The idea
In 1983, following completion of the designs for Sutton Place, Geoffrey Jellicoe at
last felt able
to consider other work. A young botanist, Peter Atkins, made contact with him. Atkins had
himself been entrusted with an appealing task by the Moody Foundation of Galveston, Texas.
He had been funded to undertake a six month study period at Kew. His own brief had been
agreed beforehand. He was to undertake a scheme for the layout of a botanical garden on the
island of Galveston, adjoining an abandoned airfield and its wild hinterland of wetlands.
With Galveston, Geoffrey Jellicoe recognised a challenge. If he could pull it off
here, he felt, and
given the budget and the necessary will on the part of the foundation, he could establish a
masterpiece of twentieth century landscape design that would incorporate an ecological and
botanical perspective within a major work of landscape art. He was on.
The subsequent terms of reference given to him at this point were fairly broad and
within an
overall budget of some thirty million dollars, as well as an annual operational target of not more
than one and a half million dollars at 1985 prices.
The island of Galveston nestles close in to the coast of Texas. In 1900 it contained
a
prosperous city that was suddenly all but annihilated by a massive inundation in which some
six thousand people were lost. Today it is again a successful community, secure now behind a
massive sea wall. The island is some thirty miles long, and on average some two miles wide.
The seawall runs for ten and a half miles and is fifteen feet high. Thus Seawall Boulevard had
been created, and runs its full length as a four lane seaside thoroughfare. At the south end of
this the route leads on to the wetlands beyond, and the adjoining airfield site.
Galveston's population runs close to seventy thousand, but the proximity of the city
of Houston
swells this throughout the holiday period. Even after summer's 'golden months' there comes an
illusion of stability and natural equilibrium: great sea shells lie unheeded on the clean sands,
while cranes, wild geese and duck migrate in overhead and settle in the wetlands.
Nature in the Gulf of Mexico is volatile with extremes of temperature and the salt
content in the
air can retard plant growth drastically. Perhaps it was to address this challenge and surmount
it in a truly Texan manner that the Moody Foundation decided to approach Jellicoe with the
commission for a design to provide an ambitious and superlative set of gardens such as has
never previously existed in the history of landscape design.
Galveston as a leisure and domestic environment does not lack for supporters. In the
mid-
1980s, a New York-based survey comparing American cities rated Galveston '12th Best Place
to Live in the USA', out of 277 such cities, while New York City rated 156th.
Yet such a project as the Moody Gardens seems implausible, a wild fantasy. The wetlands
appear to hang on the edge of the known world. From the air, this expanse of flat oblivion offers
only the negation of life. These 126 acres are bounded by the ocean on one side. On the other
lies the airfield and its abandoned sections in the form of a disused runway and some curiously
triangulated canals with, more usefully, a service road running the full length of the site. There
are also two existing flight paths serving the operational airport itself, limiting building potential
and accepting a flight density of up to fifty planes per day. Conditions are hardly ideal.
With confidence in his own skills, and a lifetime of design experience to draw upon,
he
addressed himself with a sense of urgency to this massive direction of material wealth to the
empty expanse of wetlands. Here close to the end of his working life, he had been presented
with the opportunity to create a landscape design of unprecedented significance.
In his first proposal of April 1984, Jellicoe reached for 'majesty, drama, and singleness
of
purpose'. 'It would have been the grandest landscape in the modern world', as he put it at the
time. Yet in what manner does the designer communicate such a grand plan to the average
visitor as he wanders through it? This, Jellicoe found, was the dilemma. He believes today that
this can only be achieved by reaching the individual subconscious mind. It is not a theme park.
'Like a grand opera. . . there must be a sense of having been through an experience that is
greater than life. . .like a grand opera'. This must be achieved by the symbolism of the
landscape and the way in which it finds its way subliminally to the unconscious mind.
