Garden and Landscape Studies

The Garden and Landscape Studies program was established in 1972 to support advanced scholarship in garden history and landscape architecture, encompassing the study of culturally and artistically significant landscapes around the world from ancient times to the present. The program seeks to deepen the understanding of landscape and gardens as a field of knowledge and research and as a practice carried out by landscape architects, landscape artists, and gardeners. The program provides support for research and organizes public programs and scholarly events, publications, and art installations.

As of July 1, 2019 Thaïsa Way is Program Director in Garden & Landscape Studies.

May 08, 2020 - May 09, 2020

Spatial Inequalities and Segregation in the Urban Landscape

Garden and Landscape Studies Symposium, Thaisa Way, Symposiarch

Community

Staff Senior Fellows Fellows & Visiting Scholars Project Grant Recipients Newsletter

Plant Humanities Initiative

The Plant Humanities Initiative, a collaboration between Dumbarton Oaks and JSTOR supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is a digital tool with related research and scholarly programming to advance the field of Plant Humanities.

learn More Apply to summer program

Scholarly Activities

View All

May 08, 2020 - May 09, 2020

Spatial Inequalities and Segregation in the Urban Landscape

Garden and Landscape Studies Symposium, Thaisa Way, Symposiarch

Jul 01, 2019 - Jul 26, 2019

Plant Humanities Summer Program

Program for advanced undergraduates and graduate students with an interest in plants from perspectives as different as botany, botanical exploration, the history of science and medicine, environmental studies, art history, and the history of the book and botanical illustration

Recent Garden and Landscape Publications

View All

Landscape and the Academy

River Cities, City Rivers

Sound and Scent in the Garden

Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies

Bringing scholars and practitioners together, the Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies explores how urban environments got to be the way they are and how best to manage them today.

learn more Fellows Senior Practitioners Midday Dialogues Outreach

Resources for Garden and Landscape Scholars

View All

Middle East Garden Traditions

This web-based research tool offers selected catalogues, glossaries, and bibliographies on Umayyad, Abbasid, Andalusian, Ottoman, Mughal, North African, and Safavid gardens from the eighth century to the present.

Digitized Rare Books

Access full digital facsimiles of select titles in the Rare Book Collection.

Ephemera Collection

The Ephemera Collection consists of a variety of materials related to the Byzantine and Pre-Columbian cultures and to worldwide gardens and landscapes that provide an alternative, popular cultural perspective on the academic research fields at Dumbarton Oaks.