{"id":11192,"date":"2020-10-06T13:47:58","date_gmt":"2020-10-06T12:47:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/?p=11192"},"modified":"2020-10-06T14:34:23","modified_gmt":"2020-10-06T13:34:23","slug":"river-thames-landscape-and-gardens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/river-thames-landscape-and-gardens\/","title":{"rendered":"River Thames Landscape and Gardens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PMa2Ma0mi8U\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\r\n<p>Jane Webb published <em>The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century<\/em> in 1827 and, through it, met her future husband, John Claudius Loudon. A pioneering sci-fi novel, it envisages London in 300 years time. In different ways, Jane and John had shared interests in gardens and futurology. This passage from\u00a0 <em>The Mummy<\/em> envisages the Thames&#8217; landscape and gardens the 22nd century.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n<p><em>The weather was now delicious; the autumnal tints, that had just begun to\u00a0 change the lovely verdure of summer into a glowing brown, gave richness to the landscape. <strong>Since the abolition of coal and wood fires<\/strong>, the air of London had become pure and bright, though it still remained soft from its vicinity to the river, and it was thus highly favourable to vegetation : whilst, as <strong>no house was permitted to approach within a certain distance<\/strong> of the Thames, <strong>the sumptuous gardens that bordered its banks were beautiful in the extreme<\/strong>. That of Mr. Montagu, which has been so often alluded to, was in particular laid out in the greatest taste ; and its grateful shade and delicious fragrance calmed poor Clara&#8217;s troubled spirits, and soothed them to repose. Nothing, indeed, could have a more lulling effect upon the harassed senses than the scene before her. The air was perfectly still ; not a leaf was agitated, not a flower stirred ; all nature seemed to repose, but Clara alone felt restless.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\r\n<p>She was very right about London&#8217;s needs clean air, for riverside gardens and for unbuilt-on riverside public open space. Measures contributing to her vision have been implemented. But there is much more to do. So I plan to make and publish a set of videos &#8211; as an inspiration to Londoners of what they should be pressing their elected councils to do AND what they should not do.<\/p>\r\n<div id=\"attachment_11196\" style=\"width: 635px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11196\" class=\"size-large wp-image-11196\" src=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill-863x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"625\" height=\"742\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill-863x1024.jpg 863w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill-253x300.jpg 253w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill-768x911.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill-624x740.jpg 624w, https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/John_Martin_Richmond_Hill.jpg 900w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-11196\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The View from Richmond Hill has been protected from development. The painting is by the Loudon&#8217;s friend, John Martin, and is in accord with John Claudius Loudon&#8217;s 1829 Breathing Zone Plan for London<\/p><\/div>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jane Webb published The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century in 1827 and, through it, met her future husband, John Claudius Loudon. A pioneering sci-fi novel, it envisages London in 300 years time. In different ways, Jane and John had shared interests in gardens and futurology. This passage from\u00a0 The Mummy envisages the Thames&#8217; [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11192"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11192"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11200,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11192\/revisions\/11200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}