The concept for this first scheme is of major relevance in any understanding of Jellicoe's
work,
since it essentially forms the third and final element in what he considered to be a trilogy, three
consecutive projects which he referred to at the time as his 'Augustan poets' series. The series
of landscapes was founded upon the works of Virgil, Ovid and Lucretius. Modena related
naturally to the works of Virgil. Brescia harked back to Ovid. Now, as at Sutton Place, Jellicoe
turned readily to Lucretius. Galveston provided a context within which the lengthy Lucretian
work De Rerum Natura provided a message that struck at the very basis of human life and its
place in nature.
Jellicoe was aware of the growing apprehension in the 1980s concerning the survival
both of
man and of nature. With Epicurean guile and elegantly persuasive verse, Lucretius set out in
his great work to draw humanity back to its origins, abandoning the accumulated superstitions
and prejudices which confused these basic truths. As he wrote:
This dread and darkness
of the mind cannot be dispelled by the sunbeams,
the shining shafts of
day, but only by an understanding of the outward form
and inner workings of
nature.
Jellicoe grasped this central concept. There had to be a single purpose here, the
provision
within a single primary idea, of a garden of plants, not in any way related to humanity as such.
This essential, primary idea accordingly had to accommodate, as Jellicoe put it:
The terryifying forces
of nature. . . the creation of haven for plant life in the midst of
chaos, and the work of man to preserve this life by protecting walls, water, soil, and
service paths. There is no human history here, only that of the plant and the assembly
of species from all over the entire globe.
Contrasting with the surrounding wastelands and the ravages of the Gulf of Mexico
against
these wetlands, the Moody Botanical Gardens would provide a scientific exposition of natural
botanical evolution, laid out in a pattern of rhythmic spaces with the same cohesion and
harmony as a musical score. On the periphery the sea would even be permitted to reclaim
some of the wetland areas: at this point the Sea Restaurant would stand, perched on the partly
submerged promontory to the north of the site, and only accessible by boat. It would stand, so
to speak, on the edge of the known world.
The entire site was to be enclosed by a dyke some fifteen feet high. along this would
run a
triple row of trees. The enclosed space would contain over fifty quarter-acre plots, each
designed with special reference to the ecology and habitat of given species of plants.
Within the Mountain Divide, underneath the pinnacle of the Magic Mountain the first
landscape
of man is discovered: the great oval cavern of Lascaux a replica of the cavern location and its
complex imagery from prehistory. Jellicoe has ingeniously contrived the perfect subject with
which to create a further, underground dimension for the visitor.
Various leisure activities would be concentrated at the eastern end of the site, close
to the
entrance. From here the circuit begins.
The visitor would board a water-bus for the trip through the whole complex, quietly
and stage by
stage progressing down a long and arcaded water avenue, through water arches and past
gargoyles, passing along the way four evenly spaced out glasshouses of pyramid form.
Gradually the range, size and variety of botanical growth would increase the perception of the
traveller, moving detachedly as through a non-human universe. And so the world perceived by
Lucretius would emerge for man 'in' a botanical landscape of the universe. The theme is one of
creation, growth, pollination and survival of species on the edge of chaos. The sea gives and
the sea takes back. So was an Epicurean philosophy to be translated into the art of landscape
as a comprehensible, perceptible experience.
So in the single grand idea of the universe here contained, Jellicoe extrapolated
a concept of
the world as it might be. Between order and chaos he offered, in this first set of proposals, a
twenty- first century world view of which human aspirations form a part, merging with the
inspiration of the collective unconscious to beget the survival of all species.
In the final analysis it is this first scheme for the Moody Foundation which surely
must be
Jellicoe's finest epitaph, a distillation which he proposes will take the art of landscape forward
into the third millennium. Nor are historical references, allegories or myths required where
science and the knowledge of plants are themselves explicit about the essence of life and its
ensuing ecologies. The purity of this idea stands as his witness. The symphony, although
scored in draft, for the most part in 1984, will never be performed. Yet it remains, so to speak,
the great unfinished symphony of landscape today.
