culture whose thinking on the subject of nature is somewhat schizophrenic—that it is unsure whether it wants to dominate nature in the name of civilization or to worship it, untouched, as a means of escape from civilization.”

“It has been more than a century now since the invention of the front lawn and the wilderness park (both, interestingly, date from the same period: the decade following the Civil War), yet those two very different and equally original institutions continue to shape and reflect American thinking about nature—and, in turn, our attitudes toward the idea of a garden.”

-Michael Pollan, “Keeping Eden”

Phyllis Anderson, et al. Keeping Eden: A History of Gardening in America. Edited by Punch, Walter T., (Boston: Bullfinch Press, 1992.)