 |
 |
| William Robinson's garden at Gravetye Manor in
Suyssex |
The Neoplatonic principle that gardens should imitate nature
slumbered during the middle years of the nineteenth century.
Loudon's discussion of the subject
merely confused his successors. They paid their respects to the
theory but gave no active consideration to the question of
how gardens should be made to imitate nature. Edward Kemp's attitude is representative:
Readers who have travelled with me thus far will have perceived
that I have had occasion more than once to refer to Nature as the
great school of landscape gardening. It may be worth while, then,
specifically to inquire how far the imitation of nature is
possible and right. I profess not to be of those who would carry
this principle very far, or into minor matters..... A garden is for
comfort, and convenience, and luxury, and use, as well as for
making a beautiful picture. It is to express civilisation, and
care, and design, and refinement...... In these respects, it is
fundamentally different from all natural scenes.
So it was that Dame Nature slept. In the 1870s a prince came
forward to awaken the sleeping beauty. His name was William Robinson. Robinson was 29 in
1867 and spent the summer touring the parks and gardens of France
as a correspondent for the Gardener's Chronicle. The weather
was bad and English correspondents complained about the way in
which their carpet bedding schemes were being ruined by 'cold
nipping winds..... followed almost continuously by cold nights, an
an unusually heavy rainfall' . Various suggestions were submitted
for breeding tougher plants, for using foliage plants which would
not decay in bad weather, and for using new patterns of circles and
stars to delight the eye and ensure that 'our employers will
inspect their neighbour's floral decorations again with pleasure'.
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| Subtropical Planting. William Robinson admired the bold
foliage of palms and tree ferns but wanted to find a way of
achieving similar effects with less expense. |
One solution to the problem was developed in Paris. Monsieur
Barillet-Deschamps experimented with palms, tree ferns and other
sub-tropical plants which were
less affected by the weather because they did not depend on flowers
for effect. The foliage plants were also used in more natural
groups than floral bedding. Robinson was impressed, though he noted
on September 21st that practical men were saying 'This sub-tropical
system will never do for England'.
Return to start of section
John Gibson tried out the system
in Battersea Park
during 1867. It was popular but expensive. Robinson gave a further
account of the sub-tropical system in his Gleanings from French
Gardens(1868) and said that equally natural effects could be
obtained by using hardy plants: 'We have no doubt whatsoever that
in many places as good an effect as any yet seen in an English
garden from tender plants, may be obtained by planting hardy ones
only!'. He particularly recommended the use of Pampas Grass,
Yuccas, Bamboos, Crambe and Rheum. As he later wrote in the Wild
Garden 'I was led to think of the enormous number of beautiful
hardy plants from other countries which might be naturalised, with
a very slight amount of trouble'. Thus was a new style born of the
English weather, nature and economy.
 |
 |
| The frontispiece to Robinson's Wild Garden. The other
illustrations in this group are from the same book |
Pampas grass used instead of subtropical plants. |
 |
|
| A border of hardy flowers. This type of grouping became
immensely popular in English gardens. |
'A colony of myrrhis odorate, established in a shrubbery
with harebells here and there'. The quotati |
Robinson became a militant
protagonist of naturalistic planting and an opponent of carpet
bedding. He was equally against the use of tender flowering plants
and to their arrangement in geometrical beds. His beliefs
constitute an unwitting return to the principles of planting design
which had been formulated by Sir Uvedale Price,. When Christopher Hussey remarked upon the ancestry of
Robinsons's wild planting he was summoned to Gravetye Manor where
Robinson told him that he had 'never heard' of Sir Uvedale Price.
He saw Loudon as his great predecessor and devoted a series of
articles to him in the first issues of his own periodical, The
Garden. This was partly true: Loudon followed Price in liking
natural groups of plants, providing they were well-grown and
well-labelled. The point which Robinson missed or ignored is that
Loudon's Neoplatonic conception of nature also led him to recommend
geometrical flower beds. As M'Intosh noted: 'circular figures....
in laying out flower-gardens' were 'strongly advocated by the late
Mr Loudon'.
