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THE FORMAL GARDEN
IN ENGLAND

THE FORMAL GARDEN
IN ENGLAND

BY

REGINALD BLOMFIELD, M.A., F.S.A.

ARCHITECT

AUTHOR OF 'a HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE
IN ENGLAND '

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

F. INIGO THOMAS

ARCHITECT

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited

NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
I 90 I

All rights reserved

i

First Edition, January 1 892

Second Editio7i, October iZg-z

Third Edition, igoi

270869

BOSTON COLLEGE LIBRARY
CHESTNUT HILL, MASS.

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION

During the last few years the question of
garden design has been discussed with a zeal
possibly out of proportion to its intrinsic import-
ance, and the subject, as merely literary material,
appears to possess a dangerous fascination for
writers with a turn for pretty sentiment rather
than for exact habits of thought. It is therefore
necessary to recall the attention of the thought-
ful lover of gardens to what for the purpose I
may call first principles, and it has been the
object of this short history to show, by some
account of what was actually done in the past,
that the gardens which we all admire were not
laid out at random, but in accordance with a
theory of aesthetic which embraced all the arts
in its application. I do not mean by this that
the garden designers of the seventeenth century
went to work with the deliberate intention of
realising a theory, but that, living as they did at

vi THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

a time when tradition was active and when there
existed a sense of the arts in their general re-
lationship, as opposed to the merely skilled
individualism of modern art, they inevitably
maintained in garden design the habit of mind
which they maintained in all the other arts. In
other words, garden design, took its place in the
great art of architecture, with the result of that
well-ordered harmony which was characteristic
of the house and garden in England down to
the middle of the eighteenth century. It has
been the work of the last century to destroy
this invaluable instinct, and all that it has offered
in its place has been a habit of specialising which
may sometimes arrive at technical excellence,
but has assuredly lost us the architectural sense.
It is the absence of this sense which is the most
glaring fault of modern design, and it is shown
most conspicuously in the work of the modern
landscape gardener.

At the date at which the first two editions of
this book were issued, a somewhat acrid contro-
versy raged between landscape gardeners and
architects. The gardeners said the architects
knew nothing about gardening, and the archi-
tects said the gardeners knew nothing about
design, and there was a good deal of truth on

PREFACE TO THIRD EDITION vii

both sides. The first point to be cleared up
was the confusion between horticulture and de-
sign, and, having handed over horticulture to
the gardener, the question of design came fairly
within the province of the architect. In the
attempt, however, to dislodge a tradition of bad
taste, a somewhat polemical treatment was neces-
sary. The occasion for this no longer exists,
and I have therefore omitted the preface to the
second edition. Indeed the danger at this
moment is rather that one trick of design should
be substituted for another, and that in our
admiration for certain beautiful old gardens we
should attempt to reproduce them blindly under
impossible conditions. There are, for instance,
sites which make a purely formal garden out of
the question ; and others in which, even if it
were possible, it would not be desirable ; and it
would be as absurd to make the desperate
attempt as is that favourite device of the land-
scape gardener who cannot resist the manufacture
of a hummock in order that he may wind his
path all round it. For in design we want not
only a sense of beauty, but also common sense ;
and the amateur should be on his guard against
abstract rules and recipes. What looks well in
one place may look very ill in another, and when

viii THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

the copy is based on a print or a drawing ill
understood, the result is probably disastrous.
Short cuts in these matters are not to be found.
Thought and imagination, skilled knowledge
and a light hand in execution, are the necessities,
and they are not to be set out in the terms of a
chemist's prescription. There is much that the
amateur can do in the garden, but when he
starts on his wild career in large design, he runs
a very good chance of sharing the fate of Icarus.

REGINALD BLOMFIELD.

New Court, Temple,
May 1901.

PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION

This short account of the Formal Garden in
England does not profess to be exhaustive.
The field is a wide one and includes subjects
any one of which could only be fully handled
in a special study. An -attempt, however, has
been made to break up ground and to clear
away misconceptions by giving so much of its
history as will show the general character of
the formal garden in England, its absolute
separation from landscape gardening, and the
extent and variety of design which it involves.
It is to the design of the garden that the scope
of the work more particularly refers. No
attempt has been made to deal with horticulture,
with the right methods of growing plants
and flowers and trees : these are fully discussed
by the proper authorities in existing works on
gardening ; but the question of design, of the
treatment of the grounds as a whole as well as

X THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

in detail, is an entirely distinct one, which has
been confused with that of horticulture, and
finally superseded by it. Horticulture stands
to garden design much as building does to
architecture ; the two are connected, but very far
from being identical. This book has been
written entirely from the stand -point of the
designer, and therefore contains little or no
reference to the actual methods of horticulture.

The illustrations have been drawn by Mr.
Thomas, the letterpress has been written by
Mr. Blomfield from materials collected con-
jointly. The writer begs to thank Mr. Seeley
for permission to reprint passages from an
article on " Gardens," contributed by him to The
Portfolio, December 1889.

A list of the works referred to will be found
in Appendix III.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

PAGE

The Formal Method and the Landscape Gardener i

CHAPTER II

The Formal Garden in England . ... 21

CHAPTER III

The Formal Garden — continued . . . .50

CHAPTER IV

The End of the Formal Garden and the Land-
scape School . . . . . -75

CHAPTER V

The Courts, Terraces, Walks .... 93

CHAPTER VI

Knots, Parterres, Grass- Work, Mounts, Bowl-

ing-Greens, Theatres . . . . .125

xii THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

CHAPTER VII

PAGE

Fish - Ponds, Pleaching, Arbours, Galleries,

Hedges, Palisades, Groves . . • .144

CHAPTER VIII

Garden Architecture — Bridges, Gatehouses,

Gateways, Gates, Walls, Balustrades, Stairs 168

CHAPTER IX

Garden Architecture — continued : Garden-
HousES, Pergolas, Aviaries, Columbaries, Dove-
Cotes, Hot - Houses, Carpenter's Work,
Fountains, Sun-dials, Statuary . . .189

CHAPTER X
Conclusion . . . . . . . . 223

APPENDIX I . . . . . . .237

„ II 240

III ... . .^ . .242

INDEX . . . . . . . .245

ILLUSTRATIONS

9-

lO.

1 1.

12.

13-

14.

Haddon Hall . • . ...

From "The Romance of the Rose"
From "The Romance of the Rose "
Crispin de Pass ......

From Tke Gardener' s Labyrinth

From Ike Garde?ier''s Labyrinth

Knots, from Markham's Country Farm

From Lawson's New Orchard .

Wilton, from De Caux ....

Badminton, from Les Delices de la Granae
Bretagne ......

Lead Vase, Melbourne, Derbyshire .

From Logan — Merton College, Oxford

A Garden, from J. Worlidge .

Topiary Work at Levens Hall, Westmoreland

Doves, Risley, Derbyshire

The Terrace Stairs, Prior Park, near Bath

PAGE

18

23
25
29

38
39
44

47
55

^3

68

73
74

75

xiv THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

15-
i6.

17-

i8.
19.

20.

21.

22.

23-

24.
25-

26.

27.

28.
29.

30-
31-
32.
33-

From Atkyns's Gloucestershire . . . .

From London and Wise — A Scarecrow of Bells

and Feathers .....
Barncluith, Lanarkshire ....
Garden and Terrace, Montacute, Somerset
Examples of Fore Courts — from Kip's Views
Saresden, from Kennett ....
Terraced Garden, Kingston House, Bradford

on-Avon ......

Hales Place ......

Rycott, in the County of Oxford

The Terrace, Risley Hall, Derbyshire

From The Gardener^ s Labyrinth

Ambrosden, from Kennett

View of Fore Court, showing one of the Pavilions

Montacute .....

The Garden, New College, Oxford .
Knots, from Markham
The Garden, Canons Ashby, Northamptonshire
From Markham's Cheape and Good Husbandrie
The Old Gardens at Brickwall, near Northiam

Sussex .....
The Fishpond, Wrest, Bedfordshire .
From The Gardener^ s Labyrinth
Garden, from Crispin de Pass .
The Yew Walk, Melbourne, Derbyshire

77

78
90

93

105
108
no
112
121
123

124
126
129

144
146

148
149
153
155

157

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIG.

34. Hedge, from Markham's Country Farm

35. Wrest, from Kip ....
The Water Pavilion, Wrest, Bedfordshire
Garden Gate, Avebury, Wiltshire .

36. The Palladian Bridge, Wilton, Wiltshire ,

37. Eyam, Derbyshire .

38. Gate Piers, Canons Ashby, Northampton

shire ....

39. Coley Hall, Yorkshire .

40. Swarkeston Hall, Derbyshire

4.1. Garden Gate, Tissington, Derby

42. The Terrace, Brymton d'Evercy, Somerset

43. Pitmidden, Aberdeenshire

The Old Garden and Orangery, Mount Edg
cumbe, Cornwall ....

44. Garden-House, King's College, Cambridge

45. „ St. John's College, Oxford

46. ,, King's College, Cambridge

47. „ Christ Church, Oxford

48. The Banquet-House, Swarkeston

49. Boxted Hall, Suffolk

50. Garden-House on the Wey, Surrey .

51. Isaac Walton's Fishing-House, Dovedale

5.2. Dove-cote at Rousham, Oxford

53. Dove-cote,. St, John's, Oxford.

54. Garden-House, Christ Church, Oxford

XV

PAGE
158

165

167

168

171

176

177

179
184
187

1S9
190
190
191
191
192

193
194

195
197
199
201

xvi THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

FIG. PAGE

55. The Green Court, Canons Ashby, Northamp-

tonshire ....... 204.

56. Fountain at Bolsover, Derbyshire . . . 207

57. Sun-dial, Wrest, Bedfordshire .... 209

58. Sun-dial at Cheeseburn, Northumberland . . 211

59. White Marble Sun-dial, Wroxton Abbey,

Oxfordshire . . . . . .213

60. Lead Figure of Perseus, Melbourne, Derbyshire 214

61. Stone Vase at Hampton Court . . .216

62. Lead Figure of Cupid, Melbourne, Derby . 218

63. Lead Vase at Hampton Court . . . .219

64. Lead Vase, Penshurst, Kent . . . .221

65. Penshurst Place, Kent : A Modern Garden . 231

66. Sun-dial in a Scotch Garden . . . .233
6j. The Plan of M. Tallard's Garden at Notting-
ham . , . . . . . - . 241

CHAPTER I

THE FORMAL METHOD AND THE LANDSCAPE
GARDENER

The Formal System of Gardening has suffered
from a question -begging name. It has been
labelled "Formal" by its ■ ill-wishers ; and
though, in a way, the term expresses the orderly
result at which the system aims, the implied
reproach is disingenuous. The history of this
method of dealing with gardens will be discussed
in subsequent chapters, but as some misunder-
standing prevails as to its intention, and any
quantity of misrepresentation, it will be well to
clear the ground by a statement of the principles
and standpoint of the Formal School as com-
pared with Landscape Gardening.

The question at issue is a very simple one.
Is the garden to be considered in relation to the
house, and as an integral part of a design which
depends for its success on the combined effect of
house and garden ; or is the house to be ignored
in dealing with the garden ? The latter is the

2 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

position of the landscape gardener in real fact.
There is some affectation in his treatises of
recognising the relationship between the two,
but his actual practice shows that this admission
is only borrowed from the formal school to
save appearances, and is out of court in a
method which systematically dispenses with
any kind of system whatever.

The formal treatment of gardens ought,
perhaps, to be called the architectural treatment
of gardens, for it consists in the extension of the
principles of design which govern the house to
the grounds which surround it. Architects are
often abused for ignoring the surroundings of
their buildings in towns, and under conditions
which make it impossible for them to do other-
wise ; but if the reproach has force, and it
certainly has, it applies with greater justice to
those who control both the house and its sur-
roundings, and yet deliberately set the two at
variance. The object of formal gardening is to
bring the two into harmony, to make the house
grow out of its surroundings, and to prevent its
being an excrescence on the face of nature. The
building cannot resemble anything in nature,
unless you are content with a mud -hut and
cover it with grass. Architecture in any shape
has certain definite characteristics which it
cannot get rid of; but, on the other hand, you
can lay out the grounds, and alter the levels,
and plant hedges and trees exactly as you

I THE FORMAL METHOD 3

please ; in a word, you can so control and
modify the grounds as to bring nature into
harmony with the house, if you cannot bring
the house into harmony with nature. The
harmony arrived at is not any trick of imitation,
but an affair of a dominant idea which stamps
its impress on house and grounds alike.

Starting, then, with the house as our datum,
we have to consider it as a visible object, what
sort of thing it is that we are actually looking
at. A house, or any other building, considered
simply as a visible object, presents to the eye
certain masses arranged in definite planes and
proportions, and certain colours distributed in
definite quality and quantity. It is regular, it
presents straight lines and geometrical curves.
Any but the most ill-considered efforts in
building — anything with any title to the name
of architecture — implies premeditated form in
accordance with certain limits and necessities.
However picturesque the result, however bravely
some chimney breaks the sky-line, or some
gable contradicts another, all architecture implies
restraint, and if not symmetry, at least balance.
There is order everywhere and there is no
escaping it. Now, suppose this visible object
dropped, let us say from heaven, into the
middle of a piece of ground, and this piece of
ground laid out with a studied avoidance of all
order, all balance, all definite lines, and the
result must be a hopeless disagreement between

4 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

the house and its surroundings. This very
effect can be seen in the efforts of the landscape
gardener, and in old country houses, such as
Barrington Court, near Langport, where the
gardens have not been kept up. There is a
gaunt, famished, incomplete look about these
houses, which is due quite as much to the obvious
want of relation between the house and its
grounds, as to any associations of decay.

Something, then, of the quality of the house
must be found in the grounds. The house will
have its regular approach and its courtyard —
rectangular, round, or oval — its terrace, its paths
straight and wide, its broad masses of unbroken
grass, its trimmed hedges and alleys, its flower-
beds bounded by the strong definite lines of
box -edgings and the like — all will show the
quality of order and restraint ; the motive of
the house suggests itself in the terrace and the
gazebo, and recurs, hke the theme in a coda,
as you pass between the piers of the garden gate.

Thus the formal garden will produce with
the house a homogeneous result, which cannot
be reached by either singly. Now let us see
how the landscape gardener deals with the
problem of house and grounds.

It is not easy to state his principles, for his
system consists in the absence of any ; and
most modern writers on the subject lead off
with hearty and indiscriminate abuse of formal
gardening, after which they incontinently drop,

I • THE FORMAL METHOD 5

the question of garden design, and go off at a
tangent on horticulture and hot -houses. A
great deal is said about nature and her beauty,
and fidehty to nature, and so on ; but as the
landscape gardener never takes the trouble to
state precisely what he means by nature, and
indeed prefers to use the word in half a dozen
different senses, we are not very much the wiser
so far as principles are concerned. The axiom
on which the system rests is this — "Whatever
nature does is right ; therefore let us go and
copy her." Let us obliterate the marks of
man's handiwork (and particularly any suspicion
of that bad man, the architect), and though we
shall manipulate the face of nature with the
greatest freedom, we shall be careful to make
people believe that we have not manipulated it
at all. Various rules are given as to the proper
method of " copying nature's graceful touch "
— the favourite phrase of the landscapist. The
older writers, such as Wheatly {Observations on
Modern Gardenings i77o)> had a theory which
was at least intelligible as a theory. They con-
sidered the landscape gardener as a painter on a
colossal scale. By altering natural scenery he
was to produce such landscapes as are admired
in the works of the old masters. The method
of procedure as explained by Wheatly is this.
You determine a priori the abstract character-
istics of any natural object ; and then, on
considerations evolved from your inner con-

6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

sciousness, you alter the surrounding scenery to
bring out these characteristics. For instance,
the characteristics of rocks are determined to
be " dignity, terror, and fancy." By way of
enhancing dignity, Wheatly tells us to cut away
the ground to make them steeper ; and to
refine their appearance we are to .cover them
up with " shrubby and creeping plants." Or
again, if the scenery is wild, we may make
it wilder by making a ruined stone bridge.
Straight lines and unbroken masses of foliage
are to be avoided at all costs, in order to secure
variety of effect, *' and the planter is to plant
trees of different foliage at stated intervals, by
way of reproducing the colours of the painter's
palette." These views are repeated in modern
treatises on landscape gardening, with, however,
a curious inversion. Wheatly's idea was that
we should saturate our minds with the composi-
tions of the old masters, and then proceed to
alter actual scenery till it resembled their
pictures ; but the modern landscapist tells us
that we are to copy nature — that is, study a
piece of scenery of natural formation, and
then reproduce this in our gardens. Wheatly
admitted design of some sort, while his suc-
cessors direct every effort to imitating the
absence of design. The latter insist that we
are not to copy nature literally, but only in her
spirit, whatever that may mean. Mr. Robinson
says, " We should compose from nature as land-

I THE FORMAL METHOD 7

scape artists do. It is still his (the landscape
gardener's) privilege to make ever-changing
pictures out of nature's own material — sky and
trees, water and flowers and grass. If he would
not prefer this to painting in pigments, he has
no business to be a landscape gardener. The
aim should be never to rest till the garden is a
reflex of nature in her fairest moods." For
instance, because nature is assumed never to show
straight lines, all paths are to be made crooked,
and presumably Mr. Robinson's dictum that
'' walks should be concealed as much as possible,
and reduced to the most modest dimensions" is
based on the state of a virgin forest ; the
argument perhaps running ' thus, because in a
virgin forest there are no paths at all, let us
in our acre and a half of garden make as little
of the paths as possible. Deception is a prim-
ary object of the landscape gardener. Thus to
get variety, and to deceive the eye into sup-
posing that the garden is larger than it is, the
paths are to wind about in all directions, and
the lawns are not to be left in broad expanse,
but dotted about with pampas grasses, foreign
shrubs, or anything else that will break up the
surface. As was said by a witty Frenchman,
" Rien n'est plus facile que de dessiner un pare
anglais ; on n'a qu'a enivrer son jardinier, et a
suivre son trace."

