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TheEnglish landscape garden, also calledEnglish landscape park or simply theEnglish garden (French:Jardin à l'anglaise,Italian:Giardino all'inglese,German:Englischer Landschaftsgarten,Portuguese:Jardim inglês,Spanish:Jardín inglés), is a style of "landscape"garden which emerged inEngland in the early 18th century, and spread acrossEurope, replacing the more formal, symmetricalFrench formal garden which had emerged in the 17th century as the principal gardening style of Europe.[1] The English garden presented an idealized view of nature. Created and pioneered byWilliam Kent and others, the "informal" garden style originated as a revolt against the architectural garden and drew inspiration fromlandscape paintings bySalvator Rosa,Claude Lorrain, andNicolas Poussin, as well as from the classicChinese gardens of the East,[2] which had recently been described by European travellers and were realized in the Anglo-Chinese garden.[2][3][4]
The English garden usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set againstgroves of trees, and recreations of classical temples,Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. The work ofLancelot "Capability" Brown was particularly influential. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by theFrench landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, inPavlovsk, the gardens of the futureEmperor Paul. It also had a major influence on the forms ofpublic parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century.[5] The English landscape garden was usually centred on theEnglish country house, and many examples in theUnited Kingdom are popular visitor attractions today.
The predecessors of the landscape garden in England were the great parks created by SirJohn Vanbrugh (1664–1726) andNicholas Hawksmoor atCastle Howard (1699–1712),Blenheim Palace (1705–1722), and theClaremont Landscape Garden atClaremont House (1715–1727). These parks featured vast lawns, woods, and pieces of architecture, such as the classical mausoleum designed by Hawksmoor at Castle Howard. At the centre of the composition was the house, behind which were formal and symmetrical gardens in the style of the gardenà la française, with ornate carpets of floral designs and walls of hedges, decorated with statues and fountains. These gardens, modelled after thegardens of Versailles, were designed to impress visitors with their size and grandeur.[6]
The new style that became known as the English garden was invented by landscape designersWilliam Kent andCharles Bridgeman, working for wealthy patrons, includingRichard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham;Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington; and bankerHenry Hoare. These men had large country estates, were members of the anti-royalistWhig Party, had classical educations, were patrons of the arts, and had taken theGrand Tour to Italy, where they had seen the Roman ruins and Italian landscapes they reproduced in their gardens.
William Kent (1685–1748) was an architect, painter and furniture designer who introducedPalladian-style architecture to England. Kent's inspiration came fromPalladio's buildings in theVeneto and the landscapes and ruins around Rome – he lived in Italy from 1709 to 1719, and brought back many drawings of antique architecture and landscapes. His gardens were designed to complement the Palladian architecture of the houses he built.[7]
Charles Bridgeman (1690–1738) was the son of a gardener and an experienced horticulturist, who became the Royal Gardener forQueen Anne andPrince George of Denmark, responsible for tending and redesigning the royal gardens atWindsor,Kensington Palace,Hampton Court,St. James's Park andHyde Park. He collaborated with Kent on several major gardens, providing the botanical expertise which allowed Kent to realize his architectural visions.[6]
Kent created one of the first true English landscape gardens atChiswick House forRichard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. The first gardens that he laid out between 1724 and 1733 had many formal elements of a gardenà la française, including alleys forming apatte d'oie and canals, but they also featured afolly, a picturesque recreation of an Ionic temple set in a theatre of trees. Between 1733 and 1736, he redesigned the garden, adding lawns sloping down to the edge of the river and a small cascade. For the first time the form of a garden was inspired not by architecture, but by an idealized version of nature.[8]
Rousham House in Oxfordshire is considered by some as the most accomplished and significant of William Kent's work.[9] The patron was GeneralJames Dormer, who commissioned Bridgeman to begin the garden in 1727, then brought in Kent to recreate it in 1737. Bridgeman had built a series ofgarden features including agrotto of Venus on the slope along theRiver Cherwell, connected by straight alleys. Kent turned the alleys into winding paths, built a gently turning stream, used thenatural landscape features and slopes, and created a series of views andtableaux decorated with allegorical statues of Apollo, a wounded gladiator, a lion attacking a horse, and other subjects. He placedeyecatchers, pieces of classical architecture, to decorate the landscape, and made use of theha-ha, a concealed ditch that kept grazing animals out of the garden while giving an uninterrupted vista from within. Finally, he added cascades modelled on those of the garden ofVilla Aldobrandini andVilla di Pratolino in Italy, to add movement and drama.[10]
Stowe Gardens, inBuckinghamshire, (1730–1738), was an even more radical departure from the formal French garden. In the early 18th century,Richard Temple, 1st Viscount Cobham, had commissioned Charles Bridgeman to design a formal garden, with architectural decorations byJohn Vanbrugh. Bridgeman's design included an octagonal lake and arotunda (1720–21) designed by Vanbrugh.
