Boston Society of Landscape Architects Spring Fieldbook Volume 14.1 | Página 4

“By all accounts Waugh’s artistry and creativity extended to his
teaching—inside the classroom and out. In 1899, Waugh remarked, ‘I
have always conducted my classes on the assumption that, while no
student is likely to become a landscape gardener, all are bound to
see many of the beautiful pictures in Nature’s gallery, and these they
ought to understand and enjoy.’ For many years in Massachusetts he
offered the college’s only instruction in art appreciation, using great
paintings (especially the work of the French landscape artist Corot,
of which he owned a set of prints) to inspire a love of landscape
and illustrate the universal principles of fine art. Outdoor study was
fundamental to Waugh’s approach (he once commented that even
the study of economics would be greatly humanized if only students
could meet the subject in the garden). Exercises in plant identification
would dispatch Waugh’s students across the campus and into the
surrounding hills in search of climbing vines or native asters. For
advanced students the campus became an ideal laboratory where,
under Waugh’s tutelage, they examined real-life problems and were
given the opportunity to execute their own designs.

LEFT
“Flute and Brook Harmonize in a Duet,”
self-portrait published in American
Forests and Forestry Life, June 1925.
UMass Special Collections.

Woodbury’s Sugarwoods 6½”x8½”

“Waugh’s best-known exercise, ‘landscape links,’ led
students through a series of outdoor viewpoints—a process he
compared to an afternoon walk where ‘one tramps leisurely from
point to point, stopping to contemplate at ease each good view.’
To compare landscape art with the fine art of music, he would
encourage his students to listen to the music of a free-flowing stream,
and, seated on a ledge-like boulder, he would play his flute in
cadence with the sound of ‘water running downhill.’ Such lessons were
memorable and appealed to nonprofessional as well as
professional students.”
While Waugh may not be a renowned practitioner, his impact of
the day’s practitioners is clearly evident. The foundation in natural
systems, awareness of landscape history, and art appreciation and his
then-uncommon instructional techniques, he instilled in his students
is still felt today. Not only are these methods still employed on the
UMass campus but on campuses across the world.

2

BSLA

McClelland, Linda F. Introduction. Book of
Landscape Gardening. By Frank A. Waugh. UMass
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Amherst Press.
2008. viii, xxiii-xxiv, xxxiv. Print.

RIGHT
Etching by Frank Waugh, from the personal
collection of Annaliese Bischoff, ASLA, Reprinted
with permission.

“Frank Waugh (1869-1943), one of the pioneers of landscape
architecture education, was also a noted author, having penned
more than 20 books and 300 technical bulletins, reports, pamphlets,
and magazine articles on topics from design to pomology. He not
only founded the second university-level landscape architecture
program, but also constructed Wilder Hall, the first university
building specifically for landscape architecture education.“
Waugh’s arguably most renowned work, Book on Landscape
Gardening, was issued in three editions over a span of twentyseven years. As part of the ASLA Centennial Reprint Series, the
University of Massachusetts Press, in association with the Library of
American Landscape History, released a reprint in 2007 with a new
introduction by Linda Flint McClelland. This article includes excerpts
from McClelland’s introduction in the reprint

2014 Boston Society of Landscape Architects