Mr. Milner, a recent writer on landscape
gardening, has the courage to define what he

8 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

calls his art : " The art of landscape gardening
may be stated as the taking true cognisance of
nature's means for the expression of beauty^
and so disposing those means artistically as to
co-operate for our delight in given conditions."
This is a hard saying, put in plain English it
seems to amount to this : Select such landscape
effects as appear to you to be beautiful, and en-
deavour to reproduce them in your garden.
The process suggests the paste-pot and scissors
of the penny-a-liner. By observation of natural
scenery the landscape gardener is to form certain
generalisations to guide his practice. Here are
some of the results of Mr. Milner's studies :
" A calculated shadow on a lawn is a resource of
value for the artistic use of natural effect. In
every situation a beyond implies discovery and
affects the imagination ; the area is circumscribed
of which we can take cognisance too readily and
completely ; imagination is then confused or
frustrated. The beauty of water, in motion or
still, is of universal acceptance. The created
character of a water feature must be consonant
with the surrounding land, for fitness to sur-
rounding conditions is a measure of beauty to
both ; a lake expresses spaciousness, but much
of its charm is due to its outline." There is a
curious irrelevance about these apothegms which
reminds one of Ollendorf : " My aunt is beauti-
ful, but have you seen my sister's cat ^ "

As to any system, Mr. Milner throws up the

I THE FORMAL METHOD 9

sponge at once. He admits in his first chapter
that landscape gardening can have no set of
fixed principles. He says generally that we are
not to copy nature, but " to adapt and garner
her beauties." Yet his advice as to treatment
of details is point-blank copy. " The lawn of
our garden " should present the appearance of a
"grassy glade in a wood," appear, in short, to
be exactly what it is not. For this is another of
the objects of the landscape gardener ; his aim
is not to show things as they are, but as they
are not. His first ambition is to make his
interference with nature look " natural -like " ;
his second, to produce a false impression on the
spectator and make him think the grounds to
be twice as big as they are. ~ '* Bridges may be
contrived to excite the impression of length."
"The removal of some (trees) in particular
situations, with a coincident lowering of the
bank, ' will give an effect of lengthening the
water area." So in regard to trees, "a hill is
made to appear higher if its summit be planted."
Or again, "an enclosure pure and simple, even
though it be of leaves and not a brick wall,
gives a shut-in and cramped feeling which need-
lessly militates against expressions of beauty and
expanse that may be deftly gained from outside
the boundary lines," — that is, by deftly cutting
holes in the line of trees we lead people to
suppose that our neighbour's estate belongs to
us. Hitherto no mention has been made of

10 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

architecture in this description of landscape
gardening. Indeed, it is the object of the land-
scape gardener to exclude the architect from
the garden, for he feels, like Demetrius, the
silversmith, that his craft is in danger to be
set at naught ; and having succeeded in expelling
the architect a hundred and fifty years ago, he
is naturally unwilling to let him in again. Mr.
Milner does point out that the house should
stand on a terrace, but proceeds to stultify his
own admission by stating that the terrace
" differs from the garden proper, which, though
fine in calculated detail of its plan, should
express by its breadth of treatment most un-
mistakably that nature has triumphed over art,
because art has subtly tutored the development
of nature," which, if it means anything, must
mean that when you enter the garden you are
to leave all thought of architecture behind you.
Thus, the substantial difference between the
two views of gardening is this. The formal
school insists upon design ; the house and the
grounds should be designed together and in
relation to each other ; no attempt should be
made to conceal the design of the garden, there
being no reason for doing so, but the bounding
lines, whether it is the garden wall or the lines
of paths and parterres, should be shown frankly
and unreservedly, and the garden will be
treated specifically as an enclosed space to be
laid out exactly as the designer pleases. The

I THE FORMAL METHOD ii

landscape gardener, on the other hand, turns his
back upon architecture at the earliest oppor-
tunity and devotes his energies to making the
garden suggest natural scenery, to giving a false
impression as to its size by sedulously concealing
all boundary lines, and to modifying the scenery
beyond the garden itself, by planting or cutting
down trees, as may be necessary to what he
calls his picture. In matters of taste there is
no arguing with a man. Probably people with
a feeling for design and order will prefer the
formal garden, while the landscape system, as
it requires no knowledge of design, appeals to
the average person who " knows what he likes,"
if he does not know anything else.

One or two charges, however, which have
been brought against the formal system, ought
to be dealt with here. In the first place, it is
said to be unnatural to lay out a garden in
straight lines and regular banks and to clip
your hedges. The landscape gardener appears
to suppose that he has a monopoly of nature.
Now, what is " nature" and what is " natural "
in relation to gardens ? "• II faut se mefier du
mirage de le mot * naturel ' lorsqu'il s'agit des
nuances de la sensibilite. Outre qu'il sert de
masque, le plus souvent, aux inintelligences des
ignorants ou aux hostilites des gens vulgaires, il
a le malheur de ne pas envelopper de signifi-
cation precise au regard du philosophe." ^

^ Paul Bourget.

12 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

'' Nature " must mean the earth itself and the
forces at work in the earth, and the waters of the
earth and sky, and the trees, flowers, and grass
which grow on the earth, no matter whether
planted by man or not. A clipped yew-tree is as
much a part of nature — that is, subject to natural
laws, as a forest oak ; but the landscapist, by
appealing to associations which surround the
personification of nature, holds up the clipped
yew - tree to obloquy as something against
nature. So 'far as that goes, it is no more
unnatural to clip a yew-tree than to cut grass.
Again, " nature " is said to prefer a curved line
to a straight, and it is thence inferred that all the
lines in a garden, and especially paths, should be
curved. Now as a matter of fact in nature —
that is, in the visible phenomena of the earth's
surface — there are no lines at all ; "a line " is
simply an abstraction which conveniently ex-
presses the direction of a succession of objects
which may be either straight or curved.
'' Nature " has nothing to do with either
straight lines or curved ; it is simply begging
the question to lay it down as an axiom that
curved lines are more *' natural " than straight.
As a matter of fact, whatever " naturalness "
there may be about it applies quite as well to a
straight path and a plain expanse of grass ; and
it is open to us to say that the natural man
would probably prefer a straight path to a
zigzag, and that when his eye seeks wearily for

I . THE FORMAL METHOD 13

the rest of some quiet breadth of lawn and the
welcome finality of a wall or hedgerow, he is
"naturally" bored by the landscapist with his
curves and his clumps.

The word " natural " can only mean some-
thing belonging to nature, or something done in
accordance with nature's laws, as, for instance,
planting a tree with its roots underground in-
stead of upside down ; but when the landscapist
uses the word " natural," as when he calls his
system a "purely artistic and natural " style, he
means by it a style which imitates the visible
results of natural causes, as, for instance, the
copy of a piece of natural rock in a rockery.
Now there is nothing more natural, properly
speaking, about this than there is in the forma-
tion of a grass bank in the shape of a horse-shoe.
In fact, this vaunted naturalness of landscape
gardening is a sham ; instead of leaving nature
alone, the landscapist is always struggling to
make nature lend itself to his deceptions. Mr.
Milner gives unconsciously two instances of
this. In a chapter on " Public Parks and
Cemeteries" he tells us how, at Preston, a
railway embankment, which runs across the
public park, was made to look quite natural
by " planting and irregular lines of walk and
turf. Rockwork even has been introduced
to foster the idea that the towering mass is
only one part of an old cliff." And at Glossop
the landscape gardener was still more heroic.

14 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ^ i

The park was divided by a ravine, with a
stream running along the bottom. Accordingly,
" the beautiful and natural parts of the ravine
were picked out and made the most of, whilst,
in order to convert the parts into a whole, the
sides were in places levelled down, and the
stream covered," — a somewhat scurvy treatment
of nature by the landscape gardener. This
is all very well, but what becomes of nature ?
As Sir Uvedale Price said of Brown and
his clumps of trees, " While Mr. Brown
was removing old pieces of formality, he was
establishing new ones of a more extensive
and mischievous consequence." The claims of
landscape gardening to be the true " natural
style " will not bear investigation. When
Addison and Pope sneered at the formal
garden and praised " the amiable simplicity
of unadorned nature," the logical conclusion
would have been to condemn the garden
altogether, and to let the house, if a house was
to be allowed at all, rise from the heart of the
thicket, or sheer from the rough hillside. It
is hard to see how there is less interference with
nature in an untidy grotto of shells and rocks
than in a comfortable red-brick gazebo, and the
entire extent of masonry used by Kent in his
temples and grottoes at Stowe, must have been
at least equal to the amount used by Le Notre
at Sceaux or Chantilly. To suppose that love
of nature is shown by trying to produce the

I THE FORMAL METHOD 15

effects of wild nature on a small scale in a
garden is clearly absurd ; any one who loves
natural scenery will want the real thing ; he
will hardly be content to sit in his rockery
and suppose himself to be among the mountains.
And again, some loyalty to her methods might
have been expected of these enthusiasts for
nature. It is surely flying in the face of nature
to fill the garden with tropical plants, as we
are urged to do by the writers on Landscape
Gardening, ignoring the entire difference of
climate, and the fact that a colour which may
look superb in the midst of other strong colours,
will look gaudy and vulgar amongst our sober
tints, and that a leaf like that of the yucca,
which may be all very well in its own
country, is out of scale and character amidst the
modest foliage of Enghsh trees. The formal
gardener is, by his principles, entitled to do what
he likes with nature, but the landscapist gets
involved in all sorts of contradictions. He
" copies nature's graceful touch," but under
totally different conditions to the original ; so
far, therefore, from being loyal to nature, he
is engaged in a perpetual struggle to prove her
an ass. When we find him talking of '* quite
second-rate types of vegetation " (Mr. Robin-
son), and finding fault with nature for having
put a running stream like the Derwent among
rocks instead of "a more temperate river"
(Wheatly), we begin to suspect that his " truth "

1 6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

is a mere convention. Sainte-Beuve said of the
Abbe Delille that he sincerely believed in his
love of the fields, " c'etait la mode de la nature,
on admirait la campagne du sein des boudoirs."
Our landscape gardeners take themselves too
seriously ; as the late Charles Blanc pointed out,
their pretensions to be natural have landed them
in the worst of all vices — "le faux naturel."

Two other charges are brought against the
formal garden : first, that it involves much
building and statuary ; secondly, that it requires
much space. Neither the one nor the other
is more necessary to the English formal garden
than it is to the landscape garden. In regard
to the first, Mr. Milner gives some very remark-
able designs of rustic boat-houses, and summer-
houses, and porticoes, as part and parcel of the
landscape garden ; and it will appear that the
wholesale and immoderate use of temples,
statues, grottoes, made ruins, broken bridges
and the like, originated with the landscape
gardener, not with the formal school. In point
of fact, though statuary was used in the old
English garden, it was used much less than in
the French and Italian gardens. Those who
attack the old English formal garden do not
take the trouble to master its very considerable
difference from the continental gardens of the
same period. They seem to consider the
English Renaissance as identical with the
Italian, and the public, seeing such dismal

I THE FORMAL METHOD 17

fiascoes in the Italian style as the Crystal
Palace Gardens and the basin at the head of
the Serpentine, confuse these with the old
English garden in one wholesale condemnation
of the formal style. Against the introduction
of the formal Italian garden of the sixteenth
century into England there is a very great deal
to be said. Such a garden properly carried
out would be immensely costly, unless the
balustrades and ornaments were made in com-
position, which is sure to come to pieces in a
very few years, and in any case never colours
(the case, by the way, with several of the most
famous Italian gardens). Moreover, our climate
and the quality of light in England make it
impossible to obtain the effect which is actually
attained in the great Italian gardens, such as
those at Tivoli. The older English garden, as
I shall show later, was by no means a direct copy
of the Italian ; and as to the matter of space, it
is a mere assumption to lay it down that the
formal style in England requires a great expanse
of ground to be seen to perfection. This
was necessary, no doubt, in the old French
garden, but not in the English. Some of the
best examples are on a comparatively small
scale. The gardens at Haddon Hall are in
three stages — the two top terraces only measure
about 70 paces by 18 wide apiece, and the
lower garden is only about 40 paces square.
The beautiful old garden at Brickwall, in

c

i8 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

Sussex, all walled in, measures about 6^ paces
by 55, and the kitchen and fruit garden about
90 by 50. The garden of Edzell Castle, in
Forfarshire, all walled in, measures 5 8 paces long
by 48 wide ; and a charming little flower garden

Fig. I. — Haddon Ha

at Stobhall, near Perth, in the old Scotch style
is not much more than half an acre in extent.
In fact, if either style wants room it is the land-
scape, for unrestricted space is of the essence of
natural scenery ; and, indeed, the only places in
which its use appears reasonable are gardens such
as those of Chatsworth, where the grounds are so
large that there is a real suggestion of scenery

I THE FORMAL METHOD 19

sui generis^ as of a wood in which clearings have
been made and the grass kept carefully trimmed.

The word " garden " itself means an enclosed
space, a garth or yard surrounded by walls, as
opposed to unenclosed fields and woods. The
formal garden, with its insistence on strong
bounding lines, is, strictly speaking, the only
" garden " possible ; and it was not till the decay
of architecture, which began in the middle of
the eighteenth century, that any other method
of dealing with a garden was entertained.

Before quitting the subject of gardens in
general, a distinction should be laid down
between garden design and horticulture. The
landscape gardener treats of the two indis-
criminately, yet they are entirely distinct, and
it is evident that to plan out the general dis-
position of a garden the knowledge necessary is
that of design, not of the best method of grow-
ing a gigantic gooseberry. Mr. Robinson justly
remarks that " the profession of an architect
has no one thing in common with that of horti-
culture," and infers from this that the French
do wrong to give the control of the Luxem-
bourg gardens to an architect. But the question
is not one of horticulture at all, but of design ;
and just as in the house, the designer is only
indirectly concerned with the process of manu-
facturing his bricks, so in the garden the de-
signer need not know the best method of
planting every flower or shrub included in his

20 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND i

design ; the gardener should see to that. The
horticulturist and the gardener are indispensable,
but they should work under control, and they
stand in the same relation to the designer as the
artist's colourman does to the painter, or per-
haps it would be fairer to say, as the builder and
his workmen stand to the architect. The two
ought to work together. The designer, whether
professional or amateur, should lay down the
main lines and deal with the garden as a
whole, but the execution, such as the best
method of forming beds, laying turf, planting
trees, and pruning hedges, should be left to the
gardener, whose proper business it is.

CHAPTER II

THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND

In his Essay on Gardening Horace Walpole
says that we are " apt to think that Sir William
Temple and King William introduced the
formal style, but by the description of Lord
Burleigh's gardens at Theobalds, and of those
at Nonsuch, we find that the magnificent,
though false taste was known here as early as
the reigns of Henry VIII. and his daughter."
This is of a piece with Walpole's generalisations
on Gothic architecture. He seems to have
supposed that it was possible to import an
exotic style wholesale into the midst of a people
with a strong indigenous tradition. As a
matter of fact, the advance in garden design
in the sixteenth century was, like English
architecture of the time, the result of the graft-
ing of ideas brought back from Italy on the
vigorous stock of mediaeval art, and the fully-
developed formal garden of the seventeenth

2 2 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

century retained features which were distinct
survivals from the mediaeval garden.

No instances remain of any mediaeval garden,
and we have to form our ideas of it chiefly
from illuminated manuscripts and early paint-
ings. They were walled in, and supplied with
water in conduits and fountains, and planted
closely with hedges and alleys, as appears from
the well-known lines written by James I. of Scot-
land during his captivity at Windsor, 1405- 1424.

" Now was there made, fast by the Tower's wall,
A garden fair, and in corneris set
Ane herbere green with wandes long and small,
Railit about, and so with treeis set,
Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet
Thet lyf was non, walking there forbye,
That might therein scarce any wight espye —
So thick the boughis and the leaves green
Beshaded all the alleys that there were —
And myddis every herbere might be seene
The sharp, green, sweete junipere."

Mr. Hazlitt {Gleanings in old Garden
Literature) has collected what evidence there
is of the mediaeval garden in contemporary
literature, and unfortunately there is very
little that throws much light on its arrange-
ment. It was not, however, quite such an
indiscriminate affair as Mr. Hazlitt suggests.
In " The Romance of the Rose " in the British
Museum (Had. MS. 4425) there is a beautiful
illumination of a garden, dating from the latter
part of the fifteenth century. This garden is

THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND

23

divided into two by a fence, with a high gateway
in the middle, but both gardens are surrounded
by a wall with battlements. In the centre of

Fig. 2. — From " The Romance of the Rose.

the left-hand garden is a fountain or conduit
of copper, standing in a circular basin with a
marble curb, and a little runnel of water in a
marble channel. The right-hand garden shows

2+ THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND n

rectangular grass plots, in one of which is an
orange-tree in a circular fence ; at the farther
end is a fence of flowers on a wooden trellis —
and peacocks are shown in the garden. Both
gardens are evidently pleasure or flower gardens,
as distinct from the kitchen garden. Mr.
Hazlitt suggests that "arbour" was originally
" herbarium," a space of grass planted with
trees ; but the lines quoted above certainly refer
to a *' green arbour," and prove that by the
beginning of the fifteenth century an arbour,
in pretty much the sense that we should under-
stand it, formed a regular part of the garden.
On page 14^ of "The Romance of the Rose"
there is a drawing of a garden with a wall
about 7 feet high with battlements. On
page 25 there is a drawing of a feature which
seems to have been common in the mediaeval
garden — a square embrasure was formed in the
brickwork of the garden wall, with a seat round
three sides about 2 feet wide and 1 8 inches above
the ground ; the seat v/as of grass. On page 30
a bed of roses is shown instead of the grass seat ;
on page 43 a green walk, such as is frequently
referred to in old writers, is shown, formed on
wooden framing with red and white roses.

It is not, however, till the time of Henry
VIII. that we come across any specific facts as
to the arrangement of gardens. In 1520
Cardinal Wolsey began his great palace of
Hampton Court. Wolsey's gardens, as de-

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 25

scribed by George Cavendish, resemble the
picture given by James I.

Fig. 3. — From "The Romance of the Rose.

" My garden sweet, enclosed with walles strong,
Embanked with benches to sytt and take my rest.
The knottes so enknotted, it cannot be exprest,

26 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND n

With arbours and allys so pleasant and so dulce,
The pestilent ayres with flavors to repulse."

The enclosing walls, the knottes or figured
flower-beds, the arbours and alleys, formed part
of the mediaeval gardens ; but when, after
Wolsey's death in 1530, the palace and gardens
came into the hands of Henry VIII. signs appear
of a new influence at work. Statues and figures
of all kinds were introduced, and various fantastic
features which were, no doubt, borrowed from
Italy. In the chapter - house accounts for the
additions made by Henry VIII. appear the
following entries : —

" Payd to Harry Corantt of Kyngston carver for
making and entaylling of 38 of the kynges and queenys
Beestes in freeston, baryng shyldes wyth the kynges
armes and the queenys ; that is to say, foure dragones,
scyx lyones, five grewhounds, five harttes, foure unicornes
serving to stand about the ponddes in the pondyard at
26s. the piece, £^g : 8 : o.

