Gardens+with+trees

Perhaps the most important English contribution to the world of art, the 18th century English Landscape Garden has had a huge impact on every subsequent phase of gardening in England. It evolved as a result of three main influences and in four main strands of development.


 * THE INFLUENCES**

1. Change in taste: In the 16th and 17th centuries gardens grew larger, grander and more stiffly formal, especially after the restoration of the monarchy when French influence was most pronounced. By the early 18th century England was at war with France (again!), so French inspired gardens were not only old-fashioned but unpatriotic. Lord Shaftesbury spoke of the "formal mockery of princely gardens" versus the "liberty of wit" in England.

There was a marked change in attitude to Nature: the Renaissance idea of underlying order in nature, the gradual scientific understanding of that order, the increasing cultivation of the countryside and the resultant taming of the landscape all contributed to nature being seen as wonderful rather than dreadful. The delight in and admiration of nature inspired literature, painting and gardening. John Evelyn in his Elysium Britannicum wrote gardening is "that assisting Nature with the addition of Arte" (fol. 53); or, "if Nature prove not so propitious, as to serve our Garden spontaneously with that, without which it will soone become a Wildernesse: Arte must supplie our needes" (fol. ti8a). There is nothing extraordinary for the seventeenth century in these announcements of the joint participation of art and nature in garden-making. What is arguably new, however, are Evelyn's reflections on how and above all why the ratio of art and nature shifts in different situations. Evelyn always sees art and nature working in gardens toward representation. Within the garden, as mutatis mutandis in a painting or a dramatic performance, we see another world imitated, and when art reorganizes natural (and other) materials to that end we are able to see them freshly and significantly. Sometimes it will take more art to make some representations clear; sometimes less, even on occasions allowing unmediated elements of the physical world to represent themselves within the controlled environment of the garden.

Alexander Pope's "Catalogue of Greens" satirised the old formal style of gardening. In 1719 he wrote of poetry, painting and gardening as the three new graces and in his "Essay on Taste" of 1731, advised makers of gardens to "Consult the genius of the place".

2. Change in the landscape: Iron production increased ten-fold in the 17th century, leading to loss of forest cover to provide charcoal for smelting. Population growth, increase in agricultural production and the ravages of a civil war all led to loss of forests. John Evelyn's Sylva of 1664 promoted forestry as a noble and economically sensible endeavour. The Enclosure Acts reshaped much of lowland England and stimulated agricultural improvement. Advances in the early 18th century (seed drill, crop rotation) led to an agricultural revolution in which estates were remodelled in a mixture of practicality and philosophy: re-creation of the Garden of Eden, at a profit!

3. The Grand Tour: A classical education by private tutors exposed young English aristocrats to Virgil's ideal of the simple rural life as the highest achievement of a civilised man, and pointed to the re-creation of the Garden of Eden as a noble pursuit. The Grand Tour to Italy brought these impressionable young men into contact with the classical sources of Renaisssance architecture as re-defined by Palladio and captured in the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Poussin, while the journey through the dramatic scenery of the Alps to Italy filled them with horrid delight.

When the young aristocrats returned to England, laden with works of art, sketchbooks and diaries, they were filled with ambition to transform their own estates. That transformation has four interwoven strands.


 * THE DEVELOPMENT**

1. Evolution of the formal garden to reflect "the genius of the place". Sir John Vanbrugh at Castle Howard, Yorkshire (1699) and Blenheim in Oxfordshire (1709) Charles Bridgeman at Blenheim, Claremont in Surrey, Stowe in Buckinghamshire (1714) and Rousham in Oxfordshire.

The artistic incorporation of trees into garden design is an essentially British development. Although the Stuart gardens had changed dramatically, by the early 18th Century there was a growing discontent with French formality styles. Britain was at war with France, and this brought about a fresh approach to garden design by way of landscape gardening. The first to put the new ideas into practice was Charles Bridgeman, royal gardener to George II (ruled 1727-60). His work for private clients such as Blenheim, Claremont and Rousham House show the innovative spirit of the new era, for example, the introduction of the 'ha-ha', a sunken fence that demarcated the boundaries of an estate without requiring a visible fence, opened up uninterrupted vistas into a countryside strewn with trees in woods and hedgerows, and cleared the way for greater freedom in landscape design by incorporating trees into the garden. At Stowe Bridgeman used the "ha-ha" or sunken boundary to extend garden vistas into the surrounding landscape.