Medieval Europe, Islam/Mughal India, Classical Rome. Here Jellicoe reveals the delights
of the
formalised garden as developed in Classical Rome. AD 79 marks the period of the house of the
Vettii, here paraphrased together with (centre) the parallel and later developments in Mughal
India. Later the medieval garden emerged with the symbolism that continues to interest Jellicoe
today.
In our mind's eye, the return journey winds back along a less formalised route than
before, the
water-bus threads its way lazily through the great open botanical plantings with their orderly
gridding. The Texan sun is deflected by the canopy over the boat: now and then we remain
aware of an aircraft passing overhead, and of the movement of the sea against the fifteen foot
high man- made barrier of the dyke guarding the periphery.
The problem was that the botanical gardens in themselves, as originally conceived
by the
Moody Foundation, would never generate enough income from admissions to establish basic
feasibility.
In later discussions, when the whole saga of Galveston had been completed, and the
drawings
fully documented for the second full proposal, Jellicoe would draw on the written work of a
number of authors, using passages of prose almost like a tuning fork, testing out relevances.
For instance, there is a compelling passage in V S Naipaul's The Enigma of Arrival. Naipaul's
figure describes a journey made between first coming and actual arrival. After many tribulations
and some fear and confusion, the visitor:
. . .would come upon a
door, open it, and find himself back on the quayside of arrival.
He has been saved; the world is as he remembered it. Only one thing is missing now.
Above the cut-out walls and buildings there is no mast, no sail. The antique ship has
gone. The traveller has lived out his life.
For Jellicoe, the end of the journey must signify arrival, rather than any ending.
There must
have been a sense of revelation. The world cannot just be as one remembered it. Life must
have been enriched by its very passage, individually and collectively.
The influence of Jung grew perceptibly as a force within Jellicoe's thinking as the
Galveston
project continued. Between the first proposal and the last, he felt increasingly concerned over
what Jung has referred to as 'loss of soul' in man. How, Jellicoe wondered, could one reconcile
the Lucretian ideal with the growth of scientific materialism? Where was the spirit of man as
the twentieth century approached its final decade? In Jung's view it could at least be verified
through the working hypothesis of the collective unconscious.
Such thoughts assisted Jellicoe in moving forward from this first proposal, that of
1984, through
to the 1985 scheme which has become the basis of the present proposals. The project now is
much smaller than its precursor, and rather more complicated, the fruit of compromise at many
stages. At one point he had claimed that it was not really comparable in grandeur. Appendix III
is an extract of an article by Jellicoe on the Historical Gardens of the Moody Foundation, as
they came to be known.
With a view to securing a sound degree of financial self-sufficiency the brief was
now amended
to include an hotel, a theatre, an expanded educational facility, and a form of nursery for the
study of plant growth and research facilities and linked to the ecology of the remaining
wetlands. Much of the initial Lucretian influence remained, but the necessity of providing a
major theme that would further attract visitors on an increasing scale led to the decision to
incorporate what Jellicoe called 'The Landscape of Civilisation as Experienced in The Moody
Historical Gardens'. The metamorphosis was dramatic. The Landscape of Man had, of course,
been published by Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe in 1975, and as a primary text proved an instant
success. This now became the basis for the Moody Historical Gardens, which balanced
developments between western and eastern civilisations over the centuries. In May 1985
Jellicoe produced, in a hotel bedroom in Seattle where he was staying at the time, the basic
idea in sketch form. Over the next three years he refined the project in every detail drawing
effortlessly upon his historical knowledge and experience.
Instantly Jellicoe seemed to have adjusted to the necessary reality that the project
must be
operationally self-financing. The result is one which exploits the romantic/classical difference in
landscape thinking and the contrast between romantic and secular landscapes, mainly from
France, England and Russia, with the more spiritual gardens and landscapes created in China
and Japan. By way of contrast the classical landscapes, ranging from Persia through the Italian
Renaissance and beyond, complete the picture. Over four so-called primeval cultures Jellicoe
accordingly laid twelve civilisations. The gardens were intended to remain true to the original
ideal of expressing the ultimate unity of all existence. As Anthony Storr writes:
Jung's belief in the ultimate unity of all existence led him to suppose that physical
and mental
as well as spatial and temporal were human categories imposed upon reality which did not
accurately reflect it.
