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Switzer was trained in the French and Dutch styles by London and Wise. He greatly admired D'Arganville's book on French gardening practice (which had recently been translated into English) and, with Versialles in mind, wrote of Louis XIV , "'tis certain that gardening was by his means brought to the most magnificent height and splendour imaginable". Switzer also saw himself as the first English author, rather than mere translator, to advocate the French style in England. Can it really be that Switzer was mistaken in thinking himself an advocate of the geometrical French style? - or are we mistaken in thinking him an advocate of the new British style?

Switzer's design for 'The Manor of Paston' from his book Ichnographia Rustica

An illustration from D'Arganville's 1909 book on the Theory and Practice of Gardening.

A reconstruction of the plan of the garden at Moor Park, Hertfordshire. It is formal and geometric and was described by William Temple as 'the perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw' - though he has since 1712 been hailed as a prophet of the new style.

Moor Park, Herts. The house and garden Temple admired have been replaced by a Palladian house and a Brownian park.

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A similar puzzle arises in connection with Shaftesbury. His writings have always been considered to be a major influence on the English style but the description of a fine garden which he wrote in the year before his death is plainly Italian or French. Writing from Naples, Shaftesbury praises:

It has sometimes been thought that when Shaftesbury wrote of 'the formal mockery of princely gardens' he was mocking the 'formal' style of these gardens, but he criticised such gardens only when they were a substitute for peace and harmony in the minds of their owners. He speaks rhetorically of 'a coach, liveries, parterre and knolls? cascades, jettes d'eau? - how many rattles?'. Shaftesbury thought that grand gardens and all worldly possessions were unimportant 'rattles'. In another passage he asks 'how can the rational mind rest here, or be satisfied with the absurd enjoyment which reaches the sense alone?'. His conception of a fine garden was, however, as geometrical as Switzer's.

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The puzzle also arises with Temple. He has been hailed as one of the prophets of a new style since 1712, but his description of 'the perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw' is exceedingly formal and geometric. This garden and the plan of his own garden, which was also geometric, will be descsribed in the next chapter.

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Before considering a solution to the the riddle of why, in the face of the evidence which has been adduced, Temple, Shaftesbury and Switzer are believed to be prophets of a new style, we must examine in more detail the reasons which have been advanced to support the proposition.

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The first reason which is given for Temple's originality is his remark that there may be other forms of gardens which are 'wholly irregular'. Shaftesbury and Switzer join in the praise of irregularity. Shaftesbury refers to 'all the horrid graces of the wilderness itself, as representating nature more' and Switzer to 'the beauty of rural and extensive gardening, when compared with the stiff Dutch way'. But the British taste for irregularity was not new at the end of the seventeenth century. Wotton had stated much more explicitly in 1624 that a garden 'should be irregular' and Bacon had written in 1625 that he would like part of his garden to be a 'natural wilderness'. We cannot say that it was original for Temple, Shaftesbury or Switzer to praise irregularity at a much later date.

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A second reason for hailing Temple as the originator of a new style is his much-quoted praise of Chinese gardens. But Temple had not visited China, or even seen a drawing of a Chinese garden. The new style had almost passed maturity before any Chinese garden ornament appeared in England. It was doubtless important to know that a different style of garden design was possible but in its early stages the new style owed nothing to China. Certainly there was nothing Chinese about Temple's own garden. Shaftesbury does not mention Chinese gardens and Switzer only refers us to Temple on the subject.

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The third and most important reason for believing that the three writers contributed to the development of a new style is that they conceived garden design as an art which should imitate nature. Temple wrote that it was not possible to design a good garden 'if nature be not followed' and added that he took this principle 'to be the great rule in this, and perhaps in everything else'. Similarly Shaftesbury stated that 'I shall no longer resist the passion growing in me for things of a natural kind' and Switzer that 'a design must submit to nature'. The three authors were thus united in their praise for nature. The importance of their remarks turns on the connection between garden design and the axiom that 'art should imitate nature'. Had the meaning of the word 'nature' been fixed there would have been little significance in the connection. But because the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries were a time of ferment in philosophy and the sciences, the meaning of the word 'nature' was in a state of flux.

 The importance of the the precise meaning which is attached to the word 'nature' can be shown by considering two alternatives. If nature is used to mean 'essence', as in 'the nature of the case' then the axiom exhorts designers to base their proposals on the essential geometrical forms - the circle, the square, and the rectangle. But if the word is used with the connotation 'unaffected by man' , as in 'the world of nature' or 'the natural environment', then the axiom exhorts designers to produce irregular and non-geometrical designs. Between 1700 and 1800 a series of different conceptions of nature were slotted into the axiom that gardens should imitate nature. They generated new styles of garden design but the different conceptions of nature did not replace one another in the English language. A wide range of uses of the word 'nature' remained current and were as confusing in the eighteenth century as they are today. In order to explain how they affected the course of garden design something more must be said about seventeenth century aesthetics and the idea that art should imitate nature.

Horace Walpole wrote a famously brilliant essay 'On modern gardening' in which he praises English gardens for following 'nature' and criticises French gardens for opressing 'nature'. It would have been of great benefit to garden history if he had made it clear that he supported the empiricist conception of 'nature' and opposed the rationalist conception of 'nature', as discussed in the next section of this book.