Gilbert Laing Meason

A friend of Sir Walter Scott and the man who invented the term 'landscape architecture', in the title of a book on The Landscape Architecture of the Great Painters of Italy (London, 1828). Gilbert Laing Meason lived near Forfar, in Fife, Scotland. He was a romantic and died without the faintest idea that his concept of 'landscape architecture' was destined for a worldwide future. Few copies of the book were printed but one of them fell into the hands of John Claudius Loudon, the most prolific garden author of any age. Loudon took up the term and passed it to Andrew Jackson Downing, who passed it to Frederick Law Olmsted. The meaning of 'landscape architecture' evolved and changed but there is much to be gained by returning to the circumstances of its inception. Meason's interest in architecture was inspired by the outward appearance of buildings (beauty- venustas)ﾠbut extended to the other Vitruvian virtues of firmitas (firmness) and utilitas (commodity). The importance of combining use with beauty is stressed throughout Meason's book and led him on to other matters which became part of landscape architecture in the modern sense: the placing of buildings and the types of space with which they are surrounded. [Note: the full text of Meason's book and a hyperlinked commentary is on the Garden History Reference CD].