Following in Bridgman's footsteps was William Kent (1684-1748). In 1708 Kent travelled to Italy to study painting, and returned to England in 1719 with many new aspirations and ideas. He was multitalented, and turned his hand to interior design and architecture before finally focusing on landscapes. With his experience and versatility he was the perfect person to meld together the new elements of the new styles. The idealised landscape scenes that Kent created were not English, but took their inspiration from Italy's romantic, classical times - a fusion of art and nature. William Kent (in Italy from 1710 to 1719) brought back by Lord Burlington to help decorate his new villa at Chiswick. Kent worked as a painter and he designed furniture and garden buildings. In 1730, he is reported as working in a new system of gardening, "without level or line": working the garden out on the ground rather than on paper.

2. Development of the Ferme Ornée.The estate of Ermenonville was owned and designed by the Marquis de Girardin, who also wrote a famous book published in English as 'Essay on the means of improving and embellishing the country round our habitations' (London, 1783) [De la Composition des paysages, ou, des moyens d'embellir la nature autour des habitations, en y joignant l'agreable a l'utile (Geneva, 1777)] The chateau is now separately owned and the park belongs to the Touring Club of France. There is a caravan park which has not destroyed the character of the section of the once-larger park which survives. Ermenonville is regarded as the first landscape garden in France, made after the owner's tour of English parks and a visit to William Shenstone at ferme ornee at The Leasowes. It has a lake, woods, a runined temple, a grotto and, its most famous feature, the island on which Jean-Jacques Rousseau was buried. His tomb, now empty because his body was moved to Paris after the Revolution, has the inscription 'Here lies the man of Nature and of Truth'. The ruined temple was inspired by the Italian landscape.

In 1704 the Duke of Shrewsbury married the daughter of an Italian nobleman and made or her a garden at Heythrop, in Oxfordshire, complete with shady walks and cold bath. Steven Switzer, working next door to Heythrop at Blenheim, knew the garden and described it in his Nobleman, Gentleman and Gardener's Recreation (1715) republished in 1718 as Ichnographia Rustica. Switzer proposed a new system of extensive or rural gardening, embellishing the whole landscape to look like a garden.

Philip Southcote, who bought Wooburn Farm, Surrey in 1734, is credited with introducing the term "ferme ornée" to describe his garden / farm. The poet William Shenstone also had a notable ferme ornée, but admitted that this was only because he had not enough land to have both farm and garden.

The effect of the ferme ornée was to blur the distinction between garden, park and farm, and to show the whole landscape as a garden.

3. The mature English Landscape Garden.

Perhaps the most well known designer of this era was Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1716-83). By abandoning the formal continental style Brown's gardens sought to create a stylised imitation of nature, and he built on the foundations laid by Bridgman and Kent. Some say that Brown is responsible for the destruction of many historical gardens - in his thirty working years he influenced and designed over 200 commissions, including among others Longleat House, Blenheim Palace, Petworth Park, Chatsworth and Clumber Park. However, it was Brown who persuaded George III to retain the formal landscapes at Hampton Court. Rather than looking to the classical past, Brown's designs were to be enjoyed for what they were - landscapes that were wholly English in their character and inspiration. The designs looked so natural that you could be standing within one admiring nature and surrounding views - without realising you were standing in something manmade! Perhaps the finest example of Browns work can be seen at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.

Brown was born in Northumberland and, on leaving school at 16, went to work for the local landowner Sir William Lorraine. From 1732-38 Sir William planted some 500,000 trees as part of his improvements. In 1739 Brown moved south and, in 1741 was appointed as head gardener at Stowe, where William Kent was working on the most famous garden in Europe for Lord Cobham. Brown absorbed much from Kent and his employer. Kent died in 1748 and Cobham in 1749. In 1751 Brown moved to Hammersmith, near London and practiced as an architect but worked most notably on re-modelling huge estates - moving hills, making lakes, planting forests and producing simple but memorable landscapes appealing directly to the soul rather than to the intellect. There were more than 200 Brown landscapes, many of them of 2,000 hectares or more. Brown's influence was enormous. Reactions to that success were mixed and many people failed to realise (as they continue to fail today) that Brown was not merely copying nature. The subtlety of his design and his efforts to smooth the unfinished landscape of raw nature are elegantly described in a poem by William Whitehead, a poem which ends by predicting Brown's fate, as people unjustly attribute the beauty of his landscapes to nature alone.

