Gardenvisit.com The Landscape Guide

*Forest Style 1710

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Use: The idea of the garden as a rural retreat grew in deliberate contrast to the high baroque style but retained its geometry. Owners shunned courtly life. Their proud intention was to make 'useful and beautiful' country retreats, as Virgil had done. Timber production was an important land use. Avenues were made by planting trees, not by cutting rides through existing forest. The name for the style comes from Stephen Switzer. It could also be called 'English Baroque'.

Form: The radial geometry was carried over from the high baroque. The boundary was often a low retaining wall with bastions at turning points giving views over the surrounding countryside. There was an interest in lines of view, sometimes emphasised by low hedges on the inside margins of avenues, meeting the estate boundary at bastion points.

 

Cirencester Park,