Small Scale Landscapes

In a previous post I focused on the large-scale manipulation of landscape in the Americas (as seen in our highways and dense urbanizations of our cities). Throughout history the push and pull of these large scale spaces or systems versus the small-scale landscape such as personal gardens or community parklets are often placed opposition or at odds with the other. Small-scale landscapes in the context of large-scale systems of oppression or mass urbanization have much to offer in terms of landscape theoretical inquiry. We often study the spaces of small-scale landscapes, looking at its form and function. Less often discussed are the practices that happened in these spaces.

Anthropologist Catherine Benoit studies this very concept in her comparative study of Caribbean and African American slave dooryard gardens. These spaces present the concept of the production of culture and construction of self in the context of domination. These gardens were characterized by a diversity of plants and vegetables in comparison the large-scale single-crop forced work spaces. As the development of these small scale landscapes required skills and techniques that differed from the large-scale plantation agriculture, a unique and original aesthetic developed in these spaces. By the practice of personal dooryard gardens, inhabitants of these spaces were creating culture and cultural practices. The comparison and interaction of the large-scale monoculture space with the small-scale dooryard garden reminds me of Taussig’s thesis in his exploration of the issues that existed among South American tin mine workers in Peru and Bolivia in the early days of Spanish conquest. He asserts that the practices of these small-scale communities such as kinship ties that defined these South American communities were "disrupted" by the oppressive ways of European conquest and large-scale ideas of Capitalism. On the other hand, a case can be made for the small-scale dooryard garden “disrupting” or acting as a symbol of retaliation in the context of large scale oppressive, dominant spaces. This leads me to question if practices of small-scale landscape are always in opposition or retaliation to those of large-scale systems of oppression and domination? Certainly in the case of dooryard gardens.

A detail with PETROBRÁS Building with Marx's surface and suspended gardens

Burle Marx, gets us closer to creating a balance between small-scale gardens with that of large-scale systems of dense urbanization in his “experimentation” and implementation of native flora in his designs. In a transcribed speech by Marx, he emphasizes the challenge of this balance: . “..as space began to disappear, as the buildings which were the contractor’s delight began to spring up selfishly, tightly packed around Copacabana Bay, what scope was there for a landscape gardener in Brazil?...I began to experiment.”(202) Marx was unique in his experimentations of small-scale gardens in the large-scale urbanized spaces. He would choose plantings that would act as a “volume in motion” against the static architecture. His use of plantings was a means of expression to create a link with infrastructure and architecture that would act in compliment to eachother instead of in opposition.