"Item for paynting of 30 stone bests standyng uppon
bases abought the ponds in the pond yard — Payd to
Heny Blankston of London, paynter, for paynting of 180
postes with white and greene in oyle and every poste
conteyning 2-| yards deyppe at i6d. the yard standing in
the kynge's new Garden, ^32:6:8.

"Also for lyke paynting 96 pouncheons with white and
greene and in oyle wrought with fine antyke upon both
sydes, berying up the rayles in the said garden, £^ : 16 : 10.

"Also for paynting 960 yards in length of rayle.

"Kynges Beasts at the mount — Also payd Mych. of
Hayles, kerver, for couttyng, makyng and karvyng of 16
of the kynges and the queenys beestes in tymber standyng
about the mounte in the kynges new garden, the kynge

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 27

finding stuff thereto at 20s. the pece, by convencyon,
^16 :o :o.

"Dials — To Bryce Augustine of Westmynster cloke-
maker for making 16 brazin dials serving for the kynge's
new garden at 4s. 4d. the piece.

" Trees — 200 young treys of oake and elme — appul trees
and pere trees — 5 servys trees, 4 holly trees, quycksettes
of woodbyne and thorne — treys of you — sypers, Genaper,
and Bayes at 2d. the pece, 600 chery trees at 6d. the 100
— 200 rose at 4d. the hundred, violettes, primroses, gitliver
slips, mynts and other sweet flowers, sweet williams at
3d. the bushel — a bourder of rosemary 3 years old to set
about the mount."

The actual posts and rails mentioned above
are perhaps shown in the view of Hampton
Court garden, which forms part of the back-
ground to the contemporary picture of Henry
VIII. and his family at Hampton Court.^
Some idea of the size can be formed from the
960 yards of railing. The only fragment of
Henry VIII. 's garden at Hampton Court is
probably the small sunk garden close to the
vine-house called the Pond garden. Soon after
1539 the great Palace of Nonsuch, near Cheam,
in Surrey, was begun for Henry VIII. It
is certain that Italian workmen were largely
employed on this building ; and it is evident,
from the description left by Hentzner, that

^ Mr. Law, History of Hampton Court Palace, refers to a drawing by
Wynegaarde in the Bodleian Library, and there is a remarkable view of
these gardens in Tudor times in a picture of ^ueen Elizabeth, which was
shown at the Tudor Exhibition. No. 310 — The plots are shown
divided by sanded paths with wooden balustrades and terminals at the
angles, not unlike the views in the Hortus Floridus of Crispin de Pass. —
All the woodwork is painted red in the picture.

28 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

Italian examples were freely copied in this
garden/ The kitchen garden and the fruit
garden were separated, and the latter was sur-
rounded by a wall 14 feet high, covered with
rosemary. Hentzner noticed this practice of
covering the whole surface of a wall with rose-
mary at Hampton Court and other places in
England. " In the artificial pleasure gardens,"
he writes, " there are many columns and pyramids
of marble, and two fountains of springing water
— one shaped like a round, the other like a
pyramid ; little birds spouting forth water sit
on them. In the grove of Diana, in which is
an artificial fountain, very pleasant to look
upon, Actason is being changed into a stag by
the sprinkling of the goddess, with inscriptions
underneath." Devices of this description, water-
engines and elaborate hydraulic machines, were
common in the great gardens of the sixteenth
century. Hentzner mentions a curious sun-dial
and fountain in the gardens at Whitehall which
drenched the spectators if they came too
close. Classical names and allusions were freely
applied to the different parts of the garden.
The garden at Theobalds, begun for Lord
Burleigh in 1560, contained at one end. a small
mound called " the Mount of Venus." Hentz-
ner gives a detailed account of this garden.

^ Hentzner was a German who travelled through England in the
sixteenth century and published an account of his travels in Latin at
Nuremburg in 1598.

30 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

" Close to the palace is a garden surrounded on
all sides by water, so that any one in a boat may
wander to and fro among the fruit-groves with
great pleasure to himself. There you will find
various trees and herbs, labyrinths made with
great pains, a fountain of springing water, of
white marble ; columns, too, and pyramids
placed about the garden — some of wood, some
of stone. We were afterwards taken to the
garden-house by the gardener, and saw in the
ground floor, which is circular in shape, twelve
figures of Roman emperors in white marble,
and a table of Lydian stone. The sides of the
upper floor are surrounded by lead tanks, into
which water is brought by pipes, so that fish
can be kept in them, and in summer-time one
can wash there in cold water. In a banqueting-
room close to this room, and joined to it by a little
bridge, there was an oval table of red marble."
In an account written by Frederick, Duke of
Wiirzburg, in 1592, this table is described as of
black touchstone 14 spans long, 7 spans wide, and
I span thick. Peck, in his Desiderata Curiosa,
says of these gardens, " One might walk two myle
in the walkes before he came to their ends."

Gardens such as these were plainly inspired
by Italian examples,^ and the Italian Renais-
sance garden was a close copy of the description

^ Here again a distinction, must be drawn between the earlier Italian
garden, such as that described in the text, and the later examples, such
as those of the Villa d'Este.

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 31

left by the post- Augustan writers, and more
particularly by Pliny the younger. Pliny's
account of his Tuscan villa abounds in architect-
ural details, such as garden-houses adorned with
marble and painting, fish-ponds and fountains in
marble, and marble seats ; and Pliny, in describ-
ing the general lie of his house and grounds,
uses the words amoenitas tectorum — a phrase
curiously suggestive of the sweet, low lines of
an Elizabethan manor-house. Clipped work,
chiefly in box, is often mentioned in this
account. The xystus, a space in front of the
garden portico, was spaced out with box-trees,
cut to various shapes, while the ground between
was covered with figures of animals, set out flat
on the ground, in clipped box. The paths were
marked out with box edgings, and the interven-
ing plots were filled either with grass or with
box, cut into various devices, and sometimes in
letters giving the name of the master or of the
designer. In some of the paths stood obelisks,
in others apple-trees, arranged alternately.^ The
resemblance between these details and a sixteenth-
century garden is close, and it is to this source
that we should look for the origin of shaped or
cut work. The topiarius^ or pleacher, was a very
important person in the Roman garden, and the
practice of cutting trees into various shapes was

^ " Viae plures intercedentibus buxis dividuntur, alibi pratulum, alibi
ipsa buxus intervenit, in formas mille descripta, literis interdum, quae
modo nomen domini dicunt, modo artificis, alternis metulae surgunt
alternis inserta sunt poma." — Epistolae^ v. 6.

32 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

revived by the Italians of the fifteenth century.
The beautiful woodcuts to the Hypneroto-
machia Poliphili (Aldus, 1499) show several
designs of cut work. Poliphilus dreams that he
and Pollia are conducted over the island of
Cythera ; and some curious illustrations are
given of the clipped box-trees in the enchanted
garden. An English version of this book
appeared in England in 1592 ; but by this time
the habit of cutting box and yew and juniper
into different shapes was well established in
England. Bacon refers to it in his well-known
Essay on Gardens, and the intricate hedge which
was to surround his main garden implies clip-
ping on a most elaborate scale. There is a
curious contemporary account of the garden
of Kenilworth in a letter from one of the
officers of the Court to Master Humphry
Martin, mercer, of London. This letter was
written from Kenilworth in 1575, during
Elizabeth's visit to the castle. In front of the
castle was a terrace walk raised 10 feet above
the garden, and 1 2 feet wide ; at either end
were arbours, " redolent by sweet trees and
flowers," and along the balustrade, on the garden
side, obelisks, spheres, and coats of .arms in
stone were set out at equal distances. Below
this terrace was the garden, an acre or more
in extent, divided into four quarters by fine
sanded walks. In the centre of each plot rose
an obelisk of red porphyry with a ball at the

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 33

top. The garden was planted with apple-trees,
pears, and cherries. In the middle of the wall
opposite the terrace was a great aviary 30 feet
long, 14 broad, and 20 high ; and in the centre
of the garden a fountain of white marble rose
out of an octagonal basin, "wherein pleasantly
playing to and fro (were) carp, tench, bream,
and for varietee pearch and eel — a garden then
so appointed, as whearin aloft upon sweet
shadowed walks of terras, in heat of soomer, to
feel the pleasaunt whisking wynde above, or
delectable coolness of the fountain spring be-
neath, to taste of delicious strawberries, cherris,
and other fruites even from their stalks."

Bacon's garden, which should be taken in
immediate connection with the palace of the
preceding essay, was to be divided into three
parts — a green, with a straight path across the
centre, and covered walks at the sides ; then
came the main garden, surrounded by an open
arcade, with carpenter's work, with an " entire
hedge of some 4 feet high above it," ornamented
with little turrets and figures. In the centre of
this garden was to be a mound, 30 feet high,
and there was to be a banqueting-house, and
fountains and tanks "finely paved," surrounded
with images, and " embellished with coloured
glasse and such things of lustre." Beyond this
was to be "the heath" or wilderness, as it was
afterwards called, a thicket of sweet-briar and
honeysuckle, "and the ground set with violets,

34 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND n

Strawberries, primroses, and the like low flowers,
being withal sweet and sightly." The English
garden became in the sixteenth century a much
more important affair in every way than it ever
had been before ; much money was spent on it,
and great care given to its design. Bacon talks
of 30 acres of ground as the minimum for a
prince's garden. But, apart from this matter
of size and elaboration, the only specific importa-
tions from Italy appear to have been the use of
terraces and balustrades and great flights of
stairs, and the free use of statuary ; a habit of
mythological allusion in various parts of the
f garden ; and the practice of clipping trees into
various shapes, and distributing them symmetri-
cally. The alleys, green walks, and covered
walks, the " deambulationes ligneae horti," the
arbours, the knots or figures, labyrinths and
mazes, the conduits, tanks, and fountains, and
particularly, the enclosing walls and definite
boundary lines, were only the development of
features which had existed already in the
mediaeval garden. Some of the more extrava-
gant fancies which were caught up in England
in the first flush of the Renaissance were aban-
doned in the following century. One^ doubts
if any '' little Figures with broad plates of
round coloured glasse gilt for the sunne to play
upon," perched on the top of a high hedge,
were ever used in the seventeenth century.
Caprices of this sort obtained no permanent

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 35

hold in England — the national tradition was too
sober to accept them — for in Bacon's own words
they were " nothing to the true pleasure of a
garden." And, again, it must be remembered
that Bacon's essay can no more be taken as an
accurate picture of the average garden of his
time than his Essay on Building as a representa-
tion of an ordinary Elizabethan house. Both
essays are ideal sketches, and Bacon's treatment
is purely literary ; with all its wealth of detail
it is exceedingly difficult to work out any
possible plan to fit the description given. The
gardens at Moor Park, told of by Sir William
Temple, were said to have been laid out on the
lines of this essay — probably the designer was
not careful to inform his client how much was
due to Bacon, and how much to the designer —
for when all is said, Bacon's ideas of design were
those of the amateur. Gardens appealed to him
only as so much literary material, and he wrote
a very charming essay on the subject, knowing
probably no more about it than any other
gentleman of his time. His most elaborate
treatise, the Sylva Sylvarum, deals with experi-
ments and observations in horticulture, treated
as one application of his system of philosophy ;
but the book has no relation to garden design
at all.

Bacon, moreover, was not the first in the field
with his Essay on Gardens. Borde and Thomas
Hill had both dealt with the subject many years

36 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND n

earlier. Dr. Andrew Borde was an eccentric
person of good education and abilities who was
born in the latter part of the fifteenth century,
and died in the Fleet in 1549. In the second
chapter of a curious little book entitled the
Boke for to lerne a man to be wyse in buyldyng of
his house for the health of his body^ e to holde
quyetnes for the helth of his soule and body, etc.,
Borde discusses the question of "aspecte" and
"prospecte." "My con-ceyte," he says, "is
such, that I had rather not to buylde a mansyon
or a house than to buylde one without a good
prospect i to it i from it." The chief prospect
is to be east, especially north-east, for the " est
wynde is temperat, fryske, and fragrant." This
remarkable character of the east wind is repeated
by Hill, and was, as Markham pointed out, the
result of borrowing wholesale from Italian
writers, without either acknowledging the source
or correcting their statements by local experience.
"Furthermore," says Borde, "it is a commodious
and a pleasant thing in a mansyon to have an
orcharde of sundrye fruytes, but it is more
comodyous to have a fayre garden repleatyd
with herbes of aromatyke and redolent savoures ;
in the garden may be a poole or two for.fysshe,
yf the pooles be clene kept, also a park re-
pleatyd with dere and conys is a necessary and
a pleasant thynge " ; and the country gentle-
man's residence is not complete without a
" dove-cote, a payre of buttes for archery, and

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 37

a bowling alley." Thomas Hill was a volu-
minous writer who drew his materials mainly
from Latin authors. In 1563 he published
A most briefe and pleasaunt treatyse teachynge
how to dress ^ sowe^ and set a garden^ gathered
out of the principallest authors in this art.
Hill refers to Pliny and Columella, and deals
with aspect, with the choice of site, the qualities
/ of the ground, fencing and enclosures ; and to
these are added some notes on the properties of
plants and herbs, maxims as to the times and
seasons to be observed in planting, and remarks
on the signs of the zodiac. The book is a small
octavo, printed in black letter, and Hill states
that the "lyke, hitherto, hath not been published
in the Englishe tungue." The first edition is
lost. In 1568 he published a third edition
under the title of The profitable Arte of
Gardenings with additions, treatises on bees,
and "yeerly conjectures meet for husbandmen
to know." Five subsequent editions of this
book were published in the years 1574, 1579,
1586, 1593, 1608. Two woodcuts of designs
for mazes are given — one circular in a square,
the other square ; these were to be formed,
" with Issop and Thyme or Lavender Cotton
spike masserome " ; in each angle of the square
was to be planted a fine fruit-tree, and " in the
myddle of it a proper herber decked with Roses
or else some fayre tree of Rosemary or other
Fruite." The third edition also contains five

38 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

knots for thyme or hyssop. In 1577 a
new book appeared, entitled The Gardener s
Labyrinth^ containing *' a discourse of the
gardener's life, etc., wherein are set forth divers
Herbers, knots, and mazes, cunningly handled
for the beautifying of gardens, etc., gathered

Fig. 5. — From The Gardener^ s Labyrinth.

out of the best approved writers of Garden-
ing, Husbandrie, and Physicke, by Didymus
Mountaine." It appears, from the dedication
to Lord Burghley, that this book was edited by
Henry Dethicke after the death of Mountaine.
The book is nothing more than an enlarged
edition of Thomas Hill's Profitable Art.
Much of the text and several of the woodcuts

40 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

are reproduced exactly, and it would seem
almost certain that " Didymus Mountaine " is
no other than Thomas Hill, and that Master
Dethicke yielded to the temptation to exploit
materials collected by another man. Dethicke
or " Mountaine " leads off with a grand list of
twenty -eight authors, in which " Vergile "
appears between Palladius Rutilius and Didymus,
and Hesiod stands next to Africanus. The first
part deals with the garden, the second with the
distillation of herbs. Some suggestions are given
for the formation of arbours and labyrinths and
the spacing of beds and alleys, but the greater
part of the book is taken up with advice as to
planting, and quotations from authors, such as
" the skilful Rutilius," " the learned Democritus,"
"the worthie Pliny," and "the well-practised
Apuleius." Generally speaking, the writer
conceived of a garden as a small enclosed space,
with a broad walk inside the wall on all four
sides of a rectangular plot ; and the latter was
to be subdivided into a number of smaller plots
divided by narrow alleys. The maze, or the
labyrinth, or any of the various knots, would
occupy one of the smaller plots. The book
is written in a tedious style, and with much
repetition. Its value consists in the light
which it throws on the average English garden
of the sixteenth century, as contrasted with the
princely garden sketched by Bacon. A further
point of interest in the book is its curious

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 41

superstition. The gardener is carefully to
observe the moon and the aspect of the planets
before he sows. Thus " the moone increasing
and running between the 28 degree of Taurus
and the xi degree of the signe Gemini, sow fine
seedes, and plant daintie herbes ; but the moone
found between the 28 th degree of Gemini and
the exit of Cancer (although she increase) yet
bestow no daintie seeds in your earth." As a
protection against hail, Mountaine suggests a
device of Philostratus. You drag a " Marsh
tortoise " round the garden on its back, and
then place it still on its back on a little mound,
carefully banking it up, so that the tortoise
cannot tumble over or do anything but flap its
legs. This is supposed to frighten away the
hail. Thomas Hill mentions that a " speckled
toad, enclosed in an earthen pot " was considered
another good remedy.

