DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66025#0016
X,
GARDEN ORNAMENT
and others remain to testify to the genius of the architects of the time and to the noble manner
in which they grasped and made use of the new conditions and possibilities under which building
might be carried on. It was not the great houses only that showed this advance, but the
numberless manor houses that were then built, many os which happily remain to us as precious
models os the most charming and sympathetic of human dwelling places. Many of these were
surrounded by a moat, for the tradition of a need of some means of defence was hard to die ; but
we have also to remember that the garden and house would always need protection from deer
and wolves, besides the lesser enemies, hares and rabbits.
In the case of the greater houses there was, on the entrance side, a walled forecourt;
sometimes one forecourt after another, entered through important gateways. On the garden
side, next the house, was a wide terrace, preferably some feet higher than the garden level, so
that a good view was obtained of the flowery parterre below; or the ssower garden might be
enclosed also to right and left by other raised terraces, ending in a garden house or some kind of
ornamental pavilion. A great ssight of steps would descend from the terrace to the garden
level. All these features, with their structural decoration of balustrade, moulded steps and
ornamental buildings, were the work of the architect. It followed that the dominating lines of
the building were protracted into the garden, and that the main forms, however much they
might be subdivided, were always symmetrical and rectangular.
In some one of the divisions the maze or labyrinth was an exercise of ingenuity and a form
of diversion that commended itself to the designers of Tudor and early Jacobean times and their
employers. One can understand the attraction of a puzzling and time-wasting contrivance in
the days when home-keeping for months on end, without a break, was the rule. In the present
days of hurry and much changing of place, we need all the quiet and restful inssuences that our
gardens can give, and the maze no longer comes within our desires.
Some of the details of the old Tudor gardens are to modern taste frivolous, and quite
undesirable ; such as the gilt birdcages and the swinging plates of coloured glass to ssash in the
sun, as described by Bacon. Then a great improvement on the panelled wooden rails or dwarf
trellis round ssower beds was the use of dwarf Box, so finely employed in Italy, and later to be
adopted in France, Holland and England.
The more important garden ornaments, fountains, statues, vases and other works of sculpture,
were not in general use in the gardens of the earlier Elizabethan houses ; they were to come
later, especially after the Restoration, when a great expansion of garden design took place. The
magnificent gardens at Versailles had been laid out and built by the eminent garden architect
Le Notre, some of whose designs were obtained for the additions and improvements carried out
by Charles II. at Hampton Court in 1669. It was then that the great canal was made and the
avenues of Limes were planted that are still in existence. The same inssuence pervaded all
England, and in the larger number of the great places laid out at the end of the 17th century
will be found the long lines of clearing in woodland or of special planting, diverging from one
point, probably the middle of the main terrace. These lines give reposeful dignity and that
impression of vast space that was aimed at by the leading designers of the French school. In
the nearer portion of the wood (the “Bosquet” of the French, so familiar in the pictures os
Boucher and his contemporaries), the trees were clipped to form walls of green; important points
such as inner junctions of alleys, being punctuated by fountains or statues. These were the
scenes of many brilliant summer fetes in connexion with the near gardens, that were also walled
with high hedges close-shorn, decorated with niches for sculpture and pierced with arches for
the passage of the paths. But every style becomes liable to accretions that were not contemplated
by its original founders and that are not always to its advantage; thus the French gardens of the
18th century were encumbered with a vast number of plants in pots placed along the terraces
and garden paths, a fashion justly ridiculed by the critics of the day. But even through the
reign of William and Mary, when it was inevitable that much Dutch inssuence would be likely to
prevail, the large, simple schemes of the French style, and especially the long, converging wood-
land avenues and their lesser counterparts in the garden, still held their own. John Rose,
gardener to Charles II. worked under the direct instruction of Le Notre. He was followed by
the partners London and Wise, who in the reign of William and Mary made further large
additions to the gardens of Hampton Court. These designers were succeeded by Switzer,
Bridgeman, and Kent. With Kent, before the middle of the 18th century, came the change to
the landscape style, when all straight lines became abhorrent and the old ways of gardening
GARDEN ORNAMENT
and others remain to testify to the genius of the architects of the time and to the noble manner
in which they grasped and made use of the new conditions and possibilities under which building
might be carried on. It was not the great houses only that showed this advance, but the
numberless manor houses that were then built, many os which happily remain to us as precious
models os the most charming and sympathetic of human dwelling places. Many of these were
surrounded by a moat, for the tradition of a need of some means of defence was hard to die ; but
we have also to remember that the garden and house would always need protection from deer
and wolves, besides the lesser enemies, hares and rabbits.