Since Robinson's attack on carpet bedding was in tune with
current artistic and scientific ideas it attracted widespread
support in Victorian England. Robinson became friends with John Ruskin and found him an energetic ally
in Nature's cause. At the age of twenty Ruskin (in 1839) Ruskin had
in fact written for the Architectural Magazine and Loudon,
forthright as ever in his judgement, welcomed him as 'the greatest
natural genius that it has ever been my fortune to become
acquainted with'. At the age of thirty Ruskin published the
Seven Lamps of Architecture and identified nature as one of
the main sources of beauty:
I do not mean to assert that every happy arrangement of line is
directly suggested by a natural object; but that all beautiful
lines are adaptations of those which are commonest in the external
creation....... The pointed arch is beautiful; it is the
termination of every leaf that shakes in summer wind, and its most
fortunate associations are directly borrowed from the trefoiled
grass of the field, or from the stars of its flowers.
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to start of section
Robinson was delighted to have such a powerful authority behind
him and never tired of of reiterating the dependence of art upon
Nature with a capital N : 'The work of the artist is always marked
by its fidelity to Nature'. It was a restatement of one of the
principles of the Arts and Crafts movement. William Morris was
sympathetic to Robinson's point of view and wrote in Hopes and
Fears for Art (1882) that:
Another thing also too commonly seen is an aberration of the
human mind, which otherwise I should have been ashamed to warn you
of. It is technically called carpet bedding. Need I explain
further? I had rather not, for when I think of it even when I am
not quite alone I blush with shame at the thought'.
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| The Red House was
designed by Philip Webb for William Morris |
 |
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| Morris home at Kelmscott House |
The Kelmscott Chaucer |
William Morris commissioned Philip Webb, in 1859, to design the Red House in Bexleyheath. Banister Fletcher
comments that 'The planning is informal and unconventional, but met
the practical needs of its singular owner... The remarkable
interior decoration and furnishings presage the Arts and Crafts
Movement of the 1880s'. The house takes in name from the
unpretentious red brick and tiles with which it was built. The
garden, likewise, has comfortable proportions and is designed for
homely use rather than Victorian display. It can be regarded as the
progenitor of the finest period in the
history of English garden design.
 |
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| Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, admired by both.
Blomfield and Robinson. Blomfield's illustration, left, emphasises
the architectural terrace. Robinson's illustration, right,
emphasises the cloak of romantic planting. |
When Robinson found his attack on carpet-bedding had become a
popular cause, his confidence grew and he began to criticise the
use of all straight lines in gardens. This led him to oppose the
use of terraces and architectural features as vigorously as
Brown 's supporters had done in the
second half of the eighteenth century. His enthusiasm for wildness
and romance reached such a pitch that he came near to advocating
the Picturesque Style.
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to start of section
 |
| A young lady sketching at Kenwood, from
Loudon's Suburban Gardener, 1838. Loudon believed that 'the
improvement which, within the last fifty years, has taken place in
landscape gardening, is, in a great measure, owing to the more
general adoption of the art of sketching landscapes from nature, as
a branch of female education'. Gertrude Jekyll was to give great
force to this comment. |
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| Gertrude Jekyll's house at Munstead
Wood. |
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| Above, a hypothetical design by Jekyll, based on
her visits to Italian gardens. |
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| A water channel at the Villa d'Este, of the type
admired by Jekyll |
|
| Deanery Garden, Berkshire: a masterpiece by
Jekyll and Lutyens. Photograph c 1912. |
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| The enclosed flower garden at Castle Drogo,
Devon. The great yew hedge protects the garden from the winds which
blast the hill-top site. |
Robinson's views on carpet bedding were supported by arts and
crafts architects but his views on terraces and other architectural features were
not. Reginald Blomfield and
J D Sedding, both architects and
members of the Art Workers Guild, wrote books on garden design and
advocated terraces. Sedding was comparatively moderate but a
furious dispute arose between Robinson and Blomfield as to whether
or not gardens should have terraces. Robinson had gone too far in
opposing terraces and Blomfield went too far in opposing Robinson.
Blomfield insisted that there must no natural shapes or planting
anywhere near the house. It was a most surprising recurrence of an
argument which had been effectively settled in the 1790s by
Repton and the introduction of the
Landscape Style. In the 1890s the mediator who stepped in to settle
the dispute was a person destined to fulfil Loudon's prediction that nothing was likely
to have such a good effect on the art of garden design as the fact
that so many young ladies were taking up landscape painting.
