interesting, challenging reading

This is a post for the reader who might enjoy an occa­sional book on gar­den­ing and land­scape archi­tec­ture that isn’t designed to sit on your cof­fee table or nightstand.

The British Library has recently unveiled EThOS, a por­tal to elec­tronic the­ses and dis­ser­ta­tions from the UK. If the the­sis has been dig­i­tized, it’s avail­able to you for down­load once you reg­is­ter. Reg­is­tra­tion is free, and so are most of the texts. If some­thing isn’t avail­able yet, you can request it to be dig­i­tized within thirty days so that you can down­load it. Once again, that process is usu­ally free.

Only a small minor­ity of the­ses and dis­ser­ta­tions writ­ten these days is on gar­den­ing of course, but there’s some great work being done on the topic in British insti­tu­tions, with the Uni­ver­sity of Sheffield lead­ing the way.

Do a basic search on “Sheffield” and “land­scape” and you’ll get titles like the fol­low­ing that are avail­able with­out wait­ing thirty days:

Wu, Jiahua. Land­scape mor­phol­ogy : a com­par­a­tive study of land­scape aesthetics.

Jor­gensen, Anna. Liv­ing in the urban wild woods : a case study of the eco­log­i­cal wood­land approach to land­scape plan­ning and design at Birch­wood, War­ring­ton New Town.

Alturki, Ashraf. Atti­tudes towards designed land­scapes in two desert cities : Med­ina, Saudi Ara­bia and Tuc­son, Arizona.

Zhao, Jijun. Thirty years of land­scape design in China (1949–1979): The era of Mao Zedong. (The abstract for this one out­lines some fas­ci­nat­ing ideas about designed land­scape and ide­ol­ogy: “[L]andscape archi­tects first emerg­ing in early twen­ti­eth cen­tury China con­cerned them­selves espe­cially with the design of gar­dens and parks. This sit­u­a­tion remained almost unchanged dur­ing the rad­i­cal social­ist rev­o­lu­tion, which resulted in the found­ing of the People’s Repub­lic of China in 1949 that was led by Chair­man Mao Zedong (1893–1976). Dur­ing the Mao era (1949–1979), the impact of the Chi­nese com­mu­nist ide­ol­ogy on land­scape was far-ranging and ground break­ing. Besides exten­sive devel­op­ment of pub­lic parks for social­ist edu­ca­tion as well as recre­ational pur­poses, cities were reshaped with large hous­ing areas cre­ated for workers–the pro­le­tari­ats, and urban squares play­ing a cru­cial role in exhibit­ing polit­i­cal power, while the coun­try­side was reshaped from a hier­ar­chi­cal land­scape with an exploita­tive nature to an egal­i­tar­ian one, where the broad masses were to ben­e­fit from improvements.”)

Alter­nately, try a search on “Sheffield” and “gar­den” and you’ll find titles like these, dig­i­tized and ready to download:

Gilberthorpe, Enid Con­stance. British botan­i­cal gar­dens in the 1980s : changes reflected by bib­li­o­graph­i­cal and social survey.

Kel­lett, J.E. Pub­lic pol­icy and the pri­vate gar­den : An analy­sis of the effect of gov­ern­ment pol­icy on pri­vate gar­den pro­vi­sion in Eng­land and Wales 1918–81. (Sheffield City Polytechnic)

…and then there are intrigu­ing titles like these that still need to be dig­i­tized though you could be read­ing them in not much more time than it takes for a book to be deliv­ered to your doorstep:

Qasim, Moham­mad. The poten­tial role of pri­vate gar­dens in devel­op­ing greater envi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­ity in cities.

Can­non, Andrew R. Wild birds in urban gar­dens : oppor­tu­nity or constraint?

Be fore­warned. From the skim­ming I did, these texts read like…well, col­lege dis­ser­ta­tions. Even among the authors who write really clearly you sense a cer­tain amount of them play­ing aca­d­e­mic buzz­word bingo. After all, the authors have to tell their profs that they know the lit­er­a­ture and can use their lingo. In addi­tion, the pho­tos accom­pa­ny­ing the texts aren’t picture-book qual­ity the way they appear online. But once you get beyond that, you cross over to a world rich in ideas.

[ Elec­tronic The­ses Online Ser­vice ]

July 29 2010 | Categories: gardening • landscape design | Tags: • • • • • | 2 Comments »