• Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
• /
• v.40 no.1
• /
• pp.69-80
• /
• 2012

The garden has long served as away of thinking about nature and about culture and how each influences the other (Francis and Hester, 1990). This study, viewing the garden as a representation of the ideal, tried to seek for detailed aspects of the aforementioned ideal with the representative examples of Thomas Jefferson's gardens. Hidden behind his best known position as a politician was his other career: designer and creator of several gardens. Monticello, Academical Village, and Poplar Forest represented not only his ideals of national values like freedom, democracy and agrarian society, but also a yearning for the rural area and ideals for higher education realization. His personal desire and ideal are represented inside the spatial order, together with his ideals as a politician and the pioneer of new country. By representing the symbolic meaning metaphorically and restructuring it through a spatial scheme, Jefferson's ideal was admired and shared with visitors. In this way, Jefferson's gardens were practical stages to reveal his ideals.