DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.49977#0285
CHAPTER XII.
LANDSCAPE GARDENING.
“ ... So will I rest in hope
To see wide plains, fair trees, and lawney slope ;
The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers ;
Clear streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking towers.”
Keats.
“ JS there anything more shocking than a stiff regular garden ?”*
What a revolution of the taste in gardening these words
reveal! Yet such a complete change in fashion had taken
place., that this was the opinion held by all the garden designers
of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Nor were they
content to lay out new gardens to suit the prevailing style,
but they freely destroyed, and abused, where they could not
obliterate, the work of former generations. The leader of this
new departure in garden design was Kent. He was the
successor of Bridgeman, and at first made gardens on the same
plan. Soon, however, he went so far beyond him as to entirely
leave the formal garden, and substitute for it the landscape
style. Walpole considers the first step towards this revolution
to have been the introduction of the sunk fence. And certainly
he there touched the key-note, for as soon as walls and
enclosures were dispensed with, any piece of natural and rural
scenery could be included in the garden. “The capital stroke,”f
* Batty Langley, New Principles of Gardening, 1728.
t Essay on Modern Gardening. By Horace Walpole, 1785.
LANDSCAPE GARDENING.
“ ... So will I rest in hope
To see wide plains, fair trees, and lawney slope ;
The morn, the eve, the light, the shade, the flowers ;
Clear streams, smooth lakes, and overlooking towers.”
Keats.
“ JS there anything more shocking than a stiff regular garden ?”*
What a revolution of the taste in gardening these words
reveal! Yet such a complete change in fashion had taken
place., that this was the opinion held by all the garden designers
of the latter half of the eighteenth century. Nor were they
content to lay out new gardens to suit the prevailing style,
but they freely destroyed, and abused, where they could not
obliterate, the work of former generations. The leader of this
new departure in garden design was Kent. He was the
successor of Bridgeman, and at first made gardens on the same
plan. Soon, however, he went so far beyond him as to entirely
leave the formal garden, and substitute for it the landscape
style. Walpole considers the first step towards this revolution
to have been the introduction of the sunk fence. And certainly
he there touched the key-note, for as soon as walls and
enclosures were dispensed with, any piece of natural and rural
scenery could be included in the garden. “The capital stroke,”f
* Batty Langley, New Principles of Gardening, 1728.
t Essay on Modern Gardening. By Horace Walpole, 1785.