cultural artifact so accurately reflects i9th-century American values
than the home, and Suburban Home Grounds is an important docu-
ment of the Victorian era because it celebrates domesticity.”
In short chapters and dozens of neat illustrations, Scott imag-
ined the suburban home as the centerpiece of a neatly
framed pic-
ture.
With careful attention to the grounds surrounding even the
arms in the baffle to civilize the landscape: ~ smooth, closely
shaven surface of green is by far the most essential element of
beauty on the grounds of a suburban house.”
Scott, an Ohio-born student of famed New York landscape
architect Andrew Jackson Downing, wasn’t pushing a new idea
when he published his book in 1870, just pushing it into new places.
Grass had been used as a design element since the walled gardens of
ancient Persia, and turf areas were part of the Chinese emperor’s
gardens as early as 100 B.C. The idea spread into Europe, and by the
most modest home, he believed urban refugees could enjoy the
same ‘charms of Nature” enjoyed by emperors and presidents by
including a lush carpet of green grass, if on a smaller scale. He
also believed—and here’s where Scott comes off as a bit of a nine-
teenth century Big Brother—that for the greater good neighbors
should help enforce a social code that required each homeowner
to dote slavishly on the grounds surrounding their little corner of
paradise.
Scott’s career before writing the book was, to be kind, undistin-
guished. After stud)ring with Downing in New York, he returned to
Toledo, Ohio, in 1852 and tried to make a go of it in his chosen field.
He apparently practiced there until about 1859, but then joined his
father’s real-estate business. According to Charles A. Birnbaum’s
Pioneers ofAmeri can Landscape Design, Scott “continued to think and
write about the proper design of the domestic landscape.”
But from the moment Scott’s weirdly precise and puritan tome
rolled off the presses—”an ecstatic paean to the beauty and indis-
