It is convenient to have names for styles when discussing the
history of garden design. The names act as an aide memoir and focus
attention on the changing uses and changing concepts of beauty
which have marked the course of garden history. Unfortunately
several of the names in general use are not sufficiently limited in
scope to be useful for the purpose. The names 'Natural style' and
'Landscape style' are typical examples. They are applied
indiscriminately to eighteenth century English gardens, but both
are vague and confusing. Almost any style could be called 'Natural'
depending on one's concept of nature. And which style should be
called the 'Landscape' style?
There are many contenders. Timothy Nourse, whose ideal garden was a walled
enclosure, first used the word in connection with gardens in 1699
(he said 'let there be walks of trees to adorn the landskip').
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| Illustration of an enclosed garden, from Timothy
Nourse |
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to section heading
Addison was the first, in 1712,
to speak of making a landscape, but Shenstone,
in 1754, is usually given the credit for inventing the term
'landscape gardener'. Lancelot Brown
is the most famous 'landscape gardener' but in fact he called
himself a 'place-maker' (c.1760). His successor, Humphry Repton was the first professional designer to
call himself a landscape gardener (c.1794) but he often used
'improver' as an alternative title. The style of his sometime
friends, Price, and Knight, was the most deliberately based on
the principles of landscape painting of any in the eighteenth
century, but the nineteenth century was, of course, the real heyday
of 'landscape gardener' as a trade and professional title. Since
one or other of the above considerations could be used to justify
calling almost any style the landscape style, I decided to
avoid the name in the first edition of this book. In this edition,
for the reasons given in the Preface, I have used the name
Landscape Style for what was named the Transition Style in the
first edition.
A risk with the names 'Natural' and 'Landscape', in connection
with styles, is their tendency to encourage the woeful
simplification that there are only two styles of garden design
'which are really.......the formal and the naturalistic'. This
remark does make the point that lines can be either curvilinear or
rectilinear but it obscures the fact there are many different
styles of garden design. Eleven will be described in this book.
They depend on three main variables: the plan, the hard details and
the soft details. In large gardens and estates the plan is usually
the most characteristic feature and over half the styles take their
name from a feature of the plan. In small gardens there is less
scope to vary the plan and their appearance tends to be dominated
by the design of the hard details (steps, pavings, walls etc.) and
the soft details (herbs, shrubs, trees etc). The hard and soft
details often provide the richness of colour, texture and meaning
which are amongst the chief delights of gardens. But they are not
of equal durability. A few years neglect can easily destroy a
planting design but, walls, steps and fountains often survive when
all the other elements of a garden have gone. This is certainly the
case with the oldest surviving British gardens.
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Fourteen styles which have
influenced British gardens are listed below and will be explained
in subsequent chapters:
- Enclosed Style of Garden Design
- French Style of Garden Design
- Dutch Style of Garden Design
- Forest Style of Garden Design
- Augustan Style of Garden Design
- Serpentine Style of Garden
Design
- Picturesque Style of Garden
Design
- Landscape Style of Garden Design
- Italian Style of Garden Design
- Mixed Style of Garden Design
- Gardenesque Style of Garden
Design
- Arts and Crafts Style of Garden
Design
- Abstract Style of Garden Design
- Postmodern Style of Garden
Design
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