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John Claudius Loudon and the rise of landscape architecture 

‘John Claudius Loudon, inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment, became a visionary in garden design, landscape architecture, and city planning. Encouraged by his wife, Jane Loudon, he envisioned a greener future for London.’ € This is a quote from the Kindle description of The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan by Tom Turner, (Kindle, 2024). 

More about Loudon and landscape architecture

Loudon’s professional work, as a writer and designer, centred on horticulture, gardens and planting design. He also had a passionate concern for the public welfare and it is likely that if commissions had been available, this is the work he would have concentrated on. 

Jane Loudon tells us that in 1806 her husband wrote, in his journal, that ‘I am now twenty-three years of age, and perhaps one third of my life has passed away, and yet what have I done to benefit my fellow-men?’ By the standards of his times, as of our times, this is an unusual sentiment for a young man. In Loudon, it probably derived from his presbyterian heritage and his maternal grandfather’s participation in the Cambuslang arising.

Loudon’s income came from his torrent of publications, from design commissions and from the sale of garden plants, both raised in his reserve garden and sourced from London nurseries. His income therefore came from a landowning class he did not admire. Had it not been commercially unwise, he is likely to have given more space to criticising heartless aristocrats.

It is also probable that he would like to have given more of his time to public projects if public commissions had been forthcoming. His two major surviving works were public projects and both were done on an expenses-only basis. Birmingham Botanical Garden was designed on his honeymoon tour of gardens and landscapes. The Derby Arboretum was designed when his health was exceedingly frail.

The central distinction between garden design and landscape architecture is that the former centres on private goods and the latter on public goods. In physical terms, both arts involve the composition of landform, water and plants with buildings and pavings. But in terms of the functions they serve, the requirements of public and private clients are not the same. Public squares, which were the subject of Loudon’s first article, provide a good example: their design has to be fully integrated with their social and economic context.

The credit for establishing landscape architecture as an organised profession belongs to Frederick Law Olmsted. But the credit for conceiving the profession's role and promoting the term 'landscape architect' belongs to John Claudius Loudon.

Loudon's work for public goods and public welfare

In 1958 J.K. Galbraith wrote, in The Affluent Society, that ‘in an atmosphere of private opulence and public squalor, the private goods have full sway.’ This was very much the case in the early nineteenth century and Loudon believed it was morally wrong. Among many other actions, Loudon
- ridiculed the Earl of Shrewsbury’s wanton extravagance at Alton Towers

- did everything he could for the welfare of under-educated and underpaid garden staff 

- promoted public parks, public walks and sanitation

- published the Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum which ruined the finances of his family. 

In the first half of the nineteenth century saw cities being reshaped in many ways:

- The Industrial Revolution accelerated urbanisation, as people moved from rural areas to cities in search of work in factories. This rapid urban growth created challenges in housing, sanitation, and infrastructure, prompting new approaches to urban planning. Loudon’s most significant contribution was his Breathing Zones plan for London.

Loudon's influence on civil engineering and architecture

  1. W. Skempton writes about Loudon’s civil engineering achievements in A Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in Great Britain and Ireland: 1500-1830 (Thomas Telford, 2002, pp 412-3: 

Loudoun John Claudius (1783 to 1843) writer and landscape gardener was one of the most important early innovators in the use of iron as a structural material… [On his return from his 1813-14 continental tour] he designed a ducted hot air heating system for Coleshill Oxfordshire. In 1816 he moved to Bayswater London, joined by his mother and sisters, and began experiments on hot house construction, publishing his findings which included the earliest proposals for cast iron rectangular braced girders. In Sketches of hot houses Loudon describes his wrought iron glazing bar invented in 1816. The narrow bar could be bent along its length allowing the resulting curved surface of the glasshouse to meet the sun's rays at nearly right angles for much of the day in conformance with current theories of light penetration. Loudon’s glazing bar was a pioneering event in the development of the rolled steel section. In Loudon’s design the wrought iron glazing bars and glass acted together structurally producing the earliest useful shell structure of iron and glass. In 1818 he also published a comparative view of the usual and curvilinear process of the roofing of hot houses, in which he invited commissions for hot houses or for iron roofs, fireproof buildings etc. Loudon worked jointly with a contractor W & D Bailey, building elegant arching glass houses and Bicton Park Palm House Devon in 1843 which survives as a late rare example. Loudon made over his rights to Bailey in 1818 foregoing a likely fortune but freeing himself for literary pursuits. Richard Turner's Palm House at Kew used a wrought iron glazing bar based on Loudon’s designs. Loudon also proposed the ridge and furrow design to achieve maximum light penetration twice a day. There is no evidence that an example was built but the influence of his ideas on Joseph Paxton is undeniable.’ 

‘In 1818 Loudon published his design for a bridge across the Mersey at Runcorn, a cast and wrought iron suspension bridge of 1000 feet clear opening with a minimum height above the water of 70 feet. It consisted of two giant cast iron piers with each part of the bridge deck suspended individually and directly from the piers. Loudon was friendly with Thomas Telford who also designed a bridge for the site.’

