Resumen de Loudon and the landscape: From country seat to Metropolis
Midway through Melanie Simo's book on John Claudius Loudon (1783-1843), there is a passage that describes how this amazingly prolific Scottish landscape designer welcomed change as a precondition for social, political and artistic improvement: "In this progressive age", Loudon observed, "a man who has the means of existence to procure by his labour or his talent ought to be learning every day of his life. If he stands still for a moment, the world will march on without him". Loudon and the Landscape lets us understand the extend to which Loudon lived by this compulsive vision. The dry chronology and list of works, included as appendices, are enough in themselves to inspire respect for a man who farmed, practised as a landscape designer, edited four periodicals and published nearly forty books, including An Encyclopaedia of Gardening (1822), The Suburban Gardener (1836-8) and the eight-volume Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum (1838). However, as the environmental historian William Cronon reminds us, "storytelling" should be a fundamental activity of historians, and Simo as a storyteller goes beyond a bare recitation of key events. The tale of Loudon's maturing character and political and social values is framed by ever-changing scenes - from the rural landscape of his childhood in the lowlands of Scotland, to the endless, snow-blanketed steppes of Russia, which Loudon visited in 1813, and from the industrial town of Derby with its offensive sewers and smoke-tainted atmosphere, where Loudon designed an arboretum in 1839, to his house and garden of 20 years in Bayswater, which Simo suggests are "a vivid metaphor of his own mind and sensibilities".
