Charleston Gardens and the Landscape Legacy of Loutrel Briggs provides a fascinating account of the life and career of renowned landscape architect Loutrel Briggs (1893-1977), the individual most directly responsible for the development of Charleston’s distinctive garden style. Through insightful text and nearly 140 illustrations, accomplished landscape architect and award-winning garden historian James R. Cothran provides the most complete portrait to date of Briggs, his continuing impact on the iconic gardens of Charleston, and his legacy in the lowcountry. A native of New York and a graduate of Cornell University, Briggs first visited Charleston in 1927 to experience firsthand the city’s incomparable springtime beauty and picturesque charm. Briggs was enamored by the city and opened a seasonal office in Charleston in 1929. For the next three decades he divided his practice between New York and Charleston, finally becoming a permanent resident of Charleston in 1959. Briggs completed an impressive array of private and public landscape projects, including Mepkin, McLeod, Mulberry, and Rice Hope plantations; Charleston’s Gateway Walk; the William Gibbes house garden; and the South Carolina Memorial Garden, but he is best known for his designs of many small Charleston gardens. He is credited with designing more than one hundred private gardens in Charleston’s historic district alone. In these plans Briggs drew on his remarkable sense of scale, harmony, and tradition to work wonders in limited urban spaces. Some of these gardens survive today while others have been lost to natural causes, redesign, or neglect. Cothran’s comprehensive work champions a renewed appreciation of the contributions Briggs made to Charleston’s landscape tradition and serves as a timely call to action to preserve his gardens and legacy. In addition to documenting the life and works of his subject, Cothran also provides information on the use of garden easements as an effective means of preserving historic gardens, techniques aimed at the preservation of Charleston gardens but equally applicable to efforts in other locations as well.