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to start of section
Gertrude Jekyll was born in 1843, the year in
which Loudon died. When young she had studied painting at the
Kensington School of Art and became an admirer, later a friend, of
John Ruskin. Her whole approach to
life and work was that of arts and crafts movement. Had the Art
Workers Guild permitted lady members she would doubtless have
joined and might have restrained Blomfield at an earlier date.
Jekyll was skilled at numerous arts and practised each with a
loving care for craftsmanship, naturalness and beauty. One of her
arts was gardening and, with Robinson's help, she began to
contribute to the horticultural press. Jekyll wrote with great
authority and became a highly respected figure in the gardening
world.
In 1896 she considered the arguments which had been advanced by
Robinson and Blomfield and pronounced judgement: 'both are
right,both are wrong'. You could, Jekyll believed, have a terrace
near the house, but you should arrange your plants in natural
groups. She thought both the disputants hot-headed but was somewhat
more inclined to Robinson's side, and added the comment that
Blomfield seemed to be saying 'there is no garden but the formal
garden and I am his prophet'. Blomfield accepted her judgement and
in the third edition of his book sheepishly referred to 'a somewhat
acrid controversy' between landscape gardeners and architects in
which 'there was a good deal of truth on both sides'. Robinson
bought an estate at Gravetye in Sussex
which needed a terrace and Blomfield an estate on the island of
Jersey which lent itself to the design of a wild garden.
In plan terms the dispute was resolved by an updated version of
the Landscape Style. The contestants
agreed that the ideal arrangement was to have a broad walk or a
terrace near the house, and then a transition, first to an open
lawn and then beyond to a woodland garden or a fine view. The three
elements of this sequence are shown on the diagram. It represents a
garden of about five hectares. Jekyll considered this to be
'small'- her own garden at Munstead Wood was seven hectares, which she
could manage with the help of eleven men. Few property agents would
consider seven hectares unduly small but even one hundred and seven
hectares would have been tiny for one of the old estates for which
the Landscape Style was developed. Since Repton was the chief professional advocate of
the transition it is worth noting that Jekyll and Sedding both
praise him. Jekyll wrote that Repton teaches us 'to see how to join
house to garden and garden to woodland'; Sedding that 'the best
advice you can give to a young gardener is - know your
Repton'.
Jekyll became the most powerful influence on the revival of
British garden design at the turn of the century. Her own taste for
terraces probably dated from her youthful tours of Italy and the
Mediterranean. Jekyll's second book, Wall and Water
Gardens,contains photographs of the Villa D'Este and a plan for 'one small section'
of a garden which 'I have ventured to describe and figure in
detail'. Her design was for an elaborate terraced garden with rills
of water running down both sides of a flight of steps in the
Italian manner. The geometry of Italian gardens, then as now, was
softened by a profusion of evergreen plants. The delightful
combination of straight and irregular lines attracted Jekyll's eye
and became a feature of the Arts and Crafts style. An indication of
how it was interpreted in an English context with different
vernacular traditions can be gained by placing Robinson and
Blomfield's illustrations alongside one another. Blomfield shows
the types of space which characterised the style and Robinson the
vocabulary of hardy plants in natural groupings which were used to
adorn the spaces.
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to start of section
Jekyll's influence on garden design came
about through her books and through her partnership with a third
arts and crafts architect: Edwin
Lutyens. They met in 1890 when he was only 21 and she was 47.
Jekyll and Lutyens formed friendship which developed into a most
productive working partnership. It was founded on a genuine
'closeness of minds' and shared a belief in 'the divinity of hard
work'. Jekyll had fully absorbed Repton, Price, and Knight 's theories of outdoor design (viz
Chapter 3) and passed this knowledge on to the young Lutyens. When
merged with their joint love for the vernacular arts and crafts it
produced an approach to house and garden design which is described
by Christopher Hussey:
The whole approach of the young Lutyens to architecture, through
his study of the landscape, traditions, and vernacular techniques
of his home county, was in the romantic tradition that regards
buildings as properly the product of their soil and of the country
craftsman's lore; and their planning as properly ordered by the
circumstances of the site and the needs of their inhabitants. At
the begining and again at the end of the nineteenth century these
principles were habitually qualified by another, that the resulting
building should possess the qualities of picturesqueness, that is,
'compose' picturesquely both as a design and in its setting.
