Thomas Jefferson wrote that, “the greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture”. With the development of human civilization, plants have been gradually immerging into the cultural gene all over the world. This course reviews and analyzes the western and oriental gardens over the last 3500 years.
This course is divided into four chapters. Chapter One gives priority to the “beauty”, one of the elements of gardens, and explores the sensory feast presented by plants in terms of vison, hearing, smell, touch, taste and so on. This part introduces the plant species, garden art and designing methods layer by layer to explain the natural and artistic beauty of the garden plants in a vivid and interesting way.
Chapter Two introduces how to appreciate the oriental gardens and its planting design; The plant landscaping design of oriental traditional gardens is an important means to build natural space in gardens. In this way, Chinese natural and sociocultural views are integrated into the plants landscape and thus form a unique belief; Oriental gardens, with their natural style of “fusion of setting and feeling”, is unique among the gardens worldwide. The plant landscape varies with the season, which demonstrates full of poetic charms.
Chapter Three introduces the planting design of western traditional gardens. It provides a brief look at the development of planting design in western ancient gardens, medieval gardens in Europe, Italian gardens in the Renaissance, French regular gardens and English natural landscape gardens and their historical influence on later generation. It emphases on analyzing the influence of ideological and cultural backgrounds on landscape design as well as the techniques and arts of planting design.
Chapter Four introduces the basic techniques of modern landscape planting design. How to design the plants layout by using the multiple plants such as tree, shrub, grass and flowers? How to design the layout of landscape plants to echo other elements of gardens? The planting design emphasizes the harmony between blankness and fullness, sparseness and denseness, openness and closeness as well as stillness and motion, which reflects the beauty of the natural environment.
Through the study of this course, students can gain:
1) know how to appreciate the landscape plants as well as their functions and applications;
2) master the methods of matching different plant species to its surrounding space and understand the natural and cultural beauty;
3) promote the artistic thinking and aesthetic interest;
4) learn the artistic techniques of gardening through the practical training for professional students.