In the 1730s,William Kent andJames Gibbs were appointed to work with Bridgeman, who died in 1738. Kent remade the lake in a more natural shape, and created a new kind of garden, which took visitors on a tour of picturesque landscapes. It eventually included a Palladian bridge (1738); a Temple of Venus (1731) in the form of a Palladian villa; a Temple of Ancient Virtues (1737), with statues of famous Greeks and Romans; a Temple of British Worthies (1734–1735), with statues of British heroes; and a Temple of Modern Virtues, which was deliberately left in ruins, which contained a headless statue ofRobert Walpole, Cobham's political rival.[11]
The garden attracted visitors from all over Europe, includingJean-Jacques Rousseau. It became the inspiration for landscape gardens in Britain and on the Continent.
Stourhead, inWiltshire (1741–1780), created by bankerHenry Hoare, was one of the first 'picturesque' gardens, inspired to resemble the paintings ofClaude Lorrain. Hoare had travelled to Italy on theGrand Tour and had returned with a painting by Claude Lorrain. Hoare dammed a stream on his estate, created a lake, and surrounded the lake with landscapes and architectural constructions representing the different steps of the journey of Aeneas in theAeneid byVirgil.[12]
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The most influential figure in the later development of the English landscape garden wasLancelot "Capability" Brown (1716–1783), who began his career in 1740 as a gardener atStowe Gardens underCharles Bridgeman, then succeededWilliam Kent in 1748.
Brown's contribution was to simplify the garden by eliminating geometric structures, alleys, and parterres near the house and replacing them with rolling lawns and extensive views out to isolated groups of trees, making the landscape seem even larger. "He sought to create an ideal landscape out of the English countryside."[13] He created artificial lakes and used dams and canals to transform streams or springs into the illusion that a river flowed through the garden.
He compared his own role as agarden designer to that of a poet or composer. "Here I put a comma, there, when it's necessary to cut the view, I put a parenthesis; there I end it with a period and start on another theme."[14]
Brown designed 170 gardens. The most important were:
Humphry Repton (21 April 1752 – 24 March 1818) was the last great English landscape designer of the eighteenth century, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown.[15] Repton hit upon the idea of becoming a "landscape gardener" (a term he himself coined) after failing at various ventures and, sensing an opportunity after Brown's death, was ambitious to fill the gap and sent circulars round his contacts in the upper classes advertising his services. To help clients visualize his designs, Repton produced 'Red Books' (so called for their binding)[16] with explanatory text and watercolors with a system of overlays to show 'before' and 'after' views.[17]
In 1794Richard Payne Knight andUvedale Price simultaneously published vicious attacks on the 'meagre genius of the bare and bald', criticizing Brown's smooth, serpentine curves as bland and unnatural and championing rugged and intricate designs, composed according to 'picturesque theory' that designed landscapes should be composed like landscape paintings, with a foreground, a middle ground and a background. Early in his career, Repton defended Brown's reputation during the 'picturesque controversy'. However, as his career progressed Repton came to apply picturesque theory to the practice of landscape design. He believed that the foreground should be the realm of art (with formal geometry and ornamental planting), that the middle ground should have a parkland character of the type created by Brown and that the background should have a wild and 'natural' character. Repton re-introduced formal terraces,balustrades, trellis work and flower gardens around the house in a way that became common practice in the nineteenth century.[18]
Repton published four major books on garden design:Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening (1795),Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1803),An Inquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening (1806) andFragments on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening (1816).[18] These drew on material and techniques used in the Red Books. These works greatly influenced other landscape-designers includingJohn Claudius Loudon,John Nash,Jean-Charles Adolphe Alphand,Hermann Ludwig Heinrich Pückler-Muskau andFrederick Law Olmsted.[18]
One aspect of the new style was making woodland more interesting and ornamental, leading to the establishment of thewoodland garden as a distinct type. This took several forms, one of which was helped by the developingGothic revival.Horace Walpole, a great promoter of the English landscape garden style, praisedPainshill in Surrey, whose varied features included a shrubbery with American plants, and a sloping "Alpine Valley" ofconifers, as one of the best of the new style of "forest or savage gardens".[19] This was a style of woodland aiming at thesublime, a newly-fashionable concept in literature and the arts, or at the least to bepicturesque, another new term. It really required steep slopes, even if not very high, along which paths could be made revealing dramatic views, by which contemporary viewers who had readGothic novels like Walpole'sThe Castle of Otranto (1764) were very ready to be impressed.[20]