In the case of the greater houses there was, on the entrance side, a walled forecourt;
sometimes one forecourt after another, entered through important gateways. On the garden
side, next the house, was a wide terrace, preferably some feet higher than the garden level, so
that a good view was obtained of the flowery parterre below; or the ssower garden might be
enclosed also to right and left by other raised terraces, ending in a garden house or some kind of
ornamental pavilion. A great ssight of steps would descend from the terrace to the garden
level. All these features, with their structural decoration of balustrade, moulded steps and
ornamental buildings, were the work of the architect. It followed that the dominating lines of
the building were protracted into the garden, and that the main forms, however much they
might be subdivided, were always symmetrical and rectangular.
In some one of the divisions the maze or labyrinth was an exercise of ingenuity and a form
of diversion that commended itself to the designers of Tudor and early Jacobean times and their
employers. One can understand the attraction of a puzzling and time-wasting contrivance in
the days when home-keeping for months on end, without a break, was the rule. In the present
days of hurry and much changing of place, we need all the quiet and restful inssuences that our
gardens can give, and the maze no longer comes within our desires.
Some of the details of the old Tudor gardens are to modern taste frivolous, and quite
undesirable ; such as the gilt birdcages and the swinging plates of coloured glass to ssash in the
sun, as described by Bacon. Then a great improvement on the panelled wooden rails or dwarf
trellis round ssower beds was the use of dwarf Box, so finely employed in Italy, and later to be
adopted in France, Holland and England.
The more important garden ornaments, fountains, statues, vases and other works of sculpture,
were not in general use in the gardens of the earlier Elizabethan houses ; they were to come
later, especially after the Restoration, when a great expansion of garden design took place. The
magnificent gardens at Versailles had been laid out and built by the eminent garden architect
Le Notre, some of whose designs were obtained for the additions and improvements carried out
by Charles II. at Hampton Court in 1669. It was then that the great canal was made and the
avenues of Limes were planted that are still in existence. The same inssuence pervaded all
England, and in the larger number of the great places laid out at the end of the 17th century
will be found the long lines of clearing in woodland or of special planting, diverging from one
point, probably the middle of the main terrace. These lines give reposeful dignity and that
impression of vast space that was aimed at by the leading designers of the French school. In
the nearer portion of the wood (the “Bosquet” of the French, so familiar in the pictures os
Boucher and his contemporaries), the trees were clipped to form walls of green; important points
such as inner junctions of alleys, being punctuated by fountains or statues. These were the
scenes of many brilliant summer fetes in connexion with the near gardens, that were also walled
with high hedges close-shorn, decorated with niches for sculpture and pierced with arches for
the passage of the paths. But every style becomes liable to accretions that were not contemplated
by its original founders and that are not always to its advantage; thus the French gardens of the
18th century were encumbered with a vast number of plants in pots placed along the terraces
and garden paths, a fashion justly ridiculed by the critics of the day. But even through the
reign of William and Mary, when it was inevitable that much Dutch inssuence would be likely to
prevail, the large, simple schemes of the French style, and especially the long, converging wood-
land avenues and their lesser counterparts in the garden, still held their own. John Rose,
gardener to Charles II. worked under the direct instruction of Le Notre. He was followed by
the partners London and Wise, who in the reign of William and Mary made further large
additions to the gardens of Hampton Court. These designers were succeeded by Switzer,
Bridgeman, and Kent. With Kent, before the middle of the 18th century, came the change to
the landscape style, when all straight lines became abhorrent and the old ways of gardening