Managing+third+nature

The concept of a third nature arises from a special cultural attitude to the management of 'natural materials', which are to some extent beyond the control of the planner. It came, independently, from two Italian humanists of the mid 16th century.

Bartolomeo Taegio in his treatise on La Villa, published in Milan in 1559, wrote, //'The industry of an accomplished gardener, incorporating art with nature, makes of the two together a third nature'//.

Two decades earlier, Jacopo Bonfadio was writing to a fellow humanist in August 1541. Describing his country retreat on Lake Garda, Bonfadio emulated the mode of the famous letter of Pliny the Younger, describing to a friend in similar circumstances his country seat and its surroundings in Tuscany. Bonfadio wrote, ‘//For in the gardens… the industry of the local people has been such that nature incorporated with art is made an artificer and naturally equal with art, and from them both together is made a third nature, which I would not know how to name’//.

There are many kinds of spaces in which plants are managed for non-utilitarian purposes. Until the 20th century they were all defined by the term 'garden'. Now we live in an age of extinction. Worldwide we are losing species at an unprecedented and accelerating rate. For centuries a major objective of gardeners has been to keep their patches free of wild nature. Now, there is a movement to position gardening in tune with conservation issues. Gardens are now seen to have a value as ecological havens as well as an aesthetic purpose. In this sense, the distinction between gardens and nature reserves is often blurred, Indeed, nature sites may be regarded as special kinds of gardens where access is controlled and vistors directed towards the contemplation of species and habitats maintained in a favourable condtion. The practical aims is to apply science to reach ecological management objectives. The same may be said about landscape conservation, where European farmers are paid to maintain non-economic agrarian systems of the past because of their historical, aesthetic and ecological values. Landscaping and remediation of former industrial sites are also subject to conservation management systems aimed at similar objectives. In this context, gardens, nature reserves and protected and restored landscapes all fall within the category of a third nature which will:-
 * normally be out-of-doors occupying a relatively small space of ground (relative, usually, to accompanying buildings or topographical surroundings).
 * have a specific area deliberately related through various means to the locality in which it is set: by the invocation of indigenous plant materials, by various modes of representation or other forms of reference (including association) to that larger territory, and by drawing out the character of its site (the genius loci).
 * be distinguished in various ways from the adjacent territories, either by some precise boundary, or it will be set apart by the greater extent, scope, and variety of its design and internal organization; more usually, both will serve to designate its space and its actual or implied enclosure.
 * take different forms and be subject to different uses in a variety of times and places have a combination of inorganic and organic materials strategically invoked for a variety of usually interrelated reasons —practical, social, spiritual, aesthetic—all of which will be explicit or implicit expressions or performances of their local culture.
 * to the extent that natural materials are ever-changing require constant care and attention above all other forms of landscape

These five criteria, which comprise a general definition of place-making with plants, are a slight modification of John Dixon Hunt's provisional all encompassing definition of gardens. In making his definition Hunt did not plead specifically for the garden as art.

However, most people would agree that the making of spaces we call gardens involves the creation of a work of art. Compared say with a painting, because of the variability in its natural components, more of the artistic outcome of gardeners may arise from unplanned random arrangements, failures of plants to grow, and unexpected juxtapositions of colour and texture. But what of the artistic outcomes of managing a nature reserve? Art can unexpectedy come out of the mangement plan, as exemplified in the photograph on the left. The view is from the public footpath across a grazing marsh managed as a wildfowl habitat. The picturesque outcome arises from the random pattern of at least ten wetland communities of grasses, reeds and sedges, which have emerged as the result of spatial differences in grazing pressure, drainage and substrate.

With regards remediation, the Shaw Nature Reserve, an extension of the Missouri Botanical Garden, includes 2,500 acres of natural Ozark landscape and managed plant collections. Located 35 miles southwest of St. Louis in Gray Summit, Missouri, it provides environmental education, ecological research and public enjoyment of the natural world.



The Nature Reserve was founded by the Garden in 1925 when coal smoke from the city threatened the living plant collections housed at the Garden. Though the orchid collection was moved to the Nature Reserve in 1926, pollution in the city cleared before it was necessary to move the entire plant collection.

The diversity and size of the Nature Reserve, combined with the considerable scientific and educational resources of the Garden, provide a unique opportunity for outdoor education. Besides providing workshops and classes for thousands of children and adults each year, the Nature Reserve serves as an outdoor laboratory for the development and testing of a variety of innovative outdoor programs. More recently the Nature Reserve has become a focus for the study of fire ecology and habitat restoration.

The Nature Reserve features a variety of settings in which visitors may enjoy the out-of-doors. The Pinetum is a 55-acre park-like expanse of meadows studded with plantings of conifers from around the world. In spring it comes alive with thousands of Narcissus and flowering trees. The Whitmire Wildflower Garden is a five-acre concentration of natural beauty in the form of Missouri and eastern U.S. native wildflowers in naturalistic plantings, accented by native grasses, shrubs and trees.

The Shaw Nature Reserve Ecological Reserve contains 13 miles of hiking trails through a full array of Ozark Border landscapes, including floodplain forest, oak-hickory woods, glades, bluffs, tallgrass prairie, savanna and marsh wetlands. The latter three are landscapes which once covered much of Missouri and are being restored or recreated from former farmland in the Nature Reserve.

The Joseph H. Bascom House, an elegant brick mansion, built in 1879 contains a splendid array of exhibits made possible by a challenge grant from the Missouri Department of Conservation. The exhibit, entitled "People on the Land", illustrates the broad environmental and conservation themes so important to the Nature Reserve's mission.

Shaw Nature Reserve has become increasingly popular through the years. To accommodate and encourage growth in visitor attendance and participation in education programs, plans have been made for gradual improvement of existing facilities over the next few years. The ultimate goal of all improvements will be to further the Nature Reserve's mission of educating visitors about the plants, animals, and ecosystems of the region.

Looking back into history, a similar range of spaces constituted the Jardin du Roi, which John Evelyn visited in Paris in the late 17th century and where he commented specifically on its incorporation of //'all sorts of varietys of grounds...hills, meadows, growne Wood. & Upland, both artificial and natural'//.