The appropriate style of garden buildings wasGothic rather thanNeoclassical, and exotic planting was more likely to be evergreen conifers rather than flowering plants, replacing "the charm of bright, pleasant scenery in favour of the dark and rugged, gloomy and dramatic".[21] A leading example of the style wasStudley Royal inNorth Yorkshire, which had the great advantage, at what was known as "The Surprise View", of suddenly revealing a distant view from above of the impressive ruins ofFountains Abbey.[22]
At Stowe, Capability Brown followed the new fashion between 1740 and 1753 by adding a new section to the park, called Hawkwelle Hill or the Gothic promenade, with a Gothic revival building.[23] Walpole had decided in 1751 "to go Gothic", as he put it in a letter, and thereafter was a leading propagandist for the style, with his own house,Strawberry Hill inTwickenham, still the most extreme example of 18th-century "Gothick" style.[24]
According to some writers, especially French ones, theFar East inspired the origins of the English landscape garden, via Holland. In 1685, the English writer, formerly a diplomat atThe Hague,Sir William Temple wrote an essayUpon the garden ofEpicurus (published in 1690), including a passage which contrasted European symmetrical and formal gardens with asymmetrical compositions from China, for which he introduced (as Chinese) the termsharawadgi, in fact probably a mangled Japanese word for "irregularity".[25][26][27] Temple had never visited the Far East, but he was in contact with the Dutch and their discourse on irregularity in design, had spoken to a merchant who had been in the Far East for a long time, and read the works of European travellers there. He noted thatChinese gardens avoided formal rows of trees and flower beds, and instead placed trees, plants, and other garden features in irregular ways to strike the eye and create beautiful compositions, with an understatement criticizing the formal compositions of the gardens at thePalace of Versailles ofLouis XIV of France.[28] His observations on the Chinese garden were cited by the essayistJoseph Addison in an essay in 1712, who used them to attack the English gardeners who, instead of imitating nature, tried to make their gardens in the French style, as far from nature as possible.[29]
The novelty and exoticism of Chinese art and architecture in Europe led in 1738 to the construction of the first Chinese-style building in an English garden, in the garden ofStowe House, at a time whenchinoiserie was popular in most forms of thedecorative arts across Europe. The style became even more popular thanks toWilliam Chambers (1723–1796), who lived in China from 1745 to 1747, and wrote a book,Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines, and Utensils. To which is annexed, a Description of their Temples, Houses, Gardens, &c. published in 1757. In 1761 he built theGreat Pagoda, London, as part ofKew Gardens, a park with gardens and architecture symbolizing all parts of the world and all architectural styles. Thereafter Chinesepagodas began to appear in other English gardens, then in France and elsewhere on the continent. French observers coined the termJardin Anglo-Chinois (Anglo-Chinese garden) for this style of garden.[27][30]
Descriptions of English gardens were first brought to France byJean-Bernard, abbé Le Blanc, who published accounts of his voyage in 1745 and 1751. A treatise, and tour guide, on the English garden,Observations on Modern Gardening, written byThomas Whately and published in London in 1770, was translated into French and German in 1771. After the end of theSeven Years' War in 1763, French noblemen were able to voyage to England and see the gardens for themselves, and the style began to be adapted in French gardens. The new style also had the advantage of requiring fewer gardeners, and was easier to maintain, than the French garden.[31]
One of the first English gardens on the continent was atErmenonville, in France, built by marquisRené Louis de Girardin from 1763 to 1776 and based on the ideals ofJean Jacques Rousseau, who was buried within the park. Rousseau and the garden's founder had visited Stowe a few years earlier. Other early examples were theDésert de Retz, Yvelines (1774–1782); the Gardens of theChâteau de Bagatelle in theBois de Boulogne, west of Paris (1777–1784);TheFolie Saint James, inNeuilly-sur-Seine, (1777–1780); and theChâteau de Méréville, in theEssonne department, (1784–1786). Even at Versailles, the home of the most classical of all French gardens, a small English landscape park with a Roman temple was built and a mock village, theHameau de la Reine (1783–1789), was created forMarie Antoinette.