Hill, like Bacon, was not a designer, or even
a practical fruit-grower. Bacon wrote as a
literary man, and Hill as a compiler of manuals.
The first attempt to deal with the laying out
of gardens in the light of actual experience was \\
made by Gervase Markham, who set himself to
write a complete account of the knowledge and
accomplishments which became the country j |
gentleman. Markham is English of the
English, and the most delightful of writers.
He had an amazing contempt for his pre-
decessors, who, in writing on gardens, had

42 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

contented themselves with quoting from Latin
and Italian writers, " whence it comes that our
Englishe book knowledge in these cases is both
disgraced and condemned, every one fayling in
his experiments, because he is guided by no
home-bred but a stranger, as if to read the
Englishe tongue there were none better than
an Italian pedant'' (^The English Husbandman).
" Contrary to all other authors, I am neither
beholding to Pliny, Virgil, Columella, etc. . . .
according to the plaine true Englishe fashion,
thus I pursue my purpose." As a matter of
fact, his first treatise. The Country Farm,
1615, consisted mainly of translations from the
French of Olivier de Serres. In regard to
general arrangement of house and grounds,
Markham gives a plan evidently based on the
yeoman's house, such as is found in the Weald
of Kent. The house was to be placed north and
south. In front there was to be a small fore
court enclosed with a fence, which might be
replaced by a gate -house or terrace ; at the
back of the house was the base court, with a
" faire large pond well stoned and gravelled in
the bottom," in the centre. On the north side
of the base court were the stables, cow-houses,
and swine-cotes ; on the south side, the barns and
poultry-houses ; on the west side, joining these
two arms, the lodges, with cart-shed under. The
garden was to be on the south side of the house.
Markham gives separate rules for the garden

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 43

and the orchard, but they were practically laid
out on the same lines. He further separates
the kitchen garden from the garden of pleasure,
and subdivides the latter into two parts : ( i )
The nosegay garden, to be planted with violets,
gillyflowers, marigolds, lilies and daffodils, and
" such strange flowers as hyacinths, dulippos,
narcissus, and the like " ; (2) the garden of
herbs, set with southern-wood, rosemary, hyssop,
lavender, basil, rue, tansy, all-good, marierome,
pennyroyal, and mint. The garden, like the
orchard, might either be laid out as a single
square, subdivided by cross paths into four
quarters, or as a series of squares, two, or three,
or more, on different levels. In the latter case
each square was to be raised 8 feet or so (he
also says seven or eight steps) above the lower
level, and to be reached by " convenient staires
of state"; over this ascent "there might be
built some curious and artificiall banqueting-
house." A broad path would run round each
square, with paths of the same width forming
the four quarters, and in the centre might be
placed " either a conduit of some anticke
fashion, a standard of some unusuall devise,
or else some Dyall or other Pyramid thet may
grace and beautifie the garden." Both garden
and orchard were to be surrounded with a
stone or brick wall, if possible, or failing that,
" a high strong pale, or a great ditch with quick-
set hedge." All the quarters to the squares

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 45

should be planted differently, and a series of
knots or interlacing figures are given, which
were to be planted with germander, hyssop,
thyme, pink gillyflowers, or thrift, with borders
of lavender, rosemary, or box. The noticeable
point in Markham's account of the gardens is
the emphasis with which he insists on the
necessity of ordered design, not only for all
kinds of gardens, but for the orchards and fish-
ponds as well. Everything is to be laid out in
comely order. The kitchen garden is not to
be a dreary wilderness of vegetables, but should
have its broad trim paths, its borders of
lavender or roses, its well or fountain, and even
its arbours or "turrets of lattice fashion," as in
the garden of pleasure. One finds no sugges-
tion in Markham of " improving nature " ; the
point would never have occurred to him
whether nature was to be improved or dis-
improved ; but, on the other hand, one does
find in him a genuine love of nature, of the
music of birds, of the sweet scent of flowers
and all their dainty colouring. His influence
through the seventeenth century was con-
siderable ; several of his treatises were published
in a collected form under the title of A Way
to get Wealthy and this book went through
fifteen editions, the last appearing as late as
1695, when the school of Le Notre was well in
the ascendant.

William Lawson was a friend of Markham's,

46 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ii

and wrote, like the latter, out of his own
experience. In 1618 he published A New
Orchard and Garden^ being, as he says in the
title-page, "the labours of forty -eight years,
more particularly in Yorkshire." Lawson seems
to have lived in Holdernesse. An orchard
with Lawson meant, in the strictest sense, an
apple garden, for it was to be laid out with
large walks, broad and long, having seats of
camomile, and enclosed with walls or moats,
and to have borders and beds of sweet flowers,
and cut work in "lesser wood," mazes, and
bowling alleys, and a pair of butts ; and " one
chief grace that adornes an orchard, I cannot let
slippe ; a brood of nightingales, who with their
several notes and tunes, with a strong delight-
some voyce out of a weake body, will bear you
company night and day . . . the gentle robbin
red-breast will helpe her, . . . neither will the
silly wren be behind in Summer, with her dis-
tinct whistle (like a sweet Recorder) to cheere
your spirits." Lawson lays it down as a matter
of course that a garden should be square, and
gives some designs for knots for the square
beds in The Countrie Housewife' s Garden^
1617. The kitchen garden and flower, garden
should be divided, but you are not to neglect
beauty in the kitchen garden, and you may
therefore make " comely borders to the beds,
with Roses, Lavender, and the like." The most
delightful chapter in The New Orchard is that

Fig. 8. — From Lawson's Nttu Orchard.

A. All these squares must be set with
trees ; the gardens and other ornaments
must stand in spaces betwixt the trees
and in the borders and fences.

B. Trees 20 yards asunder.

C. Garden knot.

D. Kitchen garden. | E. Bridge.
F. Conduit. | G. Staires.
H. Walkes set with great wood thicke.

Walkes set with great wood round

about your orchard.

K. The out-fence.

L. The out-fence set with stone fruit.

M. Mount. To force earth for a mount
or such like, set it round with quick, and
lay boughs of trees strangelyintermingled,
tops inward, with the earth in the middle.

N. Still-house.

O. Good standing for bees if j^ou have
an house.

P. If the river run by your doore and
under your mount it will be pleasant.

48 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND n

which deals with the ornaments of the garden.
The words seem instinct with the sweetness
and simpHcity of the old-world garden. Lawson
is a writer for whom one forms a personal
affection. He is less precise and business-like
than Bacon, who wrote of these things as an
accomplished man of the world ; Lawson is
altogether more sincere and unworldly, his
humour is gentler, his style more gracious and
musical, and he wrote with a sense of what is
beautiful in nature which could only come from
long musings among the flowers and many a
leisurely hour in the trim alleys of his garden.
Of a sense so delicate as this. Bacon was incap-
able. "What can your eye desire to see, your
eare to heare, your mouth to taste, or your
nose to smell that is not to be had in an
orchard with abundance and beauty ^ What
more delightsome than an infinite varietie of
sweet smelling flowers ? decking with sundrye
colours the greene mantle of the earth, the
universal mother of us all, so by them bespotted,
so dyed, that all the world cannot sample them,
and wherein it is more fit to admire the Dyer
than imitate his workmanship, colouring not
only the earth but decking the ayre, and
sweetening every breath and spirit.

"The rose red, damaske, velvet, and double
double province rose, the sweet muske rose
double and single, the double and single white
rose, the faire and sweet scenting woodbind

II THE GARDEN IN ENGLAND 49

double and single ; Purple cowslips and double
cowslips, primrose double and single, the violet
nothing behind the best for smelling sweetly,
and a thousand more will provoke your con-
tente, and all these by the skill of your Gardener
so comely and orderly placed in your Borders
and squares."

Lawson's work is typical of the most charm-
ing side of the Renaissance in England, of its
delight in flowers and birds, and all rare and
beautiful things in art and nature ; but Bacon's
weight of intellect bore down this subtle delicate
instinct, and the treatises on this subject for
the next fifty years follow the lines of The
Sylva Sylvarum rather than The New Orchard
and Garden.

CHAPTER III

THE FORMAL GARDEN — Continued

It has been usual in dealing with gardens to
include some account of the numerous Herbals
which were published in England in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Strictly
speaking, these lie outside the scope of my
subject ; the Herbals are little more than cata-
logues raisonnes of the various fruits and flowers
grown in England at the time, with notes on
their medicinal qualities, and instructions as to
the proper times and methods of planting.
This has nothing to do with garden design.
As, however, the distinction between garden
design, horticulture, and botany was never very
clearly made, I give the dates of the principal
Herbals.

Mr. Hazlitt gives a complete list of the
bibliography of gardening, but, as will appear
from the titles of the works there mentioned,
for the next fifty years after Lawson's book,
nearly all the treatises which are not Herbals

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 51

deal with horticulture. The Great Herbal^
from the French, was first published in 1516 ;
The Little Herbal, from the Latin, in 1525.
Gary's Book of the Properties of Herbs, and
Macer's Herbal were published about 1 540 ;
Ascham's Little Herbal, 1550 ; Turner's Herbal,
1551 to 1568 ; Lyte's translation of Dodoens's
Herbal, 1578 ; John Gerard's Herbal in 1597 ;
John Parkinson's well-known hook. Far adisi
in Sole Paradisus Terrestris, The Garden of
Pleasure, was published in 1629. His Herbal
or Theatre of Plants followed in 1640. Gerard
had a famous physic garden in Holborn, near
Ely Place, overlooking the Fleet. This was
one of the earliest of the botanical gardens
which reached such a high pitch of perfection
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, as,
for instance, the well-known Botanical Garden
at Oxford which was founded and presented to
the University by the Earl of Danby in 1632.
A botanical garden and museum was kept in
South Lambeth by John Tradescant. Isaac
Walton gives some particulars of the Tradescants.
The grandfather and father were gardeners to
Queen Elizabeth, the son to Charles I. The
father and son travelled over Europe and the
East in search of plants, and the son is said to
have travelled in Virginia for the same purpose.
His Catalogue was not published till 1662.
The collection formed by the Tradescants was
purchased by Mr. Ashmole, who gave it to

52 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND m

the University of Oxford, and it thus became
the basis of the Ashmolean collection. In lists
of garden books of this period the name of
Sir Hugh Piatt often occurs, and the titles of
his books. The Garden of Eden and Fiords
Paradise raise expectations which are uniformly
disappointed. Piatt says he will not trouble
his readers with rules for the shaping and
fashioning of an orchard — "every Drawer or
embroiderer, nay, almost each Dancing-master,
may pretend to such niceties," and having thus
demolished the necessity of such a poor thing
as the designer, Piatt unfolds his own learning
in a meagre string of amateur notes on plants.
Piatt was only a dabbler in science, and from
our point of view stands on a very different
footing from such men as Markham and Lawson.
Both of the latter were thoroughly familiar with
the garden, not only as practical gardeners, but
as designers of gardens. They do not appear
to have had any special training in design, but
they were evidently familiar with the accepted
methods of garden design, and there is an
important difference between the country gentle-
man of the seventeenth century and his successor
in the nineteenth. The latter has little tradi-
tional knowledge of design, and the arts of
design form no part of his education, whereas
the English gentleman from the sixteenth to
the eighteenth century did possess a general
traditional knowledge of design and of the

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 53

principles which govern it. He was not better
educated, but he succeeded to an excellent way
of doing things as the result of many generations
of experience and uninterrupted development,
instead of having to choose between half a dozen
different ways, with all of which he is equally
unfamiliar. It was thus that, in the seventeenth
century, the country gentleman might be able
to lay out his own garden, because, with trifling
variations, he laid it out on the same lines as
his father and his grandfather before him.

In more important work, however, there
seems little doubt that the architect, or rather
the architect builder, as he usually was, designed
the grounds as well as the house, and this
continued to be the custom till the days of
Capability Brown. Du Cerceau, in the plates
of his Les Plus Excellents Bastiments, gives
quite as much attention to the gardens as to
the palaces ; and in all books of illustration
throughout the seventeenth century, house and
grounds are shown as a whole. There is a
small plan of a house and garden by John
Thorpe in the Soane Museum, which shows a
square house, with courts in back and front, and
garden at the side, divided into four main plots,
subdivided into smaller knots and squares. On
the back court is written a note " nothing out
of square." John Thorpe died early in the
seventeenth century. The distinction of all
these earlier seventeenth-century garden plans

54 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND m

is the extreme simplicity of their arrange-
ment. However rich the details, there is
no difficulty in grasping the principle of a
garden laid out in an equal number of
rectangular plots. Everything is straightfor-
ward and logical ; you are not bored with
hopeless attempts to master the bearings of the
garden. The old gardens at Wilton, designed
by Isaac de Caux, were laid out in three
divisions, each divided into two by a broad
path running down the centre, with cross paths
running to the outer walks. Isaac de Caux, or
Caus, was a German architect, resident in
England in the early part of the seventeenth
century, and in the employment of the Court.
He laid out the gardens at Wilton for the
Earl of Pembroke, and published a series
of twenty-six copper-plates to illustrate these
gardens in detail, with the following descrip-
tion : —

"This Garden, within the enclosure of the new wall is
a thowsand foote long and about Foure hundred in
breadthe divided in its length into three long squares or
parallelograms, the first of which divisions next the build-
ing, heth fFoure Platts, embroydered ; in the midst of
which are iFoure fountaynes with statues of marble in their
midle, and on the sides of those Platts are the Platts of
fflowers, and beyond them is the little Terrass rased for the
more advantage of beholding those Platts, this for the first
division. In the second are two Groves or woods all with
divers walkes, and through those Groves passeth the river
Nader having of breadth in this place 44 foote upon which
is built the bridge of the breadth of the greate walke. In

56 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND m

the midst of the aforesayd Groves are two great statues of
white marble, of eight fFoote high, the one of Bacchus and
the other Flora, and on the sides ranging with the Platts
of fflowers are two covered Arbors of 300 fFoote long and
diverse allies. Att the beginning of thee third and last
division, are on either side of the great walke, two Ponds
with Fountaynes and two Collumnes in the midle, casting
water all their height which causeth the moveing and
turning of two crownes att the top of the same and beyond
is a Compartment of greene with diverse walkes planted
with Cherrie trees and in the midle is the Great oval with
the Gladiator of brass ; the most famous Statue of all that
antiquity hath left. On the sydes of this compartiment
and answering the Platts of flowers and long arbours are
three arbours of either side with twining Galleryes
communicating themselves one into another. Att the end
of the greate walke is a Portico of stone cutt and adorned
with Pilasters and Nyches within which are 4 ffigures of
white marble of 5 fFoote high. On either side of the sayd
portico is an assent leading up to the terrasse upon the
steps whereof instead of Ballasters are sea monsters casting
water from one and the other from the top to the bottome,
and above the sayd portico is a great reserve of water for
the grotto."

De Caux was superseded, both at Court and
in the employment of the Earl of Pembroke, by
Inigo Jones. James I. had a French gardener
in his employment named Andre Mollet, who
came of a family of famous garden designers.
His father was said to have invented the
jar din hrode^ and wrote a book entitled Le
Theatre des Plantes et Jardinages, for which
Andre Mollet supplied designs. These and
other designs by Mollet were published at
Stockholm in 165 1, as Le Jar din de Plaisir^

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 57

contintant plusieurs dessins de jardinage^ tant
'parterres en Broderie^ compartiments de gazon^
que Bosquets et autres. On the title-page of
this book Mollet is described as '* Maistre des
Jardins de la serenissime Reine de Suede."

The period from the outbreak of the Civil
War to the Restoration is, comparatively speak-
ing, a blank in the history of the arts. Evelyn
records the destruction of part of the gardens
at Nonsuch by the Puritans ; writing in 1666,
he says: "There stand in the garden two
handsome stone pyramids, and the avenue
planted with rowes of faire elmes ; but the rest
of these goodly trees both of this and Worcester
Park adjoyning, were felled by those destructive
& avaricious rebels in the late war, which
defaced one of the stateliest seats his Majesty
had." No one did more than Evelyn to
encourage the study of horticulture in England ;
he wrote treatises and translations^ himself, and
induced Worlidge and others to write on the
subject ; but though fully alive to the beauty of
a well -designed garden, he paid less attention
to the question of garden design, foreseeing,
perhaps, the chaos which was to follow the inter-
ference of the man of letters in the eighteenth
century. It seems that Evelyn did contemplate a
book on garden design, under the title of Elysium

^ The 'English Vineyard^ 1663 5 Sylva, 1664 ; Kalendarium Hor tense,
16665 The French Gardiner, translated by J. E., 1672; Of Gardens, by
Rapin, translated by J. E., 1673 ; The Compleat Gardener, De la Quintinye,
translated 1693 j Directions concerning Melons, 1693.

58 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

Britannicum. This work would have been a
most exhaustive treatise. It was to have con-
sisted of three books — the first deaUng with
the soil of the garden and the seasons, the
second with garden design under twenty -one
heads, the third with the means of producing
rare species, distilHng, and various miscellaneous
points. I give in an appendix a complete
list of the subdivisions. Unfortunately Evelyn
never carried out his intention ; but the titles
left by him are important, as showing how
Evelyn conceived of a garden, and the clear
distinction which existed in his mind between
garden design and horticulture.

With the Restoration a change came over
the designs of the larger English gardens.
Charles 11. was in intimate relations with
the brilliant Court of Louis XIV., at a time
when the latter was in the full swing of his
magnificence, and when architects such as
Mansard and Perrault were seconded by a de-
signer of such remarkable genius as Le Notre.
The noble paths and terraces, the great avenues
and masses of foliage, the broad expanse of
grass and water in which Le Notre delighted,
became the fashion in England. Whatever
faults Le Notre may have had (and to the
landscapist he represents all that is detestable),
he was at least a man of large ideas and
scholarly execution. He carried the art of
garden design to the highest point of develop-

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 59

ment it has ever reached, and this by no
violent reform or blundering originality, but
by profound thought on the lines laid down by
his predecessors. Something of the grandeur
of Le Notre, some flavour of his lordly
manner, spread to England, and for the next
fifty years or so the grounds of the great
noblemen's country-houses were laid out on a
scale compared with which even Bacon's 30
acres seems a trifling affair ; for Le Notre
had covered 200 acres with gardens at Ver-
sailles, and the great terrace which he built
at St. Germain -en- Lay e is i^ mile long and
115 feet wide. There is a story that Le
Notre actually came to England to lay out the
grounds of Greenwich and St. James's Parks ;
but there appears to be no evidence of this.
There is a plan of the palace and grounds of
St. James's in Kip's book. The gardens covered
the whole of the space now taken up by
Marlborough House and Carlton House Terrace,
and terminated in a grove laid out as a patte-
d'oie^ or goose foot, on the site now occupied
by the offices of the London County Council
and other buildings. A straight canal bordered
by double rows of trees extended from the
Chelsea Gate to opposite the Tiltyard. The
only vestige of the original laying out is the
quadruple avenue which runs from Buckingham
Palace to Spring Gardens. It is also doubtful
whether Le Notre personally had anything to

6o THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND m

do with Hampton Court, but it is plain that
the general arrangement of the grounds in
front of Wren's Buildings was due to his
injfluence, and it is known that the great
Fountain Garden was first laid out for Charles
II. The enormous semicircle, with the three
radiating avenues and the great centre canal,
the intricate parterres de hroderie^ shown in
Kip's view, and above all, the masterly con-
ception of the grounds as a whole and in strict
relation to the architecture of the palace, were
certainly inspired by the influence of Le Notre,
if not actually due to his design. There is no
mention or any indication of the use of avenues
on this scale before the Restoration. Indeed,
Worlidge, whose book was published in 1677,
specifically says : "It was not long since our
choicest avenues were first planted with those
ornamental shades that now are become
common." There is therefore good reason
for assigning the origin of this feature to
French influence. Individual avenues were, of
course, in use before this date. Switzer says :
" About the reign of Queen Elizabeth of
immortal memory we may suppose some of the
old avenues and walks adjoining noblemen's
houses were planted." These, however, should
be distinguished from the system of avenues
radiating from one centre which was now
introduced from France.

