DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0477
448
History of Garden Art
in the treatment of superlatively beautiful lawns there has been, and still is, a very
lovely and effective feature of English horticulture. Bacon's idea of a heath is quite
novel and very surprising; there seems to have been no living example of it, and it
remained unique. For all its charm as an idea, it seems a great waste of space. Only in
very recent days was this notion taken up and carried out, and then the interest in wild
gardens has always been in the smaller places only.
An unusual sidelight is thrown on this design by another literary record of the
period. In 1613, on the eve of the Feast of the three Kings, the lawyers of Gray's Inn had
a masque in honour of Lord Somerset's wedding. The stage directions describe a garden
"of wonderful beauty" which has more than one point in common with Bacon's. Here
are the four quarters into which the whole garden is divided, with walks all the way round,
but in the centre of the crossways there is a fine Neptune fountain. The god with his
trident shakes water into a shell held up by three figures which are standing on a pillar.
This garden has not only a brick wall covered with fruit-trees, but also a pretty hedge
inside the wall, with balustrades and lions and unicorns, serving as torch-holders. The
great squares are enclosed with cypresses and junipers, and adorned with flowers and
pyramids. At all the four corners there are pots full of pinks. At the end of the garden
rises the mound, so steep that the steps are like seats covered with grass. Above there
is a triple-arched arbour, covered with roses and honeysuckle and ornamented with
turrets. Above it protrude the tops of fruit-trees.
The fact that the flowers are artificial, and lighted by concealed lamps, and the
trees and walls merely painted, is only the necessary presentation of a stage garden, which
is very excellently imitated from the real thing. The mound also, made with steps, at
the end of the garden, was common at that time, and has been kept here and there till
the present day, as for example in the Rockingham garden, which in other respects,
is greatly changed.
When in 1603 James I. ascended the English throne, there were already certain
traces of Italian Renaissance influence to be seen in Scotland, his native land. Indeed
in some ways the castles of Scotland, for the most part on high ground rising steeply
from the neighbouring country, were more inclined to learn a lesson from the Italian
terraces than the English were. It is almost impossible to get a really clear picture of the
Scotch Renaissance gardens, because the descriptions are so meagre, but all the same the
effect of these terrace structures, with their firm base-lines so hard to remove, was no
doubt to protect many of these gardens in the North during the destructive wars of the
eighteenth century. And if it is true that the gardens of to-day, which are proud of their
marks of antiquity, have nothing to show but the framework, it is also the fact that a place
like Drummond Castle in Perthshire cannot deny the influence of Italy in the terraces,
whose lofty protecting walls are intersected by graceful sloping steps, or in the doors
that lead out from the terraces into the open. Barncluith in Lanarkshire calls to mind Italian
villas, partly by the row of five narrow terraces overlooking the high bank of the Avon,
partly by the stairway at the side, and partly by the delightful summer-house at the end
with the semicircular steps that lead up to it.
The gardens in Scotland later on became more like those of Italy, because of a growing
taste for the evergreen yew hedges, which were introduced in the seventeenth century,
and were excellently acclimatised, and so remained in favour in the eighteenth. One
History of Garden Art
in the treatment of superlatively beautiful lawns there has been, and still is, a very
lovely and effective feature of English horticulture. Bacon's idea of a heath is quite
novel and very surprising; there seems to have been no living example of it, and it
remained unique. For all its charm as an idea, it seems a great waste of space. Only in
very recent days was this notion taken up and carried out, and then the interest in wild
gardens has always been in the smaller places only.
An unusual sidelight is thrown on this design by another literary record of the
period. In 1613, on the eve of the Feast of the three Kings, the lawyers of Gray's Inn had
a masque in honour of Lord Somerset's wedding. The stage directions describe a garden
"of wonderful beauty" which has more than one point in common with Bacon's. Here
are the four quarters into which the whole garden is divided, with walks all the way round,
but in the centre of the crossways there is a fine Neptune fountain. The god with his
trident shakes water into a shell held up by three figures which are standing on a pillar.
This garden has not only a brick wall covered with fruit-trees, but also a pretty hedge
inside the wall, with balustrades and lions and unicorns, serving as torch-holders. The
great squares are enclosed with cypresses and junipers, and adorned with flowers and
pyramids. At all the four corners there are pots full of pinks. At the end of the garden
rises the mound, so steep that the steps are like seats covered with grass. Above there
is a triple-arched arbour, covered with roses and honeysuckle and ornamented with
turrets. Above it protrude the tops of fruit-trees.
The fact that the flowers are artificial, and lighted by concealed lamps, and the
trees and walls merely painted, is only the necessary presentation of a stage garden, which
is very excellently imitated from the real thing. The mound also, made with steps, at
the end of the garden, was common at that time, and has been kept here and there till
the present day, as for example in the Rockingham garden, which in other respects,
is greatly changed.
When in 1603 James I. ascended the English throne, there were already certain
traces of Italian Renaissance influence to be seen in Scotland, his native land. Indeed
in some ways the castles of Scotland, for the most part on high ground rising steeply
from the neighbouring country, were more inclined to learn a lesson from the Italian
terraces than the English were. It is almost impossible to get a really clear picture of the
Scotch Renaissance gardens, because the descriptions are so meagre, but all the same the
effect of these terrace structures, with their firm base-lines so hard to remove, was no
doubt to protect many of these gardens in the North during the destructive wars of the
eighteenth century. And if it is true that the gardens of to-day, which are proud of their
marks of antiquity, have nothing to show but the framework, it is also the fact that a place
like Drummond Castle in Perthshire cannot deny the influence of Italy in the terraces,
whose lofty protecting walls are intersected by graceful sloping steps, or in the doors
that lead out from the terraces into the open. Barncluith in Lanarkshire calls to mind Italian
villas, partly by the row of five narrow terraces overlooking the high bank of the Avon,
partly by the stairway at the side, and partly by the delightful summer-house at the end
with the semicircular steps that lead up to it.
The gardens in Scotland later on became more like those of Italy, because of a growing
taste for the evergreen yew hedges, which were introduced in the seventeenth century,
and were excellently acclimatised, and so remained in favour in the eighteenth. One