Jardins Communicants

Americans who write about gardening often write articles in which they speculate about whether or not a truly American style of garden will arise. In fact, a truly American style of garden has existed for over a century.

Early American gardens were usually fenced areas for growing plants. Most towns had laws which required that gardens be fenced to keep out the livestock which were allowed to roam the streets. From this practical necessity arose the tradition of a front or side garden enclosed by a picket fence. This tradition has never died out, but by the 1870's it was being replaced by the idea that all of the front yards in a neighborhood should be joined together by each house having a front lawn which would form an unbroken stretch of lawn for the length of a city or town block. The French gently tease the Americans by calling this style of garden "jardin communicants".

In 1870 this type of garden was defined by Frank J. Scott in his book The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds of Small Extent. In this book Scott writes, "It is unchristian to hedge from the sight of others the beauties of nature which it has been our good fortune to create or secure." Americans of the late Twentieth Century often misunderstand this style of garden by assuming that the "real" garden was in the backyard and that the front yard was an unused space. Most suburban backyards of the latter half of the Nineteenth Century were utilitarian, this was an area where vegetables were grown, laundry washed and hung to dry, firewood was split and often chickens and rabbits were raised. There was also usually a backyard privy because most houses of this period still lacked indoor plumbing.

The dominant style of flower gardening during the late Nineteenth century was called carpet bedding. This originally referred to beds in which foliage plants were used to create a design, later the term was used to include designs executed in flowers such as annual verbena and pelargoniums. This style of planting was perfectly suited to front yards, most ornamental gardens of this period consisted of these beds set like jewels in a neatly trimmed lawn, often the lawn was edged with borders of shrubs and herbaceous flowers.

By the end of the Nineteenth Century this was the typical ornamental garden of most homes in suburban and small town America, it was characteristic of both affluent and working class neighborhoods. The following quotation is from Henderson's Picturesque Gardens by Charles Henderson, which was published in 1901. "The American suburbanite, if he be something of a traveler, breathes a deep sigh of relief on returning from abroad, at the open, fee-to-all charms of his own and his neighbor's home environments. The united stretches of lawn, the colored flower beds; the street, a sylvan avenue of arching elms, all to be viewed from a cool vine-decked piazza, with an opportunity to salute a passing friend: this is typically American, and in refreshing contrast to the walled grounds usual to many European homes, where custom has handed down notions of such exclusiveness that they must be shut off from the outside world with barriers of stone or brick 8 to 12 feet high, crowned with broken glass from which even vines shrink." It is important to remember that this style of garden was a product of a society in which people knew their neighbors and a desire for privacy was cause for suspicion. People sat on their front porches in the evening and watched the neighborhhod's children play on the lawns, sidewalks and even in the streets. People really used their front gardens.

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