The landscape gardener of the following

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 6i

century, and his far less able followers in this,
have had ideas of modifying a landscape by
planting trees here and there or in clumps, or
by throwing out woods, or by many more of
their favourite devices for " chastening nature's
graceful touch " ; but their ideas are paltry
when contrasted with the comprehensive scale
on which designers went to work after the
Restoration. The main avenue at Bushey Park,
I mile long and 60 feet wide, with a row of
chestnuts next the road, and four rows of limes
on either side, with the great "Diana" basin at
Hampton Court, 400 feet diameter,' was carried
out by Wise in 1699 at a cost of ^4300. Very
few of these gigantic schemes remain intact,
though there is a notable instance on the
Boughton estate, near Kettering, where one
suddenly finds one's self in the presence of
avenues miles away from the house to which
they relate. Part of the original laying out of
the grounds of Wrest in Bedfordshire remains,
and there are, of course, many instances of
isolated avenues. Fortunately, however, four
publishers — Mortier, Midwinter, Overton, and
Smith — took it into their heads to publish a
series of elaborate double plates in folio, illustra-
ting the great country seats of England at the
end of the seventeenth century, under the title
of Britayinia Illustrata. The drawings for this
series were made by a man named Knyff,^ of

^ Knyff was a painter of dogs and poultry, who died in 172 1 j Jan

62 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

whom little is known, and were engraved on
copper by John Kip. The book was published
in 1709, though many of the drawings were
made much earlier, and is absolutely invaluable
for a knowledge of the metTiod of laying out
gardens and grounds on a large scale at the end
of the seventeenth century. Kip's book, Bade-
slade's Views of Kent (1772), and another book
named Les Delices de la Grande Bretagne^ are in
fact almost the only sources of information avail-
able, as very few of these great schemes remain
intact. The park and gardens at Badminton
are a typical instance. Kip gives three views of
Badminton — the illustration in the text is taken
from the smaller print in Les Delices^ ^I'^l-
The approach to the house was formed by a
triple avenue, the centre avenue 200 feet wide,
the two side avenues 80 feet wide. The en-
trance gates to this avenue were placed in the
centre of a great semicircular wall. The distance
from this gateway to the house was 2^ miles.
After passing through two more gateways, the
avenue opened on to a great oblong open space
forming part of the deer park, with avenues on
either side, and the entrance gate to the fore
court of the house opposite the end of the main
avenue. A broad gravelled path, with grass
plots and fountains on either side, led from the

Kip was born in Amsterdam in 1652. He came to England soon after
the Restoration, and engraved views for Atkyns's Gloucester Suwey, and
Badeslade's Vienvs of Kent. He died in 1722.

64 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

entrance gate of the fore court to a flight of
four steps leading to the pavement in front of
the house. Kip's view shows a coach and six
approaching the entrance gate, apparently not
on the road but on the grass of the park. To
the right hand was the base court, with stables
and outhouses ; at the back of the house the
kitchen and fruit gardens and the pigeon-house.
To the left of the house and fore court were
the bowling-green and pleasure gardens, with
the grove beyond. The latter was divided into
four plots, with four-way paths and a circular
space and fountain in the centre. Each of the
plots was planted with close-growing trees laid
out as mazes, and trimmed close and square for
a height apparently of some 15 to 20 feet from
the ground. Opposite the centre alley was a
semicircular bay divided into quadrants, each
quadrant with a basin and fountain and great
square hedges trimmed to the same height as
the rest of the grove. The whole of these
immense gardens were walled in, with the ex-
ception of a fence round the grove. Wide
gates were set at the ends of all the main paths,
and from these, as points of departure, avenues
were laid out in straight lines, radiating and
intersecting each other in all directions. If
Kip's figures are correct, some of these avenues,
which extended beyond the park to the villages
in the adjacent country, were 6 or 7 miles long.
As shown on plans these avenues look bizarre

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 65

and unattractive, but in actual fact — that is,
when the trees are fully grown — their effect
is very fine. And here, again, the straight-
forwardness, or what one might call the honesty
of the formal method is clearly shown. If a
landscape is to be altered, it may just as well
be altered frankly ; and these designers, liking
long lines of trees and the vistas of great
avenues, planted their straight lines without
any affectation that the work was nature's. At
the same time this practice was, perhaps, the
first sign of the coming decadence. It was a
failure in that strictly logical system which
separated the garden from the park, and left
the latter to take care of itself— a system which
frankly subordinated nature to art within the
garden wall, but in return gave nature an
absolutely free hand outside it. These avenues
and rides were an attempt to manipulate the
face of an entire countryside, and gave a point
of departure to the futilities of Brown and the
improvers of nature in the following century.

Generally speaking, the influence of Le Notre
and his school showed itself in the increased
scale of English gardens, and in greater elabora-
tion of detail. The gardens of Melbourne
Hall, in Derbyshire, are a perfect instance of
the French manner in England on a moderate
scale. These gardens were remodelled and
considerably enlarged for Thomas Coke, after-
wards vice - chamberlain to George L, from

F

LEAD VASE : MELBOURNE '. DEKBYSHIKeT

Fig. I

Ill

THE FORMAL GARDEN 6-]

designs by Henry Wise between 1704 and 171 1.
The older garden appears to have consisted
of a terrace, with two levels below it and
red -brick walls on either side. The lower
wall was probably removed, and an extensive
bosquet or grove planted, with a great water-
piece and several smaller fountains. Long
alleys with palisades of limes were formed, and
an amphitheatre of limes, with vistas radiating
in all directions from a superb lead urn in the
centre. The ground is of irregular plan, but
the difficulties are met by the design in a most
masterly manner. Some alterations were made
in the garden about fifty years ago. Otherwise
the original design is substantially perfect, and
is a very valuable instance of a garden laid out
when the French influence was still dominant
in England. This influence, however, was
practically limited to the grounds of men of
large estate, and the gardens of the smaller gentry
were laid out on a much less costly scale,
and without any great departure from tradi-
tional lines. The gardens of Doddington, in
Lincolnshire, or Dunham Massie, in Cheshire,
as presented by Kip, show little or no French
influence ; and the small gardens shown in
Logan's views of the Colleges of Oxford
and Cambridge might have been laid out by
Gervase Markham or William Lawson him-
self. The Oxford and Cambridge gardens
most effectually meet the objection to the

68 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

formal style that it requires great space.
Unfortunately, the original design has been
destroyed in all these gardens, but their main
dimensions have not been altered, and Logan's
views give a very accurate idea of their general
character.-^

Meanwhile, there was a vigorous revival in
the literature of gardens. Little or nothing

had been written on
the laying out of gar-
dens since the time
of Markham and
Lawson. In 1665
appeared Flora^
Ceres^ and Pomona,
by John Rea, Gent.
The greater part of
this book is taken up
with descriptions of
flowers, plants, and
fruit-trees, and hor-

-From Logan. ticultural nOtCS. But

the introduction to the first book contains some
account of the proper ordering of a "garden
of delight," — that is, of the Fruit garden and
the Flower garden. Rea wrote his book in his
old age, and after forty years' practice as a
planter of gardens, and though he describes
his work as a " Florilege " and an innovation on
the old method of the Herbal, with a sly dig at

^ Logan's Oxania Illustrata, 1675 5 Cantabrtgia lilustrata.

Fig. 12.-

Ill THE FORMAL GARDEN 69

Mr. Parkinson by the way, he was a thorough-
gonig adherent of the old school of design.
He speaks with some contempt of " gardens of
the new model " laid out with good walks and
grass plots, and fountains, grottoes, statues, etc.,
but destitute of flowers, probably referring to
some bad applications of French ideas. Rea
did Le Notre injustice in implying that his
method made no use of flowers ; Madame de
Sevigne, writing to her daughter in 1678, about
Le Notre's work at Clagny, says, " Vous
connaissez la maniere de Le Nostre . . . ce
sont des allees ou Ton est a I'ombre, et pour
cacher les caisses" (for the orange-trees) " il y a,
de deux cotes, des palissades, a hauteur d'appui,
toutes fleuries de tuberoses, de roses, de jasmins,
d'oeillets ; c'est assurement la plus belle, la plus
surprenante et la plus enchantee nouveaute qui
se puisse imaginer." The garden which Rea
contemplated was, of course, walled in. He
talks of 40 yards square as the proper size
for a private gentleman's fruit garden, and half
this size for his flower garden. The flower
gardens were to be laid out in simple geometrical
patterns, for which he gives sixteen excellent
designs which show no trace at all of French
influence. In 1670 appeared The English
Gardener^ by Leonard Meager, the third part of
which deals with "the ordering of the garden
of pleasure, with variety of knots and wilder-
ness work after the best fashion." He gives a

70 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

few diagrams of knots and designs for quarters,
but says very little to the purpose on garden
design. In 1697 Meager published another
book entitled The New Art of Gardenifig^ but
both his works are inferior in value to the
Sy sterna Horticulture, or Art of Gardening, by
J. W., Gent., published in 1677, "illustrated
with sculptures representing the form of
gardens according to the newest models." J. W.
is John Worlidge. His work consists of three
books, and describes the details of the garden
with some minuteness. The shape of the
garden, its general plan, its walls and fences,
its walks and arbours, terraces, seats, pleasure-
houses, fountains and water - works, statues,
obelisks, and dials, are all successively dealt
with, and followed by a systematic treatise on
the flowers and trees with which the gardens
should be planted. Worlidge repeated Rea's
complaint as to the banishment of flowers, and
the excessive use of sculpture in gardens, but
his garden was perfectly formal and did not
depart from the traditional lines in any sense
whatever. No serious change was introduced
under William and Mary, except that the habit
of clipping yew and box trees was carried to
an excess that made it an easy prey for the
sarcasm of Pope in the following century. The
Dutch were fond of queer little trifles, and used
to cut their trees into every conceivable shape.
Switzer says that " this fashion was brought

Fig. 13. — A Garden, from J. Worlidge.

72 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

over out of Holland by the Dutch gardeners,
who used it to a fault, especially in England,
where we abound in so good grass and gravel " ;
but Switzer is inaccurate here, for the custom
of " pleaching " was an old one in England. It
now, however, developed into a positive mania for
cocks and hens and other conceits in yew and box,
and for little clipped trees spaced symmetrically
along the sides of the walks, as they are shown
in nearly all Kip's views, and particularly in the
views of Wimple and Staunton Harold. In
the latter there is a suggestion of a whole
menagerie in clipped work along the sides of
the great basin. Peter CoUinson notes that
"the gardens about London in 17 12 were
remarkable for fine cut greens and dipt yews
in the shape of birds, dogs, men, ships, etc."
The curious cut work in the gardens of Levens
Hall, in Westmoreland, is a well-known instance.
This garden was planted early in the eighteenth
century, and is evidently a deliberate copy of a
Dutch model. The difference between the
French influence and the Dutch is very well
shown by the contrast between the gardens of
Melbourne and Levens ; there is something a
little childish about the latter. In the garden
of Risley Hall, in Derbyshire, there is a charming
instance of cut yew — two doves about 7 feet
long billing each other form an archway in a
yew hedge ; but the most remarkable instance
still exists at Packwood, in Warwickshire, where

74

THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iii

the Sermon on the Mount is literally represented
in clipped yew. At the entrance to the
" mount," at the end of the garden, stand four
tall yews 20 feet high for the four evan-
gelists, and six on either side for the twelve
apostles. At the top of the mount is an arbour
formed in a great yew-tree called the " pinnacle
of the temple," which was also supposed to
represent Christ on the Mount overlooking the
evangelists, apostles, and the multitude below ;
at least, this account of it was given by the
gardener, who was pleaching the pinnacle of
the temple.

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CHAPTER IV

THE END OF THE FORMAL GARDEN AND THE
LANDSCAPE SCHOOL

When William and Mary began their reign
gardening was already the fashionable hobby.
Charles II. had patronised it in his casual
manner : he began the great semicircle at
Hampton Court and the gardens and park of
St. James ; and for fifty years we find a succession
of famous gardeners. Rose, who had studied
under Le Notre, was gardener to Charles II. ;
London was pupil to Rose, and Switzer pupil
or servant to London and Wise. The great
nursery at Brompton, which, in the following
century, was estimated to contain plants to the
value of ^30,000 to ^40,000, was founded by
a company of these men — London, gardener to

^e THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

Compton, Bishop of London, Cook to the Earl
of Essex, Lucre to the Queen Dowager at
Somerset House, Field to the Earl of Bedford.
According to Switzer, this firm laid out the
gardens at Longleat, each of the partners staying
there one month in turn. Lucre and Field died,
and London bought out Cook, and shortly
afterwards took Wise into partnership. George
London and Henry Wise were the two most
celebrated English gardeners of their time.
London was "superintendent of their Majesties'
gardens " at ^£200 a year, and a page of the
backstairs to Queen Mary. Besides the royal
gardens, the firm directed most of the great
gardens of England. Hampton Court, Kensing-
ton Gardens, Blenheim, Wanstead, in Essex,
Edger, in Herts, and Melbourne, in Derbyshire,
were among their principal works. London
seems to have fallen out of favour with Queen
Anne. Switzer says, " Queen Anne (of pious
memory) committed the care of her gardens in
chief to Mr, Wise, Mr. London still pursuing
his business in the country." London used to
divide his business into circuits, spending six
weeks on his northern circuit, and riding 50 to
60 miles a day ; and it appears from a fl&.ming
advertisement, published by Evelyn at the be-
ginning of his translation of De la Quintinye,
that London and Wise undertook garden design
of all sorts, as well as horticulture. Switzer,
who had his own advertisement to make, speaks

78 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

IV

in rather disparaging terms of London's power
as a designer. Both London and Wise seem to
have been taken by the Dutch manner, though
London, at any rate, had seen the great French
gardens, and in his design for the gardens of
Melbourne, 1704, he was much more influenced
by French than by Dutch examples. In 1706
London and Wise pubHshed The Retired
Gard'ner, a translation from Le Jardinier
Solitaire^ and a treatise of the Sieur Louis

Liger of Auxerre, with

«^

n

IXSCARESCROWOFBEILS &TEATHEn3ie

corrections by the trans-
lators. The only sub-
stantial addition which
London and Wise made

Fig. 16.— From London and Wise, ^q ^^jg ^Qok WaS a

description of the garden laid out by them for
Marshal Tallard ^ at Nottingham. London died
in 1 7 13. He lived just long enough to see
all the boxwork at Hampton Court, which he
had planted for William, pulled up by Queen
Anne.

Another translation from the French appeared
in 1 712, entitled The Theory and Practice of
Gardenings done from the French Original^ by
John James of Greenwich. It is not known
who wrote the original. It has been attributed
both to D'ArgenviJle Dezalliers and to Le
Blond, pupils of Le Notre. Le Blond seems the
more probable author. James does not appear

^ Ses Appendix IT.

IV THE FORMAL GARDEN 79

to have known anything about its authorship,
for the original was published anonymously in
1 709 ; but he inclined to think that it was written
by an architect. The translation was pubUshed
by subscription of the principal nobility and
gentry of the time. It is illustrated with
excellent engravings of the various parts of the
formal garden, and contains by far the most
valuable account ever published of the system
of garden design as practised by the school of
Le Notre. That system was now so completely
matured that it was capable of being reduced
to rules of practice, with the necessary conse-
quence that its break-up was imminent. In
17 1 8 appeared Ichnographia Rustica^ or the
Nobleman s^ Gentleman s^ and Gardener s Re-
creations^ by Stephen Switzer, gardener. The
writer of this book evidently supposed that he
was developing the traditions of formal gar-
dening ; but he had, in fact, lost touch of its
essential principle — the principle that the garden
within its enclosure is one thing, and the
landscape outside it another, and that no
attempt should be made to confuse the two.
He devised a system of what he called " rural
and extensive gardening," by which a garden
of 20 acres should look to be 200 or 300.
Walls and fences were to be removed, and
woods and even cornfields made to appear
part of the garden scheme. He urged that
" those large sums of money that have been

8o THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

buried within the narrow limits of a high wall
upon the trifling and diminutive beauties of
greens and flowers (should be) lightly spread
over great and extensive parks and forests."
The designs which he furnishes are very intri-
cate and tedious. He points out that his
system " cashiers those interlacings of boxwork
and such-like trifling ornaments" (and appar-
ently flowers as well), and there is some ugly
cant about " natural and polite gardening,"
which is ominous of what was to follow.
Indeed, the change was now fairly on the
way. Bridgeman, another well-known gardener
of the time who succeeded Wise as gardener to
George I., abandoned " verdant sculpture," as
Horace Walpole calls it, though he still
trimmed his hedgerows. The abuse and per-
version of the good old custom of pleaching
was a sign of decay. Garden design had reached
the full development of which it was capable
by the end of the seventeenth century ; it was
growing stereotyped ; it became familiar, though
incomprehensible, to the man of letters and the
amateur, and the latter at once set to work to
pull it to pieces.

It now became the fashion to ravq about
nature, and to condemn the straightforward
work of the formal school as so much brutal
sacrilege. Pope and Addison led the way, with
about as much love of nature as the elegant
Abbe Delille some three generations later.

IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 8i

Addison began the attack in The Spectator^ with
the following extraordinary argument: — We
may assume, he says, that works of nature rise
in value according to the degree of their resem-
blance to works of art. Therefore works of
art rise in value according to the degree of their
resemblance to nature. Gardens are works of
art. Therefore they rise in value according to
the degree of their resemblance to nature.
Therefore in laying out a garden we are to copy
nature as much as possible. This is a concise
statement of the whole fallacy of the landscape
gardener. In this curious argument the first
half of the major premiss begs the question ;
we do not value nature by the standard of art ;
but even if this was true, the deduction from it
of the second proposition is an inference from '
what is true under conditions to what is true
absolutely, and the entire argument based on
this amounts to a fallacy of the ambiguous middle,
for the term "work of art" is used here both
for " works of art " in the ordinary sense and for
work which is mechanical, that is made by man
as distinct from nature. Pope, the most arti-
ficial of writers, followed suit in The Guardian ^
with a witty catalogue of objects cut in yew-
trees, supposed to be for sale, which included
"a St. George in box, his arm scarce long
enough, but will be in a condition to stab

^ T/ie Spectator, No. 414, 25th June, 17 12.
- T/ie Guardian, No. 173, 17 12.

