English-speaking writers on landscape design and its histories are dogged by a particularly nasty linguistic problem: how to define and employ the word formal. 1 This paper is a revised version of a lecture presented at the symposium ‘Formalism in the Garden,’ organized by Eric Haskell, and held joindy at Scripps College and the Huntington Library, April 11–12, 1997. Sir Kenneth Clark once commented that turning lectures into essays was a form of literary suicide, given that verbal performance can mask a multitude of inaccuracies, weak points and scholarly lacunae. The emphasis here, however, is placed on general ideas rather than universal applicability. To some extent I must request the indulgence of the reader who knows of specific examples that might severely strain or disprove my observations. View all notes Unfortunately — alas — its definitions occupy two very different arenas. In one zone, we find fornul defined in relation to shape or design; as the dictionary puts it: ‘relating to or involving the outward form, structure, relationships of, or arrangement of elements rather than content.’ ‘Style of painting’ is offered as an example. 2 These age-old and rather tired distinctions between form and content would be dismissed by critics these days, but it seems to persist in the dictionary and in the collective conscious. View all notes On the other hand, formal can be posited as the antithesis of ‘informal’, that is, ‘characterized by a punctilious respect for form’ (figure 1). This second range of definitions, however, is almost tautological: formal as a punctilious respect for form. Despite the ambiguities that haunt both applications of ‘formal,’ using the word tends to be unavoidable in the study of the designed landscape, compounding enormously our perceptions and critical thinking.