Gardenesque planting design

'Mr Loudon insisted that ‘on no account whatever is the knife to be applied to any tree or shrub, except to remove dead wood. No decaying leaves are on any account to be removed; pruning is prohibited. Every plant is to be allowed as perfect a freedom of growth as if it were in its native habitat. Exotic plants in natural arrangements is the true Gardenesque approach. Knowledge gives power.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

The origin of Loudon's gardenesque planting design principle

When Loudon moved from Edinburgh to London, in 1803, his ambition was to revolutionise garden design on Picturesque lines. Knowing the wild natural scenery of Scotland, he believed there was little that could be described as 'natural' in the design work of Lancelot 'Capability' Brown. So he wanted to make gardens that were genuinely natural. At this point, he probably shared the general view that the ancient and geometrical gardens of the Renaissance and Baroque periods were boastful and boring. He changed his mind about this in the course of the European tours that preceded the publication of his Encyclopaedia of Gardening in 1822. His conclusion was that the 'ancient' and 'modern' styles could be good or bad, depending on the skill of the designer.

Towards the end of the 1820s he read Quatremère de Quincy's book and was persuaded that if a garden 'design' could be mistaken for wild nature then 'it could not be admitted to the circle of the fine arts.' His solution to this aesthetic problem was 

- draw compositional principles from wild nature

- for the planting, use the exotic plants then flooding into Britain from all parts of the known world

The name he chose for this style of planting design was Gardenesque. It referred to a design style that was both like a garden and like a picture of natural scenery by a landscape painter. Such a design, he argued, would satisify the Principle of Recognition: the design would be recognisable as a work of art. So the original idea for Gardenesque Planting was to use exotic garden plants in Picturesque (naturalistic) compositions. The aim was for the design to be 'Recognisable' as a work of art that could not be mistaken for natural/wild scenery.

In the 1830s this idea was extended, as indicated in the above quotation from The Claudians. Loudon had other ideas for making gardens recognisable as works of art. This could be done:

- by making flower beds with geometrical shapes: circles, squares, parterres etc

- by letting plants grow in their natural forms, without being pruned and separated from other plants so that they could display their natural form

- by what he described as the 'high keeping' of paths and lawns

See also: Loudon's Gardenesque planting in his own front garden, in Porchester Terrace, Bayswater, London.