G

82 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

the Dragon by next April," and " a quickset
hog shot up into a porcupine through being
forgot a week in rainy weather." This was
an excellent sarcasm on an admitted extrava-
gance, and the formal school had undoubtedly
run riot with their pleaching and statuary ; but
this was not so much due to the system as to
the fact that garden design had slipped out of
the hands of cultivated designers and been
monopolised by the nursery gardener. The
latter, as Addison pointed out, would naturally
destroy an old orchard, or anything else, how-
ever beautiful, in order to reduce his stock of
evergreens and plants. The " natural " manner
of gardening now became the rage. Pope
turned his 5 acres at Twickenham into a
compendium of nature, and was considered to
have shown admirable taste by condensing
samples of every kind of scenery into a suburban
villa garden. Even the architects were not
true to their colours. Batty Langley published
a sumptuous book on The New Principles of
Gardenings the value of which consists chiefly
in its paper and binding ; but Kent, who really
was an architect of ability, was the great rene-
gade. It seems almost inconceivable that a man
such as Kent, who could design fine and severe
architecture, should have lent himself so abjectly
to the fancies of the fashionable amateur. No
doubt he had to make his living, and the fashion
was too strong for him. Kent was something

IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 83

of a painter as well as an architect, and he set to
work with both hands, as it were, on garden
design ; for while with his T-square and com-
passes he would design indifferently Grecian
temples, Anglo-Saxon ruins, or Gothic churches
for the grounds, he proceeded to form landscape
compositions on the most heroic scale that surely
has ever entered the head of any painter, for the
solid earth was to be his canvas, and the trees
water and rocks his paints. With these mate-
rials he endeavoured to the best of his ability to
reproduce the landscapes of Claude and Poussin ;
but he signally failed of his purpose, for instead
of the classical breadth and repose of those great
masters, the whole result was fussiness. Accord-
ing to Sir William Chambers, " Our virtuosi
have scarcely left an acre of shade, or three trees
growing in a line, from the Land's End to the
Tweed." Chambers himself published his Dis-
sertation on Oriental Gardens in 1773. This
led, however, to little result beyond the use of
light trellis work for verandahs and the backs
of garden seats. This is how Walpole, most
elegant of gushers, describes Kent's work :
*' Selecting favourite objects, and veiling de-
formities by screens of plantations, he realised
the composition of the greatest masters in paint-
ing. The living landscape was chastened and
polished, not transformed." The chastening of
nature was rather severe, for we find that it con-
sisted in wholesale destruction of trees, alteration

84 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

of ground, building up of rocks, and, for a
crowning effort of genius, in planting dead trees
" to heighten the allusion to natural woods."
He might as well have nailed stuffed nightingales
to the boughs. As Scott said of him : " His
style is not simplicity, but affectation labouring
to seem simple." Kent's great work in gardens
was Stowe in Buckinghamshire. These gardens
were begun by Bridgeman with some approach
to style, but Kent obliterated every trace of it.
He so contrived his views and prospects that
at every turn appeared a fresh /<?^r de force.
After inspecting the Hermitage, the Temple
of Venus, the Egyptian Pyramid, and St.
Augustine's Cave, built of roots and moss,
and adorned with indecent inscriptions, the
amazed spectator would proceed to the Saxon
Temple, the Temple of Bacchus, Dido's Cave,
the Witch House, the Temple of Ancient and
Modern Virtue, the Grecian Temple, the Gothic
Temple, and the Palladian Bridge, not to
mention many other monuments of minor
interest, while at every point inscriptions were
at hand to tell you what to admire and to
supply the appropriate sentiments. Shenstone,
at Leasowes, was even more solicitous ' for his
visitors, for in places of more than ordinary
interest on his farm he would put a Gothic seat
" still more particularly characterised by an in-
scription in obsolete language and the black
letter." This was the practical result of the

IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 85

process described by Walpole in a sentence,
which is probably his masterpiece in claptrap :
" Kent leapt the fence and saw that all nature
was a garden."

Kent was followed by " Capability " Brown,
who began as a kitchen gardener, but took the
judicious line that knowledge hampered origin-
ality. He accordingly dispensed with any
training in design, and rapidly rose to eminence.
Brown's notion of a landscape consisted of a
park encircled by a belt of trees, a piece of
ornamental water, and a clump — the latter in-
dispensable ; and on these lines he proceeded
to cut down avenues and embellish nature with
the utmost aplomb. He died in 1783, and was
succeeded by Humphrey Repton and other pro-
fessors of landscape gardening, who between
them irrevocably destroyed some of the finest
gardens in England. Two instances will show
the taste of these men. One of them advised,
as an improvement to Powis Castle, that a
precipitous rock in front of the Castle with a
stone balustraded terrace and stairs should be
blown up, in order to make a uniform grassy
slope to the Castle ; and in Repton's Landscape
Gardening appears the following remark : '' The
motley appearance of red bricks with white
stone, by breaking the unity of effect, will often
destroy the magnificence of the most splendid
compositions," and he accordingly recommends
that the bricks should be covered with plaster

S6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

and stone colour. The unutterable dulness of
the English Country House of the early part of
the last century is suggested here in all its weari-
some pedantry. The effort aimed at seems to
have been a sort of correct respectability of
colour, something which should not violate de-
corum. The garden front of Hampton Court
is a sufficient answer to such a grotesque as-
sertion. The principles of landscape gardening,
or rather certain assumptions which do duty for
principles, were first formulated by Thomas
Wheatly, in his Observations on Modern Garden-
ing, published in 1776, which became the standard
book on the Jar din Anglais, and has, so far as
any theory is concerned, remained so ever since.
Wheatly further signalised himself by completely
destroying the remains of the formal gardens at
Nonsuch in 1786. Horace Walpole published
an Essay on Modern Gardening in 1785, in
which he repeated what other writers had said
on the subject. This was at once translated
and had a great circulation on the continent.^
The Jar din a V Anglais e became the rage ; many
beautiful old gardens were destroyed in France

^ The Jard'in a V Anglahe was purely and simply what is now known
as landscape gardening — a term which betrays its origin in the latter
part of the eighteenth century. Certain writers have spolcen of the
landscape garden as " The English Garden," but in point of fact till the
middle of the eighteenth century a view of garden design precisely
opposed to this prevailed in England as well as in other civilised countries
of Europe. So far, therefore, as history goes, the older, that is the formal
garden, has the real claim to be called the English garden. Curiously
enough, Taine {Voyage en Italie\ in a sketch of the Villa Albani, con-
fuses the Jard'm Anglais with the older garden.

IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 87

and elsewhere, and Scotch and English gardeners
were in demand all over Europe to renovate
gardens in the English manner. It is not an
exhilarating thought that in the one instance in
which English taste in a matter of design has
taken hold on the Continent, it has done so with
such disastrous results.

It is not to be supposed, however, that this
new view of gardening took immediate and
complete possession of England. Fashions
travelled slowly in the eighteenth century, and
many a formal garden in provincial towns and
country places was laid out in the older style
as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century.
The terrace and great staircase of Prior Park,
near Bath, designed by Wood, the architect, is
one of the finest examples still in existence in Eng-
land of garden architecture ; and the terrace at
Brympton, in Somersetshire, is said to have been
constructed in the early part of last century.
Moreover, men of real cultivation began to resent
the destruction of places which for them, at least,
were instinct with scholarly associations, and the
cant and fallacies of the landscapist were too
transparent to pass unchallenged. Sir Uvedale
Price, a man of independent views and consider-
able intelligence, was perhaps the first to see
the error of his ways. In his essay on The
Decorations near the House^ he tells of an
old garden of his own, in two divisions, all
walled in, with terraces and summer-house and

88 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

rich wrought -iron gates. This garden he
destroyed, with no pleasure to himself, as he
confesses, and with no motive except that of
being in the fashion. He says that he succeeded
at much expense in making his grounds like
anybody else's and like the fields outside, but
lost for ever the seclusion, the charm, the dis-
tinction of his old-fashioned garden. Price
advocated a threefold division — the garden
immediately round the house was to be formal,
the garden beyond to be in the landscape style,
and the park to be left to itself. His idea was
that the transition should be gradual, and this
idea was worked upon by Sir Charles Barry in
laying out the gardens of Trentham Hall and
other places. This, however, seems to me to
show a misapprehension of the intention of the
formal garden as a matter of design. Instead
of the transition being gradual, there should be
no question where the garden ends. As Price
himself pointed out, half the charm of the older
garden was its contrast with the surrounding
scenery, the clean line of demarcation given by
a good brick wall, or at least an iron railing on
a low brick plinth, with the background of the
trees beyond. As for the vaunted ha-ha, it is
little better than a silly practical joke, and in
point of fact was not invented by Kent at all,
but was known to the French designers of the
seventeenth century, for the ha-ha is named and
described as a common feature in gardens in

IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 89

The Theory and Practice of Gardenings 171 2.
The last word of protest was written by Sir Walter
Scott. In 1 827 he wrote a paper on " Gardens "
for The duarterly^ which appeared in 1828 as a
review of Sir Henry Stewart's Planter s Guide.
In this he pointed out the irreparable folly of
destroying these formal gardens, and the fallacy
of claiming for landscape gardening that it was
loyal to nature ; or that Milton, who of all
men loved the formal garden, was in any sense
identified with the introduction of landscape
gardening. The paper contains a charming
description of the garden of Barncluith, in
Lanarkshire, an old garden of the eighteenth
century laid out by one of the Millars, *' full of
long straight walks, betwixt hedges of yew and
hornbeam, which rose tall and close on every
side." Scott also describes an old garden at
Kelso which he first saw in 1783. In his
journal for 29th August 1827 he notes that
"the yew hedges, labyrinths, wildernesses . . . are
all obliterated, and the place is as common and
vulgar as may be. In 1829 Felton published
his Gleanings on Gardens. Since that date the
question of garden design seems to have lost
interest for the public. An article appeared in
The (Quarterly in 1842 on London's Encyclo-
p^dia^ and a paper in The Carthusian for 1845.
The writer of the latter essay supported the old
formal garden with a wealth of scholarly allusion,
and the same ground was taken up by Mrs.

Fig. 17.

IV THE LANDSCAPE SCHOOL 91

Francis Foster in a charming little book called
Tke Art of Gardenings published in 1 8 8 1 , and in
the well-known writings of E. V. B. Until
quite recently little attention has been paid to
the formal garden.-^ The landscape gardener
has had it all his own way, so much so that he
has ceased to think it necessary to lavish that
abuse on the formal school which used to be the
regular preface to his dissertations. Some very
successful attempts, however, in formal gardens
have been made within the last forty years.
Arley and Penshurst are well-known instances.
The latter was laid out by Lord Delisle, and is
perhaps one of the most beautiful gardens in
England or anywhere else. Of contemporary-
designers it would be unbecoming to speak, but
the late George Devey and W. Eden-Nesfield
ought to be mentioned as architects who made a
deliberate and very successful effort to design
the house and grounds in relation to each other,
and this principle, carrying with it the full
appreciation of the formal method of gardening,
is now generally accepted by those who consider
that architecture is a fine art, and not a mere
matter of business or building police.

Looking generally at the history of garden-
ing in England, one cannot but admit that the
disappearance of formal gardening and the

1 Since the date when this was written (1892) several writers have
dealt with gardens, and a valuable series of illustrations, " Gardens Old
and New," has been issued by the proprietors of Country Life.

92 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv

chaos which followed was due to the abuse
of the system itself. The note of warning
uttered by Rea and Worlidge was not heeded.
The designer became so intent on showing his
skill in design that he forgot that a garden is a
place for real flowers and grass, and not for
conventional flowers mapped out on the ground
in difl^erent coloured sands. Some of the designs
for parterres in James's translation are melan-
choly instances of perverted taste. Formal
gardening fell into its dotage, and the vanity
of technique overpowered the reserve and
sobriety and genuine love of nature which
guided the earlier masters, and this was the
justification, in fact, of the violent change that
occurred in the eighteenth century. But the
change was thrust upon us by people who not
only had no sympathy with the older system,
but by their absence of training were quite
unqualified to judge whether that system was
good or bad. The consequence was that the
good went down with the bad, and the funda-
mental principle of the relation between the
garden and the house was completely lost sight
of, though that principle had been accepted as
a matter of course throughout all the greatest
periods of English art.

CHAPTER V

THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS

The advice given by the earlier seventeenth-
century writers as to sites does not precisely
agree with the instances still in existence.
Markham, in his Country Farm, advises that
the house and garden should be placed on high
ground, just under the brow of a hill for
preference, with an east aspect, or a south
aspect " borrowing somewhat of the east, for
the winds blowing from those quarters are drie,
more hot than cold, but very wholesome, as

94 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

well for the body as for the spirit of man."
Thomas Hill had already made the astounding
statement that the east wind is hotter than the
west, simply transcribing from Latin and Italian
writers. Both writers advise against placing
the house on low ground, or near moats or
standing water. Lawson, however, advised
that the orchard should be planted on low
ground by a river, and this was repeatedly done
in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Great noblemen's houses, such as Wollaton,
Bolsover, and Hardwick, were sometimes built
on the tops of hills, but men of lesser means
seem to have liked the shelter of low-lying
ground, and the custom of placing the house on
the highest and most conspicuous part of the
estate was not fully established till the end of
the eighteenth century.

Markham's arrangement of house and grounds
has been described in the second chapter, and
the general principle of it remained unaltered
till the introduction of landscape gardening.
In front of the house was the fore court, walled
in on every side, with an entrance in the centre,
opposite the door of the house ; on one side
was the base court, or bass court, as it came to
be called, which included all the stables and
farm - buildings ; on the other side were the
pleasure gardens, with a terrace along the side
of the house, as at Montacute, and at the back
of the house the fruit and kitchen gardens.

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 95

This arrangement, however, was by no means
universal. The fore court and one or more
bass courts nearly always existed, but their
relative positions were modified to suit the
necessities of the site. In old prints and draw-
ings it is not always easy to classify the courts.
James, in his Theory of Gardenings distinguishes
between the fore court, the castle court or house
court, and the bass courts, and this is a very
convenient classification. The house court is
the court immediately in front of the house,
surrounded on three sides by the centre block
and two wings of the house. The fore court is
the court or courts in front of this, giving access
from the entrance to the house court. The
bass courts are the courts to the right or left of
the fore court, or on both sides of it, or even at
the back of the house, comprising the stables
and inferior buildings. Kip's views show several
different arrangements of the courts. The
house court was usually paved over its entire
surface, or two square grass plots were left
with broad flagged paths round the sides and
down the middle. This court was raised above
the fore court, and separated from it by a
balustrade or an iron railing on a dwarf wall,
with a flight of steps opposite the central path.
Fine instances existed at Badminton and Newn-
ham Paddox, in Warwickshire, and at Bretby, in
Derbyshire, now destroyed. Kip's view of the
latter shows a wide paved path the full width of

96 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

the centre bay of the facade, with grass plots
on either side spaced out with standard-trees
in cases. At Althorp the house court was
separated from the fore court by a moat, with
a bridge opposite the outer entrance to the
fore court. In some instances, and particularly
in the case of houses built after the middle of
the seventeenth century, a terrace running
along the front of the facade took the place of
the house court, as at Chatsworth before it was
altered. Wrest House, in Bedfordshire, Wimple,
in Cambridgeshire, and the house of Sir W.
Blackett at Newcastle (Kip, 54) ; and eventually,
as the quadrangular plan for the house was
abandoned, and the long symmetrical facade
superseded the |-| or half pi plan, the house
court slipped out of use, and the fore court was
brought up immediately in front of the entrance
door of the house, as in old Burlington House
(Kip, 29). Few instances remain of the house
court proper, owing to the inconvenience of
having to walk a considerable distance from the
carriage to the front door ; but examples of
what are practically house courts still exist in
old almshouses, as, for instance, in the almshouse
at Etwall, in Derbyshire.

The fore court lasted well into the eighteenth
century. The simplest form of a fore court is
a square walled -in enclosure in front of the
entrance door, with a gateway in the centre of
the wall to the road, and either buildings or

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 97

plain walls on either side. There were usually
pavilions of more or less importance in the
angles next the road. There is a comparatively
perfect instance of a simple fore court at Wootton
Lodge, in Staffordshire. The carriage -road
sweeps round a circular grass plot up to a grand
flight of twenty-five steps to the entrance door.
This arrangement of a plain circular or oval plot
of grass in the centre of the court, with a foun-
tain or statue in the middle, was very generally
used in the seventeenth century ; but Switzer,
writing in 171 8, says that the custom was being
abandoned, because it diminished the space avail-
able for coaches, and the courts were more often
paved with different coloured stones laid
chequerwise, or in circular or star -shaped
designs. In the smaller houses the fore court
was simply a square enclosure, with a paved path
from the gate to the front door. There is^an
excellent instance in existence at Eyam Hall, in
Derbyshire. On the left is the road to the
offices, on the right the gardens. A small
terrace with a low wall raised eight steps above
the fore court runs in front of the house out to
a door in the right-hand wall, by which access
is given to the garden down a flight of five
semicircular steps. A good view of a small
fore court is given in Kennett's Parochial
Antiquities (1695) ^^^^ ^^ Saresden Hall, since
destroyed. The fore courts of these smaller
houses are not always easy to discover. As a

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V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 99

rule they only exist where the house has been
allowed to decay, and the court is so abundantly
filled with apple-trees and gooseberry bushes,
that it appears as nothing more than an ordinary
kitchen garden in front of a tumbledown house.
In larger houses the fore court was a very
important feature. It extended at least the full
width of the facade, but sometimes it was twice
or three times that length. There was a grand
fore court at Althorp, flanked by the stables on
the left, and the gardens on the right ; the whole
of the space in front of the house was gravelled ;
to the right and left of this were two grass plots
divided and surrounded by broad gravel paths.
The entrance was usually in the centre, but in
some cases, as in the Earl of Burlington's house
at Chiswick (Kip, 30), the entrance was placed
to one corner. At New Park, in Surrey
(Kip, 23)i t^^ entrance was in the centre, but
the walls on either side, instead of continuing
the line of the gates, formed the side walls by
reversed curves. At Bretby, in Derbyshire, the
fore court was oblong, running the whole length
of base court, house, and garden, with iron gates
and grilles at each end, and a fountain in a semi-
circular bay opposite the centre of the house ; a
raised walk with a row of polled trees ran
parallel to the fore court on the side to the
house, and was separated from the house court
by an iron grille. The fore court was often
repeated, so that there were two or three fore

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS loi

courts ; at Newnham Paddox there were three
such courts with gateways leading from one to
the other. At Orchard Portman there was an
outer fore court separated from the inner fore
court by a wall and two -storey gatehouse.
Kip's view of the old gardens at Longleat
shows a very remarkable fore court. The outer
court was only separated from the park by a
fence, with a wrought-iron gateway leading to
the fore court proper. A broad flagged causeway
led from the gates to the front door, with flights
of fifteen steps leading to a lower terrace on
either side in front of the house. The sides of
this causeway were formed apparently with grass
slopes ; on either side of it were grass lawns at a
lower level than the terrace, with circular basins
and fountains in the centre. The effect of such
an arrangement must have been quite magnifi-
cent. The whole of it was swept away by
Capability Brown ; and the utter insignificance of
the present approach shows the full capacity for
mischief of the landscape system. At old Eaton
Hall the outer court was formed by a semi-
circular wall, extending beyond the full width
of the inner fore court sufficiently far to admit
of gateways into the base courts on either side
of the inner fore court. This is a simple and
masterly plan. The fore court at Westwood, in
Worcestershire, was laid out lozenge-wise, with
a gatehouse in the centre and three-storey
pavilions at the two angles. These instances

I02 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

are enough to show that the fore court was not
tied down to one uniform plan, but might be
varied indefinitely to meet the conditions of the
house and grounds. The house court was
abandoned for the practical reason that it
prevented a carriage drawing up at the front
door ; but no such objection holds against the
fore court. It gives privacy to the house, and
when properly planned, provides a convenient
means of grouping the stables and outbuildings
with the main block of the house. Existing
instances show that there is no reason why it
should not be applied to small country houses
as well as to big ones. Nothing can be meaner
than the carriage-drive and rhododendron bed
which usually form a miserable apology for a
fore court proper. The advantages of a fore
court where the ground is shut in by a road
in front and buildings at the sides are obvious.