Jellicoe liked also to quote from the collected works of Jung:
For indeed our consciousness
does not create itself - it wells up from unknown depths.
In childhood it awakens gradually, and all through life it wakes each morning out of the
depths of sleep from an unconscious condition.
The vision
Throughout the aftermath of the Galveston presentation, in 1986 and 1987, and during
the
painstaking production of the detailed drawings, Jellicoe continued to amend and refine the
scheme. Resigned now to the eventuality of never himself seeing the finished project, let alone
perhaps even a start, he has continued to believe that the best guarantee of progress in that
direction would be through ensuring the widest possible public and professional awareness of
the project.
One important amendment derived from his continuing exploration of the workings of
the human
subconscious, searching out the roots of superstition, and the impulses that breed
romanticism, rather than sweeping these emotions and feelings away in a grand Epicurean
gesture. As a result, the caves at Lascaux were now inserted in replica form (see page 162).
This flashback to the earliest mental landscapes of man coincided with Jellicoe's re-reading of
Jung. Subsequent recourse to Thomas Mann's masterpiece, The Magic Mountain, led to some
rethinking of the space allocated hitherto to the Mughal Garden, which re-emerged as 'the case
for the Magic Mountain'.
Further revisions were made to the western classical sequence: Eden, was now characterised
by the addition of the symbolic apple crowning a bend in the canal.
European Eighteenth Century. Here Jellicoe represents the dichotomy of Classical and
Romantic as articulated in eighteenth century France. The Petit Trianon and the fetishes of
Versailles are reached only after the water-bus has swept past a romantic landscape that
evokes in its contrived drama the world of Salvator Rosa. (Drawings here and opposite of the
final scheme)
The English Eighteenth Century. Capability Brown seemed eminently appropriate as a
representative of this period when purism overtook English predilections, and Jellicoe obeys the
rules by removing any public access other than via the water-bus and its passage past the
Belvedere; only deer may roam across these arcadian pastures
Provision was made nearby for small groups of wild animals; viewing balconies were
added. A
prehistoric burial mound was designated within the primeval forest. In the Italian Renaissance
garden, an old friend, the monster of Bomarzo, was imported to fill a void and, while alarming
adults, to attract children. A bronze head of Poseidon has been successfully modelled by the
British sculptor Keith McCarter, to be located close to water trumpets on the walls at the
classical division. A constant refinement was pursued, and the whole scheme embellished
further into 1988 and beyond.
The water-buses themselves seem to convey a childlike sense of wonderment, as they
appear
in the drawings, meandering from one landscape vignette to another, and assist the viewer of
the drawings in relating to scale and content. They possess a curiously typical condition of
buoyant jollity, perhaps no less than a reflection of Jellicoe's own ultimate confidence in the
achievement of the whole project.
For this indeed is Jellicoe's exegesis, his achievement and the fullest possible explanation
of
landscape history, ecology and survival.
To Jellicoe, the emergence of Buddha in this Chinese sanctuary is one of the most
important
events in the sequence, and the water-bus moors in placid waters. This is possibly the greatest
of Jellicoe's Moody drawings, and seems wholly of the twentieth century, reading like an
isolated moonshot or frame-up from a helicopter. Vegetation seems to have been freeze dried
and there is an absolute obligation to disembark, the only instance in the sequence when such
a ritual must be observed.
Attracting
visitors 2004
View the depths of
the world’s oceans from inside the Aquarium at Moody
Gardens, a 12-story pyramid with several marine habitats.
Don’t miss the
lush Rainforest Pyramid or life in space at the Discovery
Pyramid. Thrills and spills await you at the IMAX Theater and the RideFilm.