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The new style also spread to Germany. The centralEnglish Grounds of Wörlitz, in thePrincipality of Anhalt, was laid out between 1769 and 1773 byLeopold III, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau, based on the models ofClaremont,Stourhead andStowe Landscape Gardens. Another notable example was TheEnglischer Garten inMunich,Germany, created in 1789 by SirBenjamin Thompson (1753–1814).
In the Netherlands the landscape-architect Lucas Pieters Roodbaard (1782–1851) designed several gardens and parks in this style.[citation needed] The style was introduced to Sweden byFredrik Magnus Piper.
InPoland the main example of this style isŁazienki Park inWarsaw. The garden scheme owes its shape and appearance mainly to the last king of the countryStanisław August Poniatowski. In another part of thePolish–Lithuanian Commonwealth theSofiyivka Park (Zofiówka), nowUkraine, was designed by CountStanisław Szczęsny Potocki so as to illustrate theOdyssey and theIliad.
The style also spread rapidly toRussia, where in 1774Catherine the Great adapted the new style in thepark of her palace atTsarskoe Selo, complete with amock Chinese village and aPalladian bridge, modeled after that atWilton House. Amuch larger park was created for her sonPaul in the neighbouring estate ofPavlovsk. TheMonrepos Park is sited on the rocky island of Linnasaari in theVyborg Bay and is noted for its glacially deposited boulders and granite rocks.
The continental European "English garden" is characteristically on a smaller scale; many are in or on the edge of cities, rather than in the middle of the countryside. Such gardens usually lack the sweeping vistas of gently rolling ground and water, which in England tend to be set against a woodland background with clumps of trees and outlier groves. Instead, they are often more densely studded with "eye-catchers", such asgrottoes,temples,tea-houses,belvederes,pavilions,sham ruins, bridges, and statues. The nameEnglish garden – not used in theUnited Kingdom, where "landscape garden" serves – differentiates it from the formalBaroque design of the gardenà la française. One of the best-known English gardens in Europe is theEnglischer Garten inMunich.
The dominant style was revised in the early 19th century to include more "gardenesque"[32] features, includingshrubberies with gravelled walks, tree plantations to satisfy botanical curiosity, and, most notably, the return of flowers, in skirts of sweeping planted beds. This is the version of the landscape garden most imitated in Europe in the 19th century. The outer areas of the "home park" ofEnglish country houses retain their naturalistic shaping. English gardening since the 1840s has been on a more restricted scale, closer and more allied to the residence.
The canonical EuropeanEnglish park contains a number ofRomantic elements. Always present is apond or small lake with apier or bridge. Overlooking the pond is a round or hexagonalpavilion, often in the shape of amonopteros, a Roman temple. Sometimes the park also has a"Chinese" pavilion. Other elements include agrotto and imitationruins.
A second style of English garden, which became popular during the 20th century in France and northern Europe, is based on the style of the late 19th-century Englishcottage garden,[33] with abundant mixed planting of flowers, intended to appear largely unplanned.
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