.
Jekyll and Lutyens enjoyed touring Surrey together in a pony
cart and liked to discuss the materials, design and construction of
the things they saw. Jekyll later asked Lutyens to help design a
new house in her garden at Munstead
Wood. Construction began in 1895 and the project became a
masterpiece. It is easy to think that Lutyens designed the house
and the Jekyll the garden but this appears not to have been the
case: it was a joint project. Lutyens had the technical knowledge
but Jekyll had the strongest feelings concerning the character and
proportions of the spaces which ought to be made. This applied
equally to house and garden.
The close working relationship which produced Munstead Wood grew
more distant as the years passed but in the two decades before the
First World War they created a number of houses and gardens which
are amongst the most delightful ever to have been made in Europe. They
have a rich charm which satisfies a deepfelt yearning for a
civilised life in the country. One can place them in the same
'quality bracket' as the gardens of ancient Egypt, sixteenth
century Italy and seventeenth century France. When compared to the
stately pleasure grounds of so many over-pretentious mansions, the
gardens of the Arts and Crafts Movement come closer to the
Homeric and Virgillian idyll of rural
retirement to a place of bounteous peace. Abraham
Cowley, in the seventeenth century, wrote of his dream
that:
I might be master at last of a small house and large garden,
with moderate conveniencies joined to them, and there dedicate the
remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of
nature.
He would surely have found contentment at the Red House, Munstead
Wood, Orchards, Deanery Garden or
Hestercombe. They are country retreats where the
gardens provide a perfect setting for the houses, and the houses a
perfect adornment to the gardens. Jane
Brown describes them as 'the gardens of a golden afternoon',
and contrasts them with the later projects on which Jekyll was less
involved and often did no more than a planting plan - sometimes
without even visiting the site. Without his partner's guiding
influence Lutyens' garden designs tended to become bleak and
formal. Grandeur took the place of charm. At Gledstone Hall (1922)
and Tyringham (1924) the gardens are ornaments to the buildings
with little use or beauty of their own - Lutyens did not enjoy
gardening, or even sitting about in gardens.
Castle
Drogo, which was completed in 1929, is a particularly
interesting Lutyens' project. One feels that the ghosts of the
three squires might have had a hand in its conception. Price, would have guided the client to chose
the Picturesque site and Knight his
selection of the castellated architectural style. Judging from an
early sketch, which is on display in the castle, Repton guided Lutyens first scheme for the
garden: it steps down a hillside like the garden which he designed
for Bayham Abbey.
However Repton followed Vitruvius
at Bayham and recommended the avoidance of hilltop sites because
they are too exposed. Castle Drogo sits astride a hilltop and the
wind forced Lutyens to lay out an enclosed garden which lurks
behind a great yew hedge in an attempt to find shelter.
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to start of section
The style which was brought to perfection by Jekyll and Lutyens
achieved great popularity with amateur and professional gardeners.
Its leading professional exponent, T H
Mawson, was eight years older than Lutyens but started his
career as a garden designer at almost the same time (c1890). He
lacked Lutyens' genius but was a competent and prolific designer.
Mawson took Repton and Kemp as his models and quoted Repton's
principles for achieving 'formality near the house, merging into
the natural by degrees, so as to attach the house by imperceptible
gradations to the general landscape' . In 1900 he had the idea of
publishing a book on The Art and Craft of Garden Making
which caught the mood of the day and provides us with a name for
his style: Mawson interpreted the old English tradition of garden
making in terms of the arts and crafts movement. The book was
handsomely produced. As Mawson proclaimed on the title page, it was
'Illustrated by photographic views and perspective drawings by C E
Mallows and others, also chapter headings designed by Mr D
Chamberlain, and one hundred and thirty plans and details of
gardens designed by the author'.