The terrace is admitted, even by the land-
scapist, to be desirable near the house. In the
first place, it presents to the eye a solid founda-
tion for the house to start from, and gives the
house itself greater importance by raising it
above the level of the adjacent grounds, and
again it is healthier. There is something un-
comfortable in the idea of a house placed flat
on the ground or down in a hole. It need not
necessarily be damp, but one always imagines
that it will, and that the timber will decay, and
the plaster moulder, and rats run over the floor ;

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 103

but when the house starts from a terrace it at
least looks dry, and the terrace enables you to
see the garden. The French author of The
Theory of Gardening lays it down that there
should always be a descent from the building to
the garden of three steps at least. The main
terrace was always placed to overlook the prin-
cipal garden. This might be either to the back
of the house or to the left or right of it, accord-
ing to circumstance. It has been given as a rule
for the width of such a terrace that it should
be equal to the height of the house from the
ground line to the eaves. This rule is so far
good that it is likely to prevent those petites
manures mesquines, against which the French
author warned designers, but it is not borne out
by existing instances. The great terrace at
Montacute, which overlooks the west garden,
is about 45 feet wide, which is much less than
the height of the building. On the other hand,
the north terrace at Versailles measures about
120 feet wide by 820 long; the terrace at
Bolsover, in Derbyshire, about 300 feet long
by 50 feet wide. The proportions of a terrace
depend not only on the height of the building,
but on the length of the terrace itself. In
Marshal Tallard's garden the house terrace
was 60 feet long by 14 wide. Switzer says the
house terrace can hardly be too wide, and that,
as a rule, in England they were much too
narrow. He gives a plan of a terrace 100 feet

I04 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

wide, but as it was to be divided into ten strips
of grass, gravel, and paving, it can hardly be
considered a terrace so much as a terrace garden.
For the side terrace, he says, the width should
not be less than 20 feet or more than 40. In
The Theory of Gardenings a terrace, shown on
the third plate, scales 40 feet wide to 190 feet
long, which is not a very happy proportion.
It is impossible to lay down any definite rule
for the proportions of a terrace, but, generally
speaking, the tendency is to make them too
narrow. Another important consideration is
the height of the terrace above the garden.
On sloping ground this will probably determine
itself ; but where the terrace is almost entirely
artificial, it is not much use making the level of
the terrace less than 2 to 3 feet above the
garden, and, for effect, the higher the better,
within certain limits. Where, however, the fall
of the ground is very sudden, it is best to make
the terrace in two levels — that is, an upper and
a lower terrace, communicating by flights of
stairs. At Kingston House, Bradford -on -
Avon, the difficulty is got over in a very skilful
way. The house is raised 12.0 above the
lower garden ; in front of the house is a terrace
24 feet wide, with a flight of fourteen steps in
the centre, descending to a grass platform with
mitred slopes. The path runs to right and left,
and descends to the lower garden by flights of
seven steps ; off this path, on either side of the

io6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

terrace walls, two steps ascend to grass terraces,
27 feet wide and 52 paces and 29 paces long
respectively, which run under the walls of the
upper gardens to right and left of the house.
The terrace should be made with a slight fall
away from the house of about i^ inches in 10
feet.

The side of the terrace to the garden may
be formed either with brickwork or masonry,
or with a grass slope. Details of the first
will be given under the head of Garden Archi-
tecture. Where a grass slope is used, the
point to aim at is to keep the verge of the
terrace well defined, and to ensure this the
slope of the bank should form an unmistak-
able angle with the ground both at its top
and its base. A gradually curved slope is
useless ; it defeats the whole purpose of the
terrace by merging it into the garden, and
where the landscape gardener uses a slope he
makes it much too flat. Switzer gave 2^ hori-
zontal to I perpendicular for the slope, on the
ground that anything steeper than this cannot
be mowed or rolled. This is a useful propor-
tion, and admits of a staircase at the same angle
as the slope of the bank, with steps of 6 inches
rise and 1 5 inches tread ; flights of steps at a
steeper angle than this are unsatisfactory out of
doors, except under special conditions. The
proportion generally used by the French
gardeners of the seventeenth century was |- to

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 107

I ^ — that is, "I of the height for the horizontal
length of the slope ; but it was also made on
the diagonal of the square, and in some cases at
an angle still more obtuse, in order to prevent
the moisture running off too quickly, and
save the grass along the top from withering
in summer. As a matter of fact, these slopes
are too steep to be practicable in England —
the grass will not grow satisfactorily except on
a rather flat slope, and if it does it is a difficult
matter to keep it trim. Moreover, when it
comes to the steps all sorts of difficulties arise in
the attempt to reconcile the angle of the steps
with the angle of the bank. If the terrace in-
volves much made ground along the outer
edge, care must be taken to build up the earth,
to prevent its slipping down. The Theory of
Gardening advises the following practice : —
" After having laid the earth i foot high, be-
ginning at bottom, you must spread upon
it a bed of Fascines, or Hurdles (made of
willow), 6 foot wide, in rows one against
another, and dispose them so that the great
ends or roots may lie next the face of the
slope, and come within a foot of the sur-
face ; then lay another bed of earth upon
this, and continue the same to the top.
Over this wattled work you lay the turf,
after covering it with a little earth." A
method of strengthening banks somewhat similar

^ The Theory a7td Practice of Gardening.

io8 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

to this is recommended by William Lawson.
The terrace next the house was either gravelled
or paved. A splendid instance of a paved
terrace, the full width of the garden, existed
at Longleat, and several others are shown in
Kip.

Besides the terrace next the house, a terrace
was often formed parallel to it at the opposite

Fig. 21. — Hales Place. ^

end of the garden. In the earlier gardens of the
seventeenth century this was almost invariably
done. In the gardens described and figured by
Markham and Lawson, the " mount," or raised
walk at the end of the garden, with garden-
houses at either end, was an indispensable
feature. There is a good example of this in

^ Hales Place, or Place House, Tenterden, was a seat of the Hales
family. It is now a farm-house, and is usually called Place House.

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 109

ruins, dating from the middle of the sixteenth
century, at Place House, near Tenterden, in
Kent. The garden, which is all walled in,
measures 47 paces wide by 92 long. It is
now a grass field. At the end of the garden
opposite to the house is a raised walk with
brick retaining wall on the garden side, and
a wall 8.0 high on the outer side of the walk.
The walk is 16 feet wide, 5.0 high above
the garden level, and 41 paces long. It is
reached by a flight of nine steps in the centre
from the garden. At each end of the walk
are octagonal garden-houses in two storeys,
the ground floor entered from the garden. On
six sides of the houses there are two light
windows with four-centred heads. The ground
floor is paved with bricks ; the first floor has a
wood floor, and the walls are plastered. All
the details are in brick, with mouldings worked
in plaster to look like stone, and evidently date
from before the middle of the sixteenth century.
At Brickwall, in Sussex, there is a grass walk 9
feet wide and about 130 feet long, with seats at
either end, which separates the garden from the
park ; this is raised six steps above the garden.
At Rycott, in Oxfordshire, there existed a mag-
nificent raised walk along the top of a one-storey
building, surmounted by a balustrade. This
was reached by double flights of steps from the
garden, with an elaborate pavilion raised on the
terrace opposite the steps. Every vestige of

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS iii

this garden has disappeared but one old cedar.
The terrace was frequently continued round the
two remaining sides of the garden, so that a
commanding view of the garden is got from
every side, as at Montacute. In this garden the
terrace next the house has a wall on the garden
side. The other three terraces are formed with
a grass slope to the gardens and flights of steps
in the centre of every side. At Brickwall there
is a rather unusual variation. There is no ter-
race in front of the house, but a paved brick
path with flights of six steps at either end com-
municates with a raised walk 8.9 wide, which
runs round the other three sides of the garden.
The garden itself is raised three steps above the
level of the path in front of the house. Raised
walks, as described above, are shown in Logan's
views of Corpus Christi, Cambridge, and Balliol
and Oriel at Oxford. Bowling-greens were
usually surrounded by raised terraces, and in
important gardens terraces or causeways were
sometimes laid out across the middle of the
garden to enable the parterres to be properly
seen. There is a good instance of this in the
Privy Garden at Hampton Court, also at Pack-
wood, and at Ven House in Somerset. Switzer
says these terraces should be raised between 2.6
and 2'^ above the garden. The terrace at
Risley, in Derbyshire, is at some distance from
the house, and runs along one side of the garden
and beyond it. The terrace is separated from

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 113

the garden by a long narrow piece of water,
which was probably dug out to form the terrace.
The terrace rises some 9 feet above this water,
with a retaining wall of masonry and a heavy
stone balustrade above it. It is reached from
the garden by a flight of seven steps rising over
the bridge, with a rather elaborate stone gate-
way. The terrace is 289 paces long, and is
in two levels. That next the balustrade is 14
feet wide and gravelled. Above this is a grass
walk, 25 feet wide, with box-hedges, and a ha-
ha on the side to the park. Part of the balus-
trade has been removed, and now encloses the
playground of the Grammar School

The terraces hitherto described are such as
might be made in ground with a slight fall.
Hanging gardens are a form of terrace, but it is
best to distinguish the two. The terrace is
specifically a walk raised above the adjacent
ground, with a certain proportion between the
length and width, whereas a hanging garden is
in the nature of a raised platform, which may be
as broad as it is long, or any other width and
any height.^ These hanging gardens were going
out of fashion in Worlidge's time, probably
because of their great expense in making ; but
in certain cases they were rendered necessary by
the ground. Camden says of Holdenby House,

^ The distinction can be well seen at Penshurst, where, in front of the
house, there is a broad platform of turf raised above the garden level, and
the terrace proper runs down one side of the garden.

I

114 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

built for Hat ton in 1583 : " Above all is especi-
ally to be noted with what industry and toyle of
man the garden hath been raised, levelled, and
formed out of a most craggye and unprofitable
piece of ground, now framed a most pleasant,
sweete, and princely place." The gardens of
Haddon Hall are well known. They are laid out
in four main levels ; at the top is a raised walk
70 paces long by 15 wide, planted with a double
row of lime-trees. About 10 feet below this is
the yew-tree terrace, divided into three plots,
about 15 yards square, surrounded by stone
curbs, with yew-trees in each angle. These
were once clipped, but are now grown into
great trees overshadowing the entire terrace.
Dorothy Vernon's stairs descend on to this
yew-tree terrace. A flight of twenty-six steps
led from this terrace to a lower garden about
40 yards square, divided into two grass plots.
A walk from this garden skirted round two
sides of a second garden laid out in three
levels, and reached the postern door in the outer
garden-wall by seventy-one steps laid out in
seven consecutive flights. The original gardens
at Chatsworth were laid out as a succession of
terrace gardens, but the greater part of this
was destroyed by Paxton. '' Queen ^ Mary's
Bower," at Chatsworth, is a curious instance of
what must be called a hanging garden ; it is a
square enclosure on a raised platform, with
retaining walls and open parapet surrounded by

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 115

a moat. This was probably a garden of herbs.
Kip's view of New Park, in Surrey, shows a
large garden, cut out in the side of a hill, with
a high double embankment above it, and an
embankment in three levels below. The house
stood at the bottom of the hill. This is an
exceedingly foolish arrangement. The garden
would be invisible from the house except to a
person standing on the top of the chimney. If
you must have hanging gardens, it is better, as
Worlidge pointed out, to have them below the
house than above it, and not to put the terraces
too close together — that is to say, to keep the
level pieces (what the French used to call the
Plein pied) as wide as possible, otherwise you
are in a constant state of going up and down
stairs. There are good examples of combined
terrace and bank work at Clevedon Court in
Somerset, and in the garden of St. Catherine's
Court, Bath. In The Theory of Gardening a third
method of dealing with sloping ground is given.
This dispensed with terraces and left the ground
on a slope, but provided at intervals elaborate
landing-places, called generally " amphitheatres "
with " easy ascents and flights of steps for com-
munication, with front paces, counter-terraces,
volutes, rolls, banks, and slopes of grass, placed
and disposed with symmetry," and further
adorned with figures and fountains. This was
considered in France the most magnificent way
of dealing with a slope, but it was seldom

ii6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

adopted in England. Such a treatment would
be exceedingly costly to carry out and maintain,
in decent order.

The dislike of regular design entertained by
the landscape gardener is shown most conspicu-
ously in his treatment of paths. He lays them
about at random, and keeps them so narrow that
they look like threads, and there is barely room
to walk abreast, and he makes a particular point
of planting trees and bushes in the way, to give
him an opportunity of winding his path, and
then taking credit to himself for subordinating
his paths to " nature." The width and propor-
tion of paths and their relation to the amount
of turf on either side is a point of the greatest
importance in garden design. In the seventeenth
century it was taken for granted that all paths
should be straight. Lawson says '' One principall
end of orchards is recreation by walks, and
universallie walks are straight," and the main
walks of the garden were always wide enough
at the least for two or three people to walk
abreast. Markham gives 14 feet as a minimum
width for main paths. He advises that the
alleys be made in three divisions — a broad walk
in the middle, 7 or 8 feet wide at the least,
covered with sand or small gravel, or even {int
coal-dust, and on either side a width of grass
of the same width as the centre alley. Thus,
the sandy walk being 7 feet wide, the entire
alley, including the grass on either side, will be

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 117

21 feet across. Markham notices that the
French paved or tiled their centre paths, but
he preferred our gravel. The centre path is
to be slightly raised in the centre to throw off
wet. A useful caution is given by Meager
(1670) that the fall to either side from the
centre should be so slight as to be hardly dis-
cernible, for *' a great fall is unhandsome, and
uneasie for such as wear high-heeled shoes."
Markham gives as practical reasons for his
triple walk — (i) That the contrast of colours, of
the green of the grass and the yellow of the
sand, is delightful to the eye, for "beauty is
nothing but an excellent mixture or consent of
colours, as in the composition of a delicate
woman, the grace of her cheeke is the mixture
of red and white, the wonder of her eye, blacke
and white, and the beauty of her hand blew and
white"; (2) if your walks are all grass, you
trample down part by treading on it, and make
it shabby and ill-favoured ; (3) that after dew
and rain you cannot walk on it at all. Another
form of triple walk is given by Worlidge, who
classifies walks under three heads, (i) The
best, he says, are made with stone " about the
breadth of 5 foot in the midst of a gravel walk
of about 5 or 6 feet gravel on each side the
stone, or of grasse, which you please." * (2)
Gravel walks. These are good to be laid out
under fruit walls, because they reflect the sun
better than grass, and should be made in the

ii8 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

following manner : — Remove all the surface
earth and all roots from the subsoil for a depth
of 8 or 9 inches. Fill in with coarse unscreened
gravel (or broken bricks) for 5 or 6 inches,
level and well ram it, and lay over the surface a
final coat of fine gravel 2 or 3 inches thick.
If moss appears, you are to rake up the top
coat and roll it again. To prevent the earth
at the sides from mixing with the gravel and
causing weeds and moss, the sides should be
supported with two or three courses of brick-
work, or bricks set on end, edge to edge,
the top of the bricks to be about an inch
below the surface. To prevent the gravel
disintegrating in frost, a coating of sea-shells
or brick refuse broken up fine is useful. On
either side of the gravel walk verges of turf
should be formed for use in hot weather ; the
grass may be separated from the gravel by stone
edging rising 3 or 4 inches above the surface
of the path.^ Switzer gives a rule for the
section of the path. It should be i inch rise
to 5 feet in width ; thus if a path is 20 feet
wide, it ought to be 4 inches higher in the
middle than at the sides. (3) Green walks,
made either by laying turf or by "raking them
fine and sowing them with hay-dust or seed,
which may be had at the bottom of a hay-mow."

1 In the quadrangle of New College, Oxford, the oval of turf is
raised some 3 to 4 inches above the gravel j a small stone curb rises
2 inches or so above the gravel, and the edge of the turf is flush vv^ith its
face. By this means a perfectly true edge is kept.

V THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 119

They should be very slightly rounded at the
top, and have a water table on either side 2
to 3 inches deep. The flower garden described
by Worlidge practically consisted of three such
paths as the last, with flower-beds between. It
was to be oblong in shape, forming the centre
third of a square, of which the other two-thirds
were occupied by the kitchen gardens and
orchard. The flower garden was to consist of
a broad gravel walk, with borders of flowers,
with green walks beyond these borders, and
borders of perennials planted between the green
walks and the palisades.

