Page content
Resize textResize textResize text largerEmail pagePrint pageShare this page
View related multimedia and links
  next

Among other sources Arthur Shurcliff used were 1769 maps of North Carolina towns that detailed the garden layouts of the towns' houses. Made by French cartographer, Claude Joseph Sauthier, these maps and their amazingly detailed garden sketches (right) allowed later historians to confirm that Georgian artistic principles of symmetry and formality were understood and used in Colonial America.

The Sauthier maps, along with others, such as the map detailing the Charleston, South Carolina lot and garden layouts (right), were invaluable in giving the early landscape architects precedents on which to base their compelling designs. The David Morton garden in Williamsburg is very reminiscent of the planting bed detail of the garden to the right with its arrangement of four clipped planting beds surrounding a fifth element in the center.

Above: Sauthier maps as redrawn by Alden Hopkins

Sauthier maps as redrawn by Alden Hopkins

 Courtesy of The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.

Courtesy of The Charleston Museum, Charleston, South Carolina.

Multimedia and related links

  • podcasts