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| The garden at Graythwaite Hall, in the Lake District, was
designed by T. H. Mawson in 1896. It is a classic example of the
style which Mawson expounded in The Art and Craft of Garden
Making, published in 1900 and dedicated to the owner of
Graythwaite. Mawson lacked Lutyens' genius but he was a prolific
designer, as well as being the man who named and popularised the
Arts and Crafts Style of garden design. He believed in local
materials and traditional detailing. |
 |
 |
| The
Hill, Hampstead, designed by T H Mawson for Lord Leverhulme in
an Italian version of the Arts and Crafts Style. |
|
| A bridge at Roynton Cottage,
Lancashire, built of local stone. It is in the 'cottage
garden' designed by Mawson for Lord Leverhulme. |
The use of photographs in a book on garden design was an
original idea which many publishers copied. A great series of
picture books from Country Life , The Studio and
other publishing houses followed. They have left historians with a
fine visual record of the state of British gardening at a time when
vast resources were available for the construction and maintenance
of country houses and gardens. This was the twilight hour of the
wealthy landowning class which had so long patronised the art of
landscape design. Like aging fruit trees which know they will not
survive into another season, the country landowners of England
produced one last crop of magnificient gardens before succumbing to
income tax, estate duty, and war.
In the early years of the Arts and Crafts style, garden
detailing was based on a patriotic admiration for the old English
gardens which inspired the engravings of steps, walls, gateways and
other features in Blomfield's book.
Return to
start of section
Further research showed the origin of many of these details to
be Italian and the style tended to drift into a third period of Italian influence over English
gardens. Inigo Triggs major study of
Formal Gardens in England and Scotland (1902) contains many
examples of gardens which were made during the seventeenth and
nineteenth century phases of Italian influence. They stimulated
further historical research and new garden designs. Sir George Sitwell admired Blomfield's and
Triggs' books and also knew that his family had owned an Enclosed
garden in the seventeenth century. He spent many years studying
Italian gardens, wrote a book on the subject, and then spent a
fortune laying out two gardens in an Arts and Crafts version of the
Italian style - at Renishaw in
Derbyshire and at Montegufoni in Italy. Clients were attracted to
the Italian style by its air of grandeur and it was adopted by a
large number of Arts and Crafts designers, including Inigo Thomas, H A
Tipping, Oliver Hill and Harold Peto. Thomas
Mawson laid out an elaborate Italian garden for Lord Leverhulme
which survives in good condition (now known as The Hill Garden). He also designed a 'cottage
garden' for him in Lancashire, formerly known as Roynton Cottage and now as Rivington Terraced Gardens. It was built in
the Arts and Crafts style but using stone instead of brick in a
most imaginative way.
Gardeners who undertook their own designs tended to remain loyal
to the English version of the Arts and Crafts style. The
owner-designers of Great Dixter
(Nathanial and Christopher Lloyd),
Sissinghurst (Vita
Sackville-West), Hidcote (Lawrence
Johnson), and Kiftsgate (Heather
Muir) employed the style with great flair, and showed a
sustained brilliance in their use of plant material which can
scarcely be equalled by a designer who is not in residence.
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to start of section
The designers of Arts and
Crafts planting followed in the wake of Gertrude Jekyll, who
was also an owner-designer and, as Hussey justly observes, 'the
greatest artist in horticulture and garden-planting that
England has produced'. Jekyll's theory of planting design can be
traced to the three authors who published their first books in
1794. She combined Knight 's
admiration for native woods with Repton 's idea of creating different
compartments, and and with Price, 's
idea of basing the composition of planting schemes on landscape
painting. Her interpretation of these three themes is expressed in
the following quotations from her most successful book, Colour
Schemes for the Flower Garden:
On woods: I am myself surprised to see the number and
wonderful variety of the pictures of sylvan beauty that displays
throughout the year. I did not specially aim at variety, but,
guided by the natural conditions of each region, tried to think out
how best they might be fostered and perhaps a little bettered.
On compartments: It is extremely interesting to work out
gardens in which some special colouring predominates...... it opens
out a whole new range of garden delights..... besides my small grey
garden I badly want others, and especially a gold garden, a blue
garden and a green garden.