Loudon's work on green urban landscapes and town planning

Loudon also made a comprehensive proposal for planning London in the public interest. He called it a plan for ‘Breathing Places’ and ‘Breathing Zones.’ But it was much more than this. It was a far-reaching plan for planned roads, public transport, public open space, green belts, building zones and, of course, clean air. These aspects of Loudon’s London Plan are analysed in several publications:

  1. Melanie Simo: Loudon & The Landscape: From Country Seat To Metropolis 1783-1843 (Yale Publications in the History of Art, 1989)
  2. Patrice Bouche “John Claudius Loudon’s 1829 plan for London” Planning Perspectives, 2017. ‘ABSTRACT: We consider Scottish landscape gardener J.C. Loudon’s already well-documented 1829 plan for a system of successive green belts around London. Our perspective will be that of transport planning, given his recommendations on street layout and public transport provision. Our contention is that Loudon’s design for the Metropolis would have been theoretically inoperative if it had not been for its transport network. Beside other forward-thinking aspects already demonstrated by researchers, Loudon’s plan is remarkable for setting out a design for an integrated Metropolis based on road planning and the then barely nascent technology of railways.
  3. D. L. Johnson “Observations on J. C. Loudon’s beau ideal town of 1829” Journal of Planning History 2012. ‘ABSTRACT. IIn 1829, the perceptive landscape gardener John Claudius Loudon published an essay in which he introduced the design of a “systematic plan” for the layout of an ideal London that became a theoretical model. Little known today, yet the influence of the Scot’s “beau ideal” is measurable on the course of town planning theory and practice for the remainder of the nineteenth century. This includes colonial Adelaide’s renowned park lands that were conceived in 1835 and executed in 1837.’ 

The Builder's obituary of John Claudius Loudon 

Loudon’s obituary in The Builder emphasises his public spiritedness, without mentioning that it was the prosperous successor to Loudon’s Architectural Magazine: “Obituary from The Builder, Volume 1, 1843, page 552.’THE LATE MR. LOUDON. The death of Mr. Loudon, which took place on the 14th inst., is a great loss to science, as well as to his numerous circle of friends in private life. To a most amiable and benevolent disposition he joined an ardent love of the study of nature, more particularly of the vegetable kingdom, of which his Encyclopædias and his ably-conducted Magazine bear ample evidence. Mr. Loudon had a power of communicating his knowledge in writing, and a felicitous manner of explaining it to his friends, which will long endear his memory to an extensive circle of lovers of nature. His great talent and taste in laying out ornamental grounds is well known to the public, and the arrangement of some garden enclosures under the control of Government, where the name and classification of each plant is correctly inscribed and fixed in a convenient position, was, we believe, originally the suggestion of Mr. Loudon. Great credit is due to the present Government for the manner in which that plan is now carried out. During a walk in St. James's park the poorest of Her Majesty's subjects may, whilst enjoying the pleasure of healthful exercise, gather knowledge which in former times could be procured only with difficulty, and at an expense far beyond the reach of the more humble admirers of nature. Mr. Loudon died of a pulmonary complaint, accelerated by his assiduous mental exertion. It may indeed be said that he has sacrificed his existence to an anxious and unremitting application to study, which benefited his fellow creatures, whilst, unfortunately, it was productive of but little advantage to himself. Mr. Loudon has left a widow and a daughter, the latter still in childhood.’

The period from 1800 to 1830 saw significant changes in urban design and planning, driven by the pressures of industrialization, social reform, military needs, and intellectual currents. These changes laid the foundation for modern urban planning, as cities began to grapple with the challenges of rapid growth and the need for more structured and humane living environments. Loudon was a pioneer.

Rise of the landscape architecture profession and IFLA 

Though not ‘as old as the hills’ the art of landscape architecture is older than the art of building architecture: you have to choose a site before you can build on it. Landscape architecture is best defined as'the art of composing plants, water and landform with buildings and pavings to make good outdoor places' and in this sense the first landscape designer whose name is known to history is Gilgamesh.

But as an organised profession, landscape architecture dates from the nineteenth century. It grew, like the US Constitution, in the context of the Reformation, the Enlightenment and Protestantism. More specifically, it grew from a Presbyterian dedication to serving the wider community and creating public goods. John Claudius Loudon was the grandfather of modern landscape architecture and Frederick Law Olmsted became the father of the organised profession, in America and, through the International Federation (IFLA), around the world. Loudon was also the only polymath, so far, to have taken up the profession of landscape design. By definition, the work of a polymath spans a range of disciplines and skills, as Loudon did.

The Landscape architecture profession 

  • The art of landscape architecture is older than building architecture, because you have to choose and comprehend sites before you can build on them. But as an organised profession landscape architecture grew out of garden design in the course of the nineteenth century. 
  • John Claudius Loudon and Frederick Law Olmsted, the grandfather and father of today’s landscape architecture profession, were sympathetic to both the 'Geometrical' and' Natural' styles of garden design.
  • The Geometrical style of garden design developed in the context of Roman Catholicism and Renaissance Rationalism. It can be called the 'Renaissance' style.
  • The Natural style of garden design developed in the context of Reformation Protestantism and Scientific Rationalism. It can be called the 'Romantic' style.
  • The essential difference between landscape architecture and garden design is that the former focuses on public space and public goods. The latter focuses on private space and private goods. There are many crossovers, because involve the composition of buildings, landform and water with buildings and pavings.
  • The landscape architecture profession’s emphasis on public goods probably derives from the Presbyterian ethics of Loudon’s community and family. Roman Catholics shared a deep concern for the public welfare but their energy tended to go into charitable and educational activities organised by churches and monasteries.
  • On a broader canvas, Calvinism, Protestantism, Puritanism and Presbyterianism are the conceptual background to representative democracy, the voyage of the Pilgrim Fathers and the US Constitution.
  • Today’s landscape architecture profession grew under the influence of Christian ideas and principles. Its ancient roots are shamanistic, prehistoric, pagan and worldwide. 
  • The debate about the roles of reason and faith in human affairs has deep historical roots. In the 18th century Enlightenment period these issues came to the forefront of intellectual discourse and influenced the art of designing outdoor space in relation to increasingly sophisticated and complex technical, functional and aesthetic considerations.
  • Christianity, the Reformation and the Enlightenment are the intellectual context in which the landscape architecture profession came into being.

See also: Gardenvisit.com appreciation of John Claudius Loudon.