Book review: The Landscape of Man

Tim Richardson, the Oxbridge-educated academic and garden critic known for defending his well-formed opinions with formidable zeal, has long been a champion of the "intellectual" in gardening. It is no surprise, then, that he has turned his editorial eye toward what he describes as a "great and singular work". First published in 1975, Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe’s masterpiece remains a titan of the genre. For Richardson, there is simply nothing to match the Jellicoes’ ambition; the book stands as a profound emblem of their long marriage, a distilled record of their shared travels, and a testament to their immense erudition.

Richardson draws a bold parallel between this work and E.H. Gombrich’s The Story of Art. The comparison is earned. The Jellicoes argue that landscape design is not merely the arrangement of plants, but a manifestation of Jungian subconscious instincts. Just as Gombrich traced the evolution of the human spirit through the brushstroke, the Jellicoes (landscape architect Sir Geoffrey 1900-96 and plantswoman and photographer Lady Susan 1907-86) trace it through designed landscapes.

To read this book is to see the landscape through the eyes of the High Modernists. Richardson notes the influence of the geometry of Klee, the perspectives of Picasso, and the organic masses of Henry Moore and Ben Nicholson.

The scope is staggering, leaping from the spiritual gravity of Angkor Wat to the gravity of the Kennedy Memorial at Runnymede. This book proves there is an intellectual ballast behind designed landscapes.

Horticulturists and garden designers frequently lament that their sector is dismissed as a pleasant hobby or unskilled manual labour. This volume is the ultimate rebuttal to that slight. Across 440 pages and 600 illustrations, the Jellicoes move from the dawn of prehistory to the complexities of the 20th century, proving that the designed landscape is one of humanity's most sophisticated cultural expressions.

Richardson’s re-engagement with the text reminds us that beneath every lawn and shrub lies a deep, intellectual foundation. It is a work of "extraordinary scope and variety" that demands and deserves to be taken seriously.