11 Genius loci
A new way of looking at gardening was pioneered by British landscape gardeners with their more “natural” approach and promoted by poet Alexander Pope in the 18th century. The idea of gardens and buildings that respect nature and the spirit of the place continues to be influential on the way we think about the countryside, landscapes and places generally.
The idea that a place has a guardian spirit, a supernatural being that protects it, and that people visiting the place or living there must respect or worship it, goes back to the earliest forms of religion. In local belief systems from Japan to Africa, spirits of the place, deities of mountains and waterfalls, forests and trees, abound.
Local deities Respect for the local deity took different forms according to the place and culture—travelers might be expected to make an offering to the deity of the region they were passing through; and if they behaved disrespectfully they could expect the spirit to take revenge on them by making difficulties in their journey, or worse. The link between place and spirit could be very powerful.
The people who gave us our most familiar phrase for a spirit of place were the Romans, for whom the words genius loci meant the deity of a specific place—a locality or a specific feature of the topography, such as a volcano, a mountain or a notable tree. It was the Roman use of this term that was picked up by writers in the 18th century and which had a major effect on taste in Britain and beyond.
Pope and the gardeners Alexander Pope was the most celebrated writer to use the phrase. Pope, writing principally about landscape gardening, but also applying his words to architecture, was reacting against the very formal tradition in gardening in the previous century, an era in which men such as the great French gardener André Le Nôtre created highly formal gardens, such as his masterpiece at Versailles. For Pope and the landscape gardeners of the 18th century, such complex gardens, patterned like intricate carpets, went against nature. They sought for a style of gardening that was more in tune with the surrounding landscape.
Pope’s “Epistle IV. To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington” stresses the importance of respecting nature and the spirit of the place whenever a person puts up a building or plans a landscape garden. The poet is particularly interested in landscape gardening in this poem and admires the way the great landscape gardeners used their skill to blend the garden with the surrounding landscape. But he also applies his ideas to architecture, instructing Burlington when “To build, to plant, whatever you intend,” to consider Nature.
“Consult the Genius of the Place in all;
That tells the Waters or to rise, or fall,
Or helps th’ambitious Hill the heav’n to scale,
Or scoops in circling theaters the Vale,
Calls in the Country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
Now breaks or now directs, th’intending Lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.”
Alexander Pope
The landscape gardening movement As Pope describes, the Genius of the Place, then, controls the features of the landscape, and continues to control the effect of a scene as the gardener modifies it. The gardener has to work with it, rather than against it, and if this is done, can hope for satisfaction. This idea encouraged the landscape gardeners of the 18th and 19th centuries—such as Charles Bridgman and Lancelot “Capability” Brown—to create the great “naturalistic” gardens that still surround many country houses. Painting with a broad brush, planting swathes of trees and digging long, sinuous lakes, they tried to work with nature. And architecture played its role in this approach, with garden buildings and houses placed with apparent casualness in these artificial landscapes.
Garden buildings
For hundreds of years people incorporated buildings into their gardens—to offer comfortable places to view the scenery or to give shelter from the rain. But the landscape gardens of the 18th century included more of these structures than ever before—a mass of gazebos, temples, umbrellos, rotundas and other structures. Many of these act as focal points, to lead the eye to a specific place in the garden and to create a particular atmosphere.
Landscape gardeners used temples like the one at Stourhead, below, to simulate “Arcadian” valleys, and sham ruins to evoke the Gothic past. They could also use these buildings to express philosophical ideas. At the great English garden at Stowe, for example, Lord Cobham and his heirs erected symbolic buildings—such as a Temple of Ancient Virtues and a Temple of British Worthies—to express their philosophical and political views.
“Born to grace Nature and her works complete
With all that’s beautiful, sublime and great!
For him each muse enwreathes the laurel crown
And consecrates to fame immortal Brown.”
Anon, published by Horace Walpole, 1767
This apparent insouciance was of course achieved with meticulous planning and hard work—sometimes whole villages were moved to accommodate these artificial landscapes. But the effect was to create buildings and spaces that were at one with nature and with the genius loci.
Although the era of the great landscape gardens and country houses is long gone, the notion of the genius loci has remained influential. The idea lies behind planning laws that restrict industrial developments in rural areas or high-rise building in country villages and towns. And it influences our sensibility when we praise the appearance of canals or railway lines of the 19th century, which follow contour lines and thus seem in part to respect nature, over roads, which often do not. It also influences the ideas of “neo-rationalist” architects, such as the Italian Aldo Rossi, who design buildings in a style that draws much from traditional and vernacular architecture. And it informs the ideas of all who appreciate what is locally distinctive about particular towns and regions. From psychogeographers to conservationists, the genius loci is still a powerful spirit.
the condensed idea
The power of place
| timeline |
| 1731 |
Pope’s Epistle IV to Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington published |
| 1741 |
Lancelot “Capability” Brown is appointed gardener at Stowe and makes the garden more “naturalistic” in style |
| 1741 |
Henry Hoare begins to design his outstanding landscape garden at Stourhead, Wiltshire |
| 1764 |
Brown begins work on the great garden at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire |
| 1764 |
Brown is appointed surveyor to the gardens of King George III |
