We do not recommend historic ’styles’ as a basis for garden design. This is because heritage gardens were made under different social, conceptual and technical conditions. But we are very much in favour of maintaining historic gardens ‘in the style to which they were accustomed’. You would not want to see MDF in a historic house and you would not, we hope, want to see modern hybrid plants in an important historic garden.

BUT if you do have a historic garden then it is very important to have as full a knowledge of possible of the historic style category to which it belongs. The above chart, from Tom Turner’s book on Garden History, represents the historic styles of western garden design in diagramatic form. There is also a detailed explanation of the styles, with a great deal of reference material, in the Garden History Reference Encyclopedia CD. Or there is an eBook on 24 Historic Styles of Garden Design.