DOI Artikel:
Hunt, John Dixon: On the formation and conduct of garden history
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14576#0015
ON TI II I ORMATION ANI) C'ONDUCT OF (iARDI-N IIISÏORY
4
or misguided efforts (the teleological emphasis) or was advanced as a wholly new departurc (the radical
break from a totally moribund past), such historiés tended to narrate a "progress of gardening" (a phase com-
monly used in English writing since the end of the 18th century) with its best and final émanation being dis-
played in the présent day of the writer.
Perhaps the most famous - certainly the most tenacious and long-lived in its hold on at least English
gardenists - was Horace Walpole's essay on modem gardening, first published in 1780 as part of his Anec-
dotes ofPainting in England, but then issued separately and widely read throughout Europe. Famously, he
sees the "new" landscaping of William Kent and Lancelot Brown as an essentially British invention, the
culmination of little trial and much error- the trial of the mediaeval deer park, forgotten because of the con-
sidérable later error of supinely surrendering to continental, especially French and Dutch, landscape practice,
but wholly explicable in terms of a récent political and social condition that only his country enjoyed: „That
the reason why [English] taste in [natural] gardening was never discovered before the beginning of the pré-
sent century, is that it was the resuit of ail the happy combinations of an Empire of Freemen, an Empire
formed by Trade, not by a military & conquering spirit, maintained by the valour of independent property,
enjoying long tranquillity after virtuous struggles, and employing its opulence and good sensé on the refine-
ments of rational Pleasure".
While it is valuable to see a landscape style and taste contextualized in a wide range of larger events,
there were and still are major problems with accepting the logic of this historical narrative. Because the essay
was written as part of a history of painting, even when separately published its situating of the new landscape
gardening within a painterly narrative (where Kent's designs are praised for their painterly skills) has inclined
every subséquent commentator to explain the new gardening largely in picturesque terms. Further, if land-
scaping in England under Kent and Brown was indeed a "perfection", the apogée of design, then everything
thereafter was presumably inferior, a rather difficult line to hold throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries,
even if you don't exactly warm to the eclecticism of their designs; the resuit has been some very unexciting
and uncertain surveys of the Victorian garden. Another difficulty with buying into the Walpolean story was
that if the English had alone invented this new and wonderful landscape style, how was one to explain the
early 18th-century contributions from non-English sources that undoubtedly contributed to the new attitudes?9
Moreover, wherever the "English" mode of landscaping was taken elsewhere in Europe after Walpole, it was
often decisively reformulated to lose its Englishness and take on local forms and associations. In many
respects, therefore, the Walpolean historical agenda served his polemic purposes but failed to provide a basis
for later or other national historiés. Such a pattern can repeat itself: the promotion of the so-called "new
urbanism" in the United States in the 21st century confuses historical claims for its new approach with the
strategie polemic need to invent and promote such novelty10.
SO WHAT HAS GARDEN HISTORY BEEN UP TO AND WHAT MIGHT IT DO?
It is easy enough to question historiographical methods and approaches that fail to do justice to their
subject by (supposedly) delivering inadéquate narratives. More difficult is to prescribe or project what could
constitute better historiés. But - to start with - we need at the very least a dual approach: we need more,
more detailed and archivally sustained accounts of individual sites and individual designers; at the same time
we need to re-assess the longue durée of garden history in the light of thèse newly unearthed, local and spé-
cifie incidents. Re-discovering an "unknown" designer or site has its limitations if we do not use this new
materiał to ask how it might change or reinforce our conventional historiés. Too much récent garden history,
while it may draw upon new "discoveries", simply uses them somewhat lazily to confirai existing historiés
9 For example the much vaunted ha-ha was almost certainly derived from the French saut de loup; the deer park that Wal-
pole thought the genuine fons et origo of the English landscape garden was an even earlier Norman importation; the Italian impact
on English so-called "Palladian" gardening was also substantial. Indeed, several reviewers of the book where I argued for this Ital-
ian impact and incisive contribution to "English" landscaping (Garden and Grave. The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English
Imagination 1600 1750, J.M. Dent&Sons Ltd, London 1986) aceused me of lack of patriotism for casting doubt on the Walpolean
mythology!
10 On new urbanism, see the spécial pleading of some of its advocates in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Ch. W a Id-
h e i m, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2006.
