Observations On Modern Gardening
Among gardeners, Whately is largely remembered as the author of Observations on Modern Gardening, illustrated by descriptions (London, 1770), written while living in the Mansion House in Nonsuch Park. Close on the heels of George Mason's Essay on Design in Gardening, Whately's Observations provide the most comprehensive work on the theory and practice of English landscape gardening in the naturalistic taste before Horace Walpole's brief Essay on Modern Gardening (1782) and the writings of Humphry Repton. The picturesque landscape style in the manner of idealized landscapes by Salvator Rosa or Claude Lorraine, had been pioneered by Charles Bridgeman in the 1720s, improved by William Kent and eventually dominated by Lancelot "Capability" Brown, but neither had put their thoughts into print.
By 1783, polymath Thomas Jefferson, the future third President of the United States, already had a copy of Whately's book in his library at Monticello. During his European years as Minister to France, he also visited England. Eager to explore and gain practical knowledge for his own garden designs, in April 1786, Jefferson set out for a tour of English gardens in the company of his close friend and future second President of the USA, John Adams. Whately's treatise guiding him every step of the way, Jefferson's near contemporary statement attests to the accuracy and reliability of Whately's description:
Memorandums made on a tour to some of the gardens in England described by Whateley in his book on gardening. While his descriptions in point of style are models of perfect elegance and classical correctness, they are as remarkeable for their exactness. I always walked over the gardens with his book in my hand, examined with attention the particular spots he described, found them so justly characterised by him as to be easily recognised, and saw with wonder, that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him from the truth.
Whately's work went through several editions. Translations in German and French appeared as early as 1771.
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