On garden pictures: When the eye is trained to perceive
pictorial effect, it is frequently struck by something - some
combination of grouping, lighting and colour - that is seen to have
that complete aspect of unity and beauty that to the artist's eye
forms a picture. Such are the impressions that the artist-gardener
endeavours to produce in every portion of the garden.
J M W Turner was the landscape painter Jekyll most admired. Her
main border at Munstead Wood, and a
great many of her other planting schemes, were designed to create a
sequence from blood-red in the centre, to golden yellow, to lemon
yellow, to the white of the moon and to the pale blue of the sky.
An identical sequence can be found in 'The Fighting
Temeraire' and many of Turner's later paintings. The
influence of the French Impressionists on Jekyll's planting schemes
has been very much exaggerated.
The near-destruction of Jekyll's garden at Munstead Wood is a
great loss to the nation's heritage which is hardly compensated by
the restorations which are in progress at Hestercombe, Great
Maytham, New Place, and a number of other gardens.
Sissinghurst, Hidcote and Great
Dixter are in the Jekyll-Lutyens style. These gardens have
attracted enormous numbers of visitors since 1946 and contributed
to the continuing popularity of the style amongst amateur
gardeners. The allegiance of such authors as G E Whitehead and Brigadier CE Lucas-Phillips, who have written for the
amateur market, is revealed by their choice of illustrations -
though they have interpreted the style with a marked lack of
imagination. Garden styles are classified baldly as formal or
informal. The Brigadier advises: 'If you aim at a very formal
design, straight lines are the thing, but otherwise think in terms
of soft, smooth-flowing curves,..... but no snakey wriggles,
please'. They have also been reluctant to use new materials.
Whitehead observes: 'There have been many changes since I first
started. Materials are different. Instead of natural stone we must
use artificial pavings more often than not'.
The continuing popularity of the Arts and Crafts style in the
1980s can best be explained by its wide cultural base. The arts and
crafts movement embodied an approach to life and work which is
especially close to the historic gardening ideal of combining use
with beauty, profit with pleasure and work with contemplation. This
philosophy was adopted by William
Morris's Firm and by the community which he describes in
News from Nowhere . It was an ideal pastoral community,
which operated without laws or money. Morris enjoyed gardening and
explains something of his approach to life and gardening in the
following letter, written at Kelmscott,
to Mrs Burne-Jones:
I am just going to finish my day with a couple of hours work on
my lecture but will first write you a line...... Yet it sometimes
seems to me as if my lot was a strange one: you see, I work pretty
hard, and on the whole very cheerfully, not altogether for pudding,
still less for praise; and while I work I have the cause always in
mind...... Well, one thing I long for which will certainly come,
the sunshine and spring. Meantime we are hard at work gardening
here: making dry paths, and a sublimely tidy box edging .
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to start of section
 |
| Great Dixter. A fine Arts and Crafts garden with a
wild-flower meadow by Christopher Lloyd |
The Arts and Crafts style has also been able to satisfy the
scientific interest in nature which has grown with such speed since
Darwin's time. William Robinson was
the first to advocate the conservation of wild-flower meadows. In
The Wild Garden he asks 'Who
would not rather see the waving grass with countless flowers than a
close shaven surface without a blossom?' As the proud possessor of
a handsome Victorian beard he was able to add that shaving one's
grass was as foolish as shaving one's face.
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to start of section
Robinson also encouraged an appreciation for the old gardens
which were attached to that best-loved of British building types:
the country cottage. He toured cottage gardens and illustrated them in his books and
periodicals. In 1892 Robinson started a magazine on Cottage
Gardening and announced that 'To those who look at a garden
from an artistic point of view the cottage garden is often far more
beautiful than the gentleman's garden near it'. Brenda Colvin's garden at Filkins is a lovely
example of a modern cottage garden by an owner-designer. It has a
Robinsonian flower-meadow and is planted in the Arts and Crafts
style. Her partner, Hal Moggridge,
described the garden as follows:
It is a subtle blend of many different plants held together by a
strong overall composition; at every time of year the rich textures
of foliage are lightened by many flowers always in perfect colour
relationship to one another. To obtain this balance of form and
colour individual plants have always been treated with
determination.
The treatment of plant forms, textures and colours as
compositional elements foreshadows the Abstract style.
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