4
or misguided efforts (the teleological emphasis) or was advanced as a wholly new departurc (the radical
break from a totally moribund past), such historiés tended to narrate a "progress of gardening" (a phase com-
monly used in English writing since the end of the 18th century) with its best and final émanation being dis-
played in the présent day of the writer.
Perhaps the most famous - certainly the most tenacious and long-lived in its hold on at least English
gardenists - was Horace Walpole's essay on modem gardening, first published in 1780 as part of his Anec-
dotes ofPainting in England, but then issued separately and widely read throughout Europe. Famously, he
sees the "new" landscaping of William Kent and Lancelot Brown as an essentially British invention, the
culmination of little trial and much error- the trial of the mediaeval deer park, forgotten because of the con-
sidérable later error of supinely surrendering to continental, especially French and Dutch, landscape practice,
but wholly explicable in terms of a récent political and social condition that only his country enjoyed: „That
the reason why [English] taste in [natural] gardening was never discovered before the beginning of the pré-
sent century, is that it was the resuit of ail the happy combinations of an Empire of Freemen, an Empire
formed by Trade, not by a military & conquering spirit, maintained by the valour of independent property,
enjoying long tranquillity after virtuous struggles, and employing its opulence and good sensé on the refine-
ments of rational Pleasure".
While it is valuable to see a landscape style and taste contextualized in a wide range of larger events,
there were and still are major problems with accepting the logic of this historical narrative. Because the essay
was written as part of a history of painting, even when separately published its situating of the new landscape
gardening within a painterly narrative (where Kent's designs are praised for their painterly skills) has inclined
every subséquent commentator to explain the new gardening largely in picturesque terms. Further, if land-
scaping in England under Kent and Brown was indeed a "perfection", the apogée of design, then everything
thereafter was presumably inferior, a rather difficult line to hold throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries,
even if you don't exactly warm to the eclecticism of their designs; the resuit has been some very unexciting
and uncertain surveys of the Victorian garden. Another difficulty with buying into the Walpolean story was
that if the English had alone invented this new and wonderful landscape style, how was one to explain the
early 18th-century contributions from non-English sources that undoubtedly contributed to the new attitudes?9
Moreover, wherever the "English" mode of landscaping was taken elsewhere in Europe after Walpole, it was
often decisively reformulated to lose its Englishness and take on local forms and associations. In many
respects, therefore, the Walpolean historical agenda served his polemic purposes but failed to provide a basis
for later or other national historiés. Such a pattern can repeat itself: the promotion of the so-called "new
urbanism" in the United States in the 21st century confuses historical claims for its new approach with the
strategie polemic need to invent and promote such novelty10.
SO WHAT HAS GARDEN HISTORY BEEN UP TO AND WHAT MIGHT IT DO?
It is easy enough to question historiographical methods and approaches that fail to do justice to their
subject by (supposedly) delivering inadéquate narratives. More difficult is to prescribe or project what could
constitute better historiés. But - to start with - we need at the very least a dual approach: we need more,
more detailed and archivally sustained accounts of individual sites and individual designers; at the same time
we need to re-assess the longue durée of garden history in the light of thèse newly unearthed, local and spé-
cifie incidents. Re-discovering an "unknown" designer or site has its limitations if we do not use this new
materiał to ask how it might change or reinforce our conventional historiés. Too much récent garden history,
while it may draw upon new "discoveries", simply uses them somewhat lazily to confirai existing historiés
9 For example the much vaunted ha-ha was almost certainly derived from the French saut de loup; the deer park that Wal-
pole thought the genuine fons et origo of the English landscape garden was an even earlier Norman importation; the Italian impact
on English so-called "Palladian" gardening was also substantial. Indeed, several reviewers of the book where I argued for this Ital-
ian impact and incisive contribution to "English" landscaping (Garden and Grave. The Italian Renaissance Garden in the English
Imagination 1600 1750, J.M. Dent&Sons Ltd, London 1986) aceused me of lack of patriotism for casting doubt on the Walpolean
mythology!
10 On new urbanism, see the spécial pleading of some of its advocates in The Landscape Urbanism Reader, ed. Ch. W a Id-
h e i m, Princeton Architectural Press, New York 2006.