4. The Picturesque.

The late 18th century saw many revolutionary changes in art and in life. Discovery of a robust Greek architecture predating Palladio, re-appraisal of the glory of mediaeval or "gothic" architecture and exposure to the architecture of China and later India destroyed any idea that there was one correct manner of building, the Palladian. New and exotic buildings looked out of place in a smooth Lancelot Brown landscape.

In 1770 William Gilpin began his "Observations" on the more rugged parts of the British landscape, defining and developing a taste for "the Picturesque". The concept of the picturesque was invented in order to deal with the issue of applying a common standard of aesthetics to works of art and nature.

In 1794/5 Uvedale Price published his essay on The Picturesque and Richard Payne Knight wrote his essay on The Landscape. Both criticised Brown's "bare and bald" landscapes and sought to create more exciting, picturesque landscapes.

As Brown had died in 1783 he was unable to reply to these attacks but the defence came from Brown's successor, Humphry Repton (1752-1818). Repton launched into a career as a "landscape gardener" (a term which he devised) when he was 36. He explained his ideas to his patrons in "red books", beautifully illustrated works bound in red Morocco leather. The general principles from the red books were gathered together in four major works which, between them, show the transition in culture and gardens between 1788, when he began his career, and his death in 1818.

With a very different style of design, Brown's successor, Humphry Repton saw skill in combining the beauty of the landscape with the convenience of the garden. Woodland was used, as was moving water, but more irregularly laid out than in Brown's designs. Contoured gravel paths skilfully lead the eye from the house to bring into view specific vistas, and the use of rustic buildings was incorporated into the overall design. Repton was renowned for his 'Red Books'- journals bound in red leather with the aim of marketing to his clients, explaining his proposals and incorporating watercolour paintings that exhibited the 'before' and 'after' images of the planned commission. By the time of his death in 1818, Repton had produced over 400 Red Books. However, by the 1820's, the Industrial Revolution was in full swing, and Repton was the last of his ilk. With the increasing distribution of wealth and the Victorian passion for picturesque formality and overkill, the ingredients of the High Victorian garden were assembled. The garden was now returning to being a work of art rather than a work of nature.

Quoted from Humphry Repton

From Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1795) (describing Richard Payne Knight's estate, Downton Castle)
 * //The path ... branching in various directions ... is occasionally varied and enriched by caves and cells, hovels and covered seats or other buildings in perfect harmony with the wild but pleasing horrors of the scene. Yet, if the same picturesque objects were introduced in the gardens of a villa near the capital or in the tame yet interesting pleasure grounds which I am frequently called upon to decorate they would be as absurd, incongruous and out of character as a Chinese temple from Vauxhall transplanted to the Vale of Downton.//

From Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803)
 * //A flower garden should be an object detached and distinct from the general scenery of the place ... within this enclosure rare plants of every description should be encouraged and a provision made for soil and aspect for every different class.//
 * //The flower garden, except when it is annexed to the house, should not be visible from the roads or walks about the place. It may therefore be of a character totally different from the rest of the scenery, and its decorations should be as much those of art as of nature.//The flower garden, except when it is annexed to the house, should not be visible from the roads or walks about the place. It may therefore be of a character totally different from the rest of the scenery, and its decorations should be as much those of art as of nature.

From Inquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening (1806)
 * //After tracing the various past changes of taste in gardening and architecture I cannot suppress my opinion that we are on the eve of some great future change in both these arts, in consequence of our having lately become acquainted with the scenery and buildings in the interior provinces of India//

From Fragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816)
 * //Having so long dedicated the active part of my professional career to increasing the enjoyment of rural scenery for others, my own infirmities have lately taught me how the solace of garden scenery and garden delights may be extended a little further when the power of walking fails.//

Repton was, by then, confined to a wheelchair after a carriage accident in 1811. When he died in 1818, England was already feeling the effects of the Industrial Revolution, which rapidly became the biggest influence in gardens of the 19th century.