Middleton Place
The garden of Middleton Place is a unique survival; not just because it is the earliest surviving landscape garden in North America, but because it seems to have been the earliest landscape garden to have been created in North America. It was the centerpiece of a great plantation located 14 miles northwest of Charleston, South Carolina. The plantation's house was probably built in the 1730s and along with 200 acres of land, was part of the dowry that Mary Williams brought to Henry Middleton when they married in 1741. Henry and Mary immediately moved to their plantation, which they named Middleton Place, rather than The Oaks, where Henry had been living.
Henry hired an English garden designer, who seems to have been working in Charleston at the time. The designer's name has been forgotten, but he was obviously very talented. When people think of English landscape gardens, they tend to picture Capability Brown's informal compositions of lawn, water and trees - an idealized form of nature, but the garden at Middleton Place reflects the landscape gardens of the early eighteenth century, when English designers began to soften the grand French style of LeNotre into a style that would be seen as English.
It is difficult to believe that the designer of Middleton Place's garden was unfamiliar with the garden at Studley Royal. This is widely recognized as the most beautiful formal watergarden in England and was created by John Aislabie between 1722 and his death in 1742. Middleton Place's twin butterfly lakes could almost have been designed by Aislabie. Of course, there were probably more English gardens in the style of Studly Royal, it is just that most of them were transformed into informal gardens during the latter half of the eighteenth century. The 1740's were a decade of transition in the English landscape style. The garden of Middleton Place was in the latest style when it was begun in 1741, but by the time that the construction was completed a decade later, it was already old fashioned. This makes its survival especially important, because only a few gardens in this style have survived in England.
It took a hundred slaves a decade to complete the construction work on the 65 acres of garden, but they weren't working on it year-round. They did the construction work during periods when they weren't needed in the fields and rice paddies. The terraces leading down to the lakes and the Ashley River are more characteristic of Virginian gardens, where they were known as "falls". These falls were always simply planted with grass, their owners appreciated the uncluttered lines that they added to landscapes, but they required a great deal of labor to construct. The falls and lakes of Middleton Place were extravagant displays of wealth and power. Heny Middleton was trying to show his English relatives that he knew how to live like a gentleman of style and fashion, but It is difficult to imagine the impression that his garden must have made on other colonists.
While the falls and butterfly likes have always made the dominant impression, the formal garden to the northwest of the house is also a major feature. It was originally studded with statues, but only one of these, a marble wood nymph, still remains.
Henry and Mary lived at Middleton Place until her death in 1761, adding two dependency buildings buildings known as "flankers" to each side of the house in 1755. After Mary's death, Henry lived at the Oaks and relinquished Middleton Place to his eldest son, Arthur - a signer of the Declaration of Independence The garden was carefully tended by his heirs until the Civil War. Rare plants were added, but the formal lines remained unchanged.
On February 22, 1865, Union troops set fire to the house. The main house and north "flanker" were destroyed, but the family was able to restore the south flanker and use it as their home. With the loss of their slaves, the family couldn't main such as vast garden, so it was neglected. In 1886, a massive earthquake drained the butterfly lakes and damaged the terraced falls. The garden seemed unlikely to survive.
In 1915, John Julius Pringle-Smith, a direct descendent of Henry Middleton inherited the property. Many books say that he began the restoration of the garden in 1916, but this was actually a labor of love done by his wife, Henringham. Over several years, with the help of some garden workers, Henringham painstakingly restored the garden. The Pringle-Smiths opened the garden to the public in the 1920's. The garden is now managed by the Middleton Place Foundation.
This article was written for Black History Month. I feet a bit uncomfortable because this article is more about the slave owners than about the slaves who did the work. The fact of the matter is that ornamental gardening really began in the southern colonies rather than the northern ones and it was always closely connected with slavery. The white plantation owners may have been interested in plants and garden design, but it was black slaves who executed the designs and actually grew the plants. It could be said that the first great ornamental gardeners in North America were black, so those great plantation gardens are a part of the heritage of African-Americans.
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