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DOI Artikel:Faryna-Paszkiewicz, Hanna: Ogrody w dwudziestoleciu międzywojennym: zmierzch wielkiej tradycji
DOI Seite / Zitierlink: https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49351#0396
388
Hanna Faryna-Paszkiewicz
further afield into the surrounding landscape. In the
literaturę of that period, critical references were
madę to pretentious, cracknel-shaped {obwarzan-
kowy) arrangements of park avenues, upheld in the
spirit of the German Pratzelstiel, at a time when
applying straight lines went against all accepted
norms. In the 1920s, the straight linę had gained
equal standing with the soft and gentle curve. An
essential problem was to retain harmony between
the severity of corners and softness of the greenery
itself. Earlier, as a result of brutal wartime action,
palatial parks and closely attended flower gardens
fell into ruin. The Russian Revolution caused the
destruction of some of the most famous magnatial
parks. Their parcelisation, the dispersal of garden-
ers-cum-artists, as well as the lack of financial
means, had an exceptionally unfortunate influence
on park resources. In time, the model for a new kind
of garden was supposed to become the Polish land-
scape. Simultaneously, the contemporary park was
supposed to extend beyond the sphere of the pałace
or residence and embrace the entire farm. The con-
temporary park was supposed to be unlimited, free
and accessible to every eye: bright, sun-kissed, fuli
of native character and simplicity. it hated enclo-
sures and sought no prototypes in France or Britain.
The shaded avenues of thick, ancient trees were re-
placed by sunny, extensive fields and ‘the garden
crossed into ponds and meadows and showed no
sign of ever ending’. The asymmetry and faked
coincidence of widely dispersed groups of, or alter-
natively solitary, trees provided the background
to extensive and well cared for lawns. A so-called
native beauty was thus propagated, just slightly
touched up here and there by the hand of a cons-
cious gardener who was supposed to propagate
those species emphasizing exclusively a given
region’s local character without struggling with the
climate, tradition or original landscape. However,
garden art, carried over from the vast expanses of
estates in the eastern borderlands to gardens mea-
suring a smali number of sąuare metres on the out-
skirts of large towns, or laid out in the fashionable
districts of Warsaw, could hardly bear comparison
with, let alone perpetuate or even imitate, natural
landscape. The suburban garden thus became
nothing morę than its own peculiar composition,
dependent on the generally built-up surroundings
and subject to the prevailing tendencies in art. The
straight, sąuare or oval cement paving slabs of
pavements, laid out across the lawn, intentionally
overgrown with grass or Iow, trailing plants, were
demarcated by paths which ran mainly towards
rectangular pools with concrete sides. Most of the
colourful compositions in the garden tended to be
concentrated around these miniaturę, artificial
ponds. Miniaturised rock gardens, Iow, stone or
brick walls and smali scarps covered with cobbles
were also applied. Here it was possible to make out
the distant echoes of Japanese symmetry with its
tendencies towards miniaturę compositional and
architectural Solutions. To an eąual degree, natural
materials like stone, wood or ceramics, concrete
elements, wrought iron and glass were madę use of.
Reinforced structures, particularly reinforced
concrete, produced favourable Solutions in domes-
tic and garden architecture, while French doors
ensured visual contact with the garden, irrespective
of the weather. Freąuently, the designers of these
forms were themselves architects, for whom the
garden was a prolongation of the design for the
building itself. In the interwar years, attention was
also turned to protecting the natural environment,
a problem unrecognised until then which gradually
began to be included within the framework of
building regulations and paragraphs. In 1920, the
country’s first national parks, at Białowieża
(currently belonging in part to Belarus), the Pieniny
and Tatras were called into being. New ways of
looking at ‘natural resources’ weakened to some
extent the significance of the architect-cum-garden
designers’ artificial projects, while the rise of mass
tourism (e.g. mountain recreation, including the
development of skiing) became an alternative to
time spent in town gardens or the parks of spa
towns. At the same time, the new challenge was met
by park design in built-up areas, now supposedly
the resultant of passive recreation and active rest,
including the practising of sports. The ‘twilight of
a great tradition’ included in the title recalls the
chapter closed during the two decades of the inter-
war Polish State of magnificent parks belonging
to the manorial residences which, maintained as
historie monuments, continued to exist and exist
still, while in the meantime the green surroundings
of modern man, particularly in the large industrial
cities, were supposed to play an altogether different
role.
