Garden Design as Fine Art: Fletcher Steele's Gardens of Pleasure

Historic New England welcomes Cindy Brockway, Cultural Resources Program Director at The Trustees, for a talk in connection with our special exhibition, Patios, Pools, & the Invention of the American Backyard. Learn about celebrated architect Fletcher Steele’s innovative, evocative, and exotic visions for private, residential landscapes.

Steele believed that landscape architecture was an art form as important as painting or music, and that gardens were created for pleasure, a stage set for life’s theater. His use of bold colors, crisp lines, and dramatic juxtaposition of forms brought new Modern design principles to clients steeped in the Beaux Arts tradition. Often brilliant, always original, Steele’s more than 700 private designs have all but disappeared, but their design legacy shaped a twentieth-century movement.

Doors open at 6:30 for a reception prior to the lecture.