Translated by Peter Martyn
Hanna Faryna-Paszkiewicz
further afield into the surrounding landscape. In the
literaturę of that period, critical references were
madę to pretentious, cracknel-shaped {obwarzan-
kowy) arrangements of park avenues, upheld in the
spirit of the German Pratzelstiel, at a time when
applying straight lines went against all accepted
norms. In the 1920s, the straight linę had gained
equal standing with the soft and gentle curve. An
essential problem was to retain harmony between
the severity of corners and softness of the greenery
itself. Earlier, as a result of brutal wartime action,
palatial parks and closely attended flower gardens
fell into ruin. The Russian Revolution caused the
destruction of some of the most famous magnatial
parks. Their parcelisation, the dispersal of garden-
ers-cum-artists, as well as the lack of financial
means, had an exceptionally unfortunate influence
on park resources. In time, the model for a new kind
of garden was supposed to become the Polish land-
scape. Simultaneously, the contemporary park was
supposed to extend beyond the sphere of the pałace
or residence and embrace the entire farm. The con-
temporary park was supposed to be unlimited, free
and accessible to every eye: bright, sun-kissed, fuli
of native character and simplicity. it hated enclo-
sures and sought no prototypes in France or Britain.
The shaded avenues of thick, ancient trees were re-
placed by sunny, extensive fields and ‘the garden
crossed into ponds and meadows and showed no
sign of ever ending’. The asymmetry and faked
coincidence of widely dispersed groups of, or alter-
natively solitary, trees provided the background
to extensive and well cared for lawns. A so-called
native beauty was thus propagated, just slightly
touched up here and there by the hand of a cons-
cious gardener who was supposed to propagate
those species emphasizing exclusively a given
region’s local character without struggling with the
climate, tradition or original landscape. However,
garden art, carried over from the vast expanses of
estates in the eastern borderlands to gardens mea-
suring a smali number of sąuare metres on the out-
skirts of large towns, or laid out in the fashionable
districts of Warsaw, could hardly bear comparison
with, let alone perpetuate or even imitate, natural
landscape. The suburban garden thus became
nothing morę than its own peculiar composition,
dependent on the generally built-up surroundings
and subject to the prevailing tendencies in art. The
straight, sąuare or oval cement paving slabs of
pavements, laid out across the lawn, intentionally
overgrown with grass or Iow, trailing plants, were
demarcated by paths which ran mainly towards
rectangular pools with concrete sides. Most of the
colourful compositions in the garden tended to be
concentrated around these miniaturę, artificial
ponds. Miniaturised rock gardens, Iow, stone or
brick walls and smali scarps covered with cobbles
were also applied. Here it was possible to make out
the distant echoes of Japanese symmetry with its
tendencies towards miniaturę compositional and
architectural Solutions. To an eąual degree, natural
materials like stone, wood or ceramics, concrete
elements, wrought iron and glass were madę use of.
Reinforced structures, particularly reinforced
concrete, produced favourable Solutions in domes-
tic and garden architecture, while French doors
ensured visual contact with the garden, irrespective
of the weather. Freąuently, the designers of these
forms were themselves architects, for whom the
garden was a prolongation of the design for the
building itself. In the interwar years, attention was
also turned to protecting the natural environment,
a problem unrecognised until then which gradually
began to be included within the framework of
building regulations and paragraphs. In 1920, the
country’s first national parks, at Białowieża
(currently belonging in part to Belarus), the Pieniny
and Tatras were called into being. New ways of
looking at ‘natural resources’ weakened to some
extent the significance of the architect-cum-garden
designers’ artificial projects, while the rise of mass
tourism (e.g. mountain recreation, including the
development of skiing) became an alternative to
time spent in town gardens or the parks of spa
towns. At the same time, the new challenge was met
by park design in built-up areas, now supposedly
the resultant of passive recreation and active rest,
including the practising of sports. The ‘twilight of
a great tradition’ included in the title recalls the
chapter closed during the two decades of the inter-
war Polish State of magnificent parks belonging
to the manorial residences which, maintained as
historie monuments, continued to exist and exist
still, while in the meantime the green surroundings
of modern man, particularly in the large industrial
cities, were supposed to play an altogether different
role.
Translated by Peter Martyn