London and Wise, in The Retired Gardiner ^
say that in a garden of 4 acres the main path
parallel to the house should be at least 20
feet wide, the path down the centre and the
walks at the sides and ends 1 5 feet, and inter-
mediate paths 1 2 feet wide ; all alleys should
have a border of grass or flowers 3 feet wide
on either side, and they add, in a note, " We
generally make our alleys 2 foot broad for
passing, 5 foot for wheeling, and 7 foot for two
persons to walk abreast in." "Walks" are
dealt with in some detail in The Theory of
Gardening. The author distinguishes between
" single walks," with a single row of trees or
a palisade on either side, and "double walks,"
which consisted of a broad walk in the middle,
with smaller walks at the sides. The side
walks were separated from the centre walks by

120 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

a line of single trees, and from the grounds by
a palisade breast high. These side walks were
called counter walks. They were usually made
half the width of the centre walk. For instance,
if the entire walk was 48 feet wide, the centre
walk would be 24 feet wide, the side walks 12
feet each ; but the counter walks should never
be less than 6 feet wide at the least. " The
best way to gravel walks," he continues, '' is to
make a bed of mason's rubble or stone dust,
lay at the bottom 7 or 8 inches thickness of
the coarser stone or gallets, and upon that about
2 inches thickness of the finest dust that has
been run through a sieve. Let this be beaten
three several times with the Beater, after having
been well watered each time, and then spread
the gravel upon it, which also should be well
beaten. When you lay a bed of saltpetre over
this mason's dust, as is done in making a mall
or Base to bowl on, it should be beat eight or
nine times." Coarse gravel or pebbles may be
used instead of mason's dust. He admits that
this way of gravelling is "very chargeable," and
that in ordinary cases 2 inches of gravel well
beaten and rolled may do. " Draining wells
should be made at convenient distances of flint
and dug stones." Another method is to. make
a deep V groove under the length of the path,
and fill up with boulders and smaller stones to
form a continuous drain. As to the dimensions
of great walks, the French author gives a width

THE COURTS, TERRACES, WALKS 121

of from 30 to 1^6 feet for a walk 600 feet long,
42 to 48 for 1200 feet, 54 to 60 for 1800
feet, and so on. The Broad Walk at Hampton
Court, as laid out by Wise in 1699, was 2264
feet long by 39 feet wide.

Fig. 24. — From T/ie Gardener's Labyrinth.

Besides the main walks of the garden there
are the small paths between beds and parterres.
In The Gardener s Labyrinth 3 or 4 feet is
given as the width for such an alley covered
with sand, and i foot as the width for the
cross path between the beds. One foot to 1

122 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

foot 6 inches continued to be a common width
for the paths inside parterres down to the end
of the eighteenth century. At Bellair, in King's
County, Ireland, there is a parterre of chpped
box along the upper side of the kitchen garden
in which the width is i6 inches. This was laid
out in 1790. Rea gives a few particulars of the
alleys to the fret of his flower garden. These were
to be 2 feet 6 inches between the fret, gravelled
and rolled and separated from the beds by a
rail 5 inches by i^ thick, carefully gauged and
levelled and painted white, kept in position by
stout wooden pins about 1 8 inches long, nailed
to the rail and driven into the ground. The
rail was to be 4 inches above the surface of the
path and the grass i inch. This rule for the
height of the grass above the path is still given
by landscape gardeners. The small alleys
running in and out of the different parts of the
fret communicated with a broad path 17 feet 6
inches wide, running round the four sides of the
entire fret. Instead of the plank, Rea says box-
edging will do for a border to beds and grass,
but all the borders to the walks should be set
with these planks.

A charming walk is described by Lawson in
dealing with the fences of his orchard. The
best fence, he says, is a hedge with a mount or
double ditch ; the ditches are to be 2 yards wide
and 4 feet deep. Between them is to be formed
a walk 6 feet wide, raised some 5 or 6 feet

124 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND v

above the level of the orchard or garden. The
outer bank of this walk is to be planted with
thorn, the inner with cherry, plum, damson,
bulks, or filbert, and the trees to be trimmed
to any form you fancy. At each corner of the
walk and in the middle of each side " a mound
would be raysed, whereabout the woode might
claspe, powdered with woodebinde." There is
an orchard at the Lordship House, Hadham,
in Hertfordshire, which closely follows this idea,
and was probably laid out early in the seventeenth
century. The orchard, which is rectangular, is
surrounded by a moat (now dry), and beyond
this, on either side, are raised grass walks
with old yew hedges. The effect is extremely
good. Switzer mentions a terrace walk at the
end of a garden 12 to 20 feet wide, 2 to 3 feet
above the garden, with a parapet wall on the
outer side, and a graft or ditch to separate it
from the park 1 5 feet wide and 5 deep. This
sounds rather bare and uninviting after Lawson's
beautiful idea.

CHAPTER VI

KNOTS, PARTERRES, GRASS-WORK,
MOUNTS, BOWLING-GREENS, THEATRES

The ordinary modern flower-bed is ugly in form
and monotonous in colour, and it seems to be
thought necessary to border it with the ugly
lobelia, regardless of the colours of the flower-
bed itself. All the fancy has gone out of it,
and little or no attempt is made to lay out
the beds on any consecutive scheme. Contrast
this with the beds of the old gardens of New
College, now destroyed.^ In front of the
entrance gateway there was a broad path about
1 8 feet wide, with cross paths subdividing the
garden into four square plots. On the right-
hand plot as you entered was worked, probably
in rosemary, hyssop, or thyme, the arms of New
College and the motto '' manners makyth man "
and the date. In the next plot was a curious
device in flowers. On the left hand was planted
the royal arms and the date 1628 ; and the

^ Logan's Oxonia lUustrata.

26 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

VI

plot beyond was laid out as an enormous sun-
dial, the hours probably shown in box or rose-
mary on an oval of sand, with an upright
dial formed of wood in the centre. Olivier de
Serres mentions a similar sun-dial, in which
a single cypress formed the dial.-^ Such a

Fig. 26.

garden, if it had been preserved, would have
been beyond all price to us now. The ridicule
with which such work is dismissed, the abuse
lavished on it as artificial, is beside the mark.
It is just this very artifice, this individuality,
this human interest, that gives to the old formal
garden its undying charm — the feeling that once
there was a man or a woman who cared about

^ Theatre d^ Agriculture, p. 531.

VI KNOTS, PARTERRES, GRASS-WORK 127

the garden enough to have it laid out in one
way more than another, and that they and
many generations since have taken pleasure in
its beauty and the fancy of its parterres.
Perhaps, when any tradition of art is formed
among us again, there will return this pleasure
and delight in those old ways which are the
better.

In the sixteenth century the flower-beds
were commonly square. The author of The
Gardener s Labyrinth advises that they should
be kept to such a size as that '' the weeder's
handes may well reach into the middest of the
bed " ; 12 feet by 6 is given as the size. Each
bed was to be raised about i foot above the
ground, but 2 feet in marshy ground. The
edges were to be cased in with stout planks
framed into square posts with finials at the
angles, with intermediate supports. Rea, in his
Flora^ a hundred years later, advises beds and
the various parts of the frets for flowers to be
formed with planks in much the same way, but
the plank side was only to be 4 inches high.
Beds raised in this way about 1 8 inches above the
adjacent paths, and bordered with box-edgings,
can still be seen in the gardens at Versailles.
Besides the square flower-beds, a more intricate
form of bed, designed to fill up a square plot,
was much in use. This latter was called a
"knot." In the sixteenth century it seems to
have been usually formed with rosemary, hyssop,

128 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

and thyme. Five designs for knots are given
in The Gardener s Labyrinth, which were
to be formed entirely of hyssop or thyme.
In The Countrie Housewife's Garden (1617)
Lawson gives " divers new knots for gardens,"
viz. : —

Cinkfoyle
Flowers de luce
Trefoyle
Frette

Maze

Lozenges
Grose-boowe
Diamond
Ovall

All the flowers and herbs for these should,
he says, be planted by Michaeltide. The
borders were to be of '* Roses, thorne, Lavender,
rosemaris, isop, sage, or such like," and filled
in with cowslips, primroses, and violets, " Daffy-
downdillies," "sweet Sissely," "go to bed at
noone," and all sweet flowers, and, chief of all,
with gillyflowers, the favourite flower of the
English Renaissance — " July flowers, commonly
called Gillyflowers,^ or clove Jully flowers (I

^ The name carnation gradually superseded the name gillyflower.
Worlidge refers to it as the vulgar name for gillyflower. " Carnation "
was at first used to describe one species, but came to be used for gilly-
flowers in general. Lawson's play upon words is pretty but improbable.
Gillyflower is possibly a corruption of Guies Flew. A full account of
this flower and its various species will be found in Gerard's Herbal^ chap.
172. Of clove Gillyflowers, Gerard says that these flowers were pro-
cured from Poland by a worshipful merchant of London, Master
Nicholas Lett, and given to him for his garden ; and that they had
never before "been seen or heard of in these countries," and further that
fresh varieties were being constantly introduced into England. He con-
sidered them not inferior to the Rose "in beauty, smell, and varietie."
Matthiolus, in his commentary on Dioscorides, p. 316, says that they
were called in France " Girophles," again probably a corruption of the
Latin name " Caryophyllus."

I30 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

call them so because they flower in July) ;
they have the names of cloves of their scent.
I may well call them the king of flowers
(except the rose). Of all flowers (save the
Damaske rose) they are the most pleasant to
sight and smell." Markham says that " Of all
the best ornaments used in our English gar-
dens, knots or mazes were the most ancient,
and at this day of most use among the vulgar,
the least respected with great ones." His list
of knots contains : —

Straight line knots
Diamond knots, single

and double
Single knots

Mixed knots
Single Impleate

of straight line
Plain and mixed

Direct and circular

These knots were formed with a border of
box, lavender, or rosemary, i8 inches broad
at the bottom, and clipped so close and level
at the top as to form a table for the house-
wife to spread out clothes to dry on. Mark-
ham gives instructions how knots are to be
set out from designs on paper by subdividing
the square plot into a number of squares pro-
portional to those on the paper, and adds that
" You are to keep your level to a haire, for
if you faill in it you faill in your whole ,work."
He further describes two knots which anticipate
the parterre de hroderie. In the first you set
out the lines of your design in germander or
hyssop, and fill in the parts with difl^srent

VI KNOTS, PARTERRES, GRASS-WORK 131

coloured earths and chalks, with camomile for
green. By this means you may represent
armorial bearings or anything else, and a very
poor affair it would probably have been. The
other knot sounds much more attractive. You
set out a plain knot, the larger the better. The
different " thrids " of the knot, as Markham
calls them, are to be planted with flowers of
one colour. Thus in one you will place
carnation gillyflowers, in another great white
gillyflowers, in another blood red, or hya-
cinths, or " dulippos." The knot will then
appear as if " made of divers coloured ribans."
The maze which appears in these descriptions
of knots was evidently only a figure for a
bed and not a labyrinth, such as the maze at
Hatfield or Hampton Court. Meager gives
some designs for knots and uses the term, but
he does not describe them, and his designs
are inferior to those of the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Knots seem to have
dropped out of use in the reign of Charles 11.
The word occurs in London and Wise's trans-
lation of The Retired Gard'ner^ and in James's
translation ; but the writers only deal with
parterres.

The parterre was introduced from France.
The old parterre corresponded to the English
knot, except that it was much more elaborate.
As early as 1600 Claude Mollet laid out par-
terres of embroidery for Henry IV. at the

132 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

Tuileries, Fontainebleau, and St. Germain-en-
Laye. Seven engravings of these are given in
Olivier de Serres's Theatre d' Agriculture et
mesnage des Champs, 1603. These were planted
with flowers and grass edgings, and laid with
coloured earths. The parterre was developed
by Le Notre, and by the end of the seventeenth
century a systematic classification was arrived
at, which divided parterres into four main
heads."^ In James's translation of The Theory
and Practice of Gardening they are given as
follows : — " Parterres of embroidery, parterres
of compartiment, parterres after the English
manner, and parterres of cut-work. There are
also parterres of water, but at present they are
quite out of use."

1. Parterres de broderie were designs similar
to embroidered work, planted with edgings of
box and filled up with different coloured earths,
such as black earth composed of iron filings, or
the scales beaten off the anvils, or powdered red
tiles, or charcoal, or yellow sand. The fohage
of the design was called " branchings," the
flowers *' fiourishings."

2. Parterres of compartiment are the same
as the last, except that the design, instead of
being single, is repeated both at the ends and
the sides — that is to say, one quarter of the

^ The term parterre was used generally to signify one specific plot or
compartment of a garden, which formed a single design complete in
itself.

VI KNOTS, PARTERRES, GRASS-WORK 133

whole parterre gives the design, and to com-
plete the entire parterre this quarter has only
to be reversed and doubled, so that it is used up
four times.

3. Parterres a r Anglais e were formed
simply with grass cut into various patterns and
bounded with box-edgings. Round the whole
parterre would run a sanded path, 2 to 3 feet
wide, and then a border of flowers to separate
it from the main walks. The terrace garden
overlooking the piece d'eau des Suisses, at Ver-
sailles, is laid out with parterres a FAnglaise,
but this parterre was never a success in France,
owing to the inferiority of the French to the
English turf.

4. Parterres of cut-work admitted neither
grass nor coloured earths, but every part of it
between the box-edgings was to be planted
entirely with flowers.

The paths between each part were to be
covered with yellow or white sand, and set
out at regular spaces with large Dutch jars
filled with flowers. London and Wise men-
tion that it was once the custom to cover
the paths with potter's clay, well beaten, with
lees of oil. James specifies brick dust or tile
sherds powdered. In parterres of cut-work
all parts of the ground under the flowers and
within the box-edgings were to be covered
with fine sand.

Round these parterres were planted borders

134 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

from 4 to 6 feet wide, formed with a sharp
rising in the middle, "Hke a carp's back." ^
These borders were either continuous all round
the parterre or cut into short lengths by cross
paths. They might be planted with flowers
or formed entirely of grass, with two small
sanded paths on either side, or entirely of sand
with a simple edging of box next the gravel
walk. In the two last cases they would be
set out with vases and flower-pots, or orange-
trees in cases, with yews in between, spaced
at regular intervals round the border. No
yews or shrubs were to be permitted to grow
more than 4 to 5 feet high, to avoid hiding
the parterre. The -plates -bandes isolees of the
French were detached borders of flowers having
no relation to parterres. They were reserved
for the choicest flowers, and were enclosed
with borders of planks, such as those described
by Rea, painted green. Composite parterres
were formed by the combination o^ parterres de
broderie with cut-work and so on.

No instance of these parterres as at first
planted has survived, and it could not possibly
do so except in the case of the parterre a
V Anglaise. Even the French author admits
that they are costly to lay out, and always lose
their form. On the whole the loss is not to
be regretted, for the designs shown in James's
translation, and particularly in Switzer's Ichno-

^ The Retired Gardiner.

VI MOUNTS 135

graphia^ are exceedingly absurd. The purpose
of a garden — to make the most of flowers and
velvety turf — was forgotten. The dignity of the
older formal garden was lost in these intricate
designs, which only led to a violent reaction in
favour of what was considered to be nature un-
adorned. Of all the parterres the parterre a
r Anglais e was the least absurd, and the French-
men thought little of it. What is one to think
of a parterre laid out " with the mask-head of a
griffin having bats' wings formed by the sides of
grass-work, as the flourishes of the embroidery
form the nose, eyes, brows, moustaches, and
tuft upon the head of the mask " ? Much might
be done with simple parterres of grass and
flowers, but the elaborate system in fashion at
the beginning of the eighteenth century was a
pernicious abuse. It is significant that some of
the silliest of its features — such as the use of
coloured earths and broken tiles — have survived
in the practice of the landscape gardener.

Grass-work as an artistic quantity can hardly
be said to exist in landscape gardening. It is
there considered simply as so much background
to be broken up with shrubs and pampas grass
and irregular beds ; not as a means of eff^ect in
itself, to be handled as a question of values,
both in regard to colour and amount. Lawn-
tennis and croquet have stopped some of the
worst faults of the landscapist by necessitating a
clear space of level lawn, and this large expanse

136 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

of uninterrupted grass has always been an
essential feature in formal garden design.

In the older garden, grass-work would in-
clude all artificial works intended to be turfed —
such as mounts, grass walks and banks, bowling-
greens, and theatres. The mount was a common
feature in English gardens as late as the middle
of the seventeenth century. They were the
natural result of the walled-in garden, in so far
as they provided the place from which the
owner could look abroad beyond his walls, and
were probably formed by the earth excavated for
the house. In the larger gardens there were
artificial mounts of considerable height raised at
some distance from the house, and usually
turfed and planted with trees. At the top
might be a banqueting -house. Kip's view of
Dunham Massie, in Cheshire, shows a circular
mount in four stages or terraces. Each stage
was fenced in with a pole-hedge, and at the top
was a garden-house with four gables. Leland
{Itinerary^ p. 60) says that at Wresehall, in
Yorkshire, "in the orchardes were mountes,
opere topiarii writhen about with degrees like
turninges of cockell- shells, to cum to the top
without paine." It is possible that mounts of
this kind were suggested by a curious descrip-
tion of a medicinal garden given by Olivier de
Serres, and referred to by Markham. De Serres
gives two designs for these " montagnetes " (as
he calls them) or mounts. One was to be

VI MOUNTS 137

circular in six stages, ascended by a continuous
walk like the Tower of Babel ; the other was to
be square in six stages, ascended by flights of
steps at the four angles. The stages were to be
15 feet wide — 11 for the path and 4 for the
border of herbs. Each stage was to be 6 to 8
feet high, with retaining walls of masonry, and
the interior might be vaulted over as an inner
chamber for preserving the plants in winter.
The circular mount was 45 fathoms in diameter,
the square 50 fathoms by 50 ; but De Serres
suggests that these might be used on a very
much smaller scale. Worlidge mentions the
mount at Marlborough as the most considerable
in England at his time. This somewhat re-
sembles the circular mount of De Serres.
Mounts were usual in the smaller gardens as
well. The square mount in New College
garden still exists. The base of the mount
measures about 40 paces by 40 ; the height is
about 30 feet, but the original shape has been
lost, and it is now entirely overgrown with
trees and shrubs. There was a famous mount
in Wadham Gardens, circular in plan, with an
octagonal platform at the top reached by a
double flight of steps. In the centre of this
platform was a colossal figure of Atlas carrying
the globe. This mount stood in the centre of
the garden,^ but their position appears to have

1 The Wadham mount still exists, but the Atlas and all that made
interes ting have long since disappeared.

138 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

been arbitrary. The term was also used for the
raised walk at the end of the garden.^ Lawson
mentions " mountes whence you may shoote a
Buck" among the causes of dehght in an
orchard. " When you behold in divers corners
of your orcharde mounts of stone or woode
curiously wrought within and without, or of
earth covered with fruit-trees ; Kentish cherry,
damsones, plummes, etc., with staires of precious
workmanship, and in some corner (or mo.) a
true Dyall or clocke and some anticke workes,
and especially silver -sounding musique, mixt
instruments and voices gracing all the rest :
how will you be rapt with delight ? Large
walks, broad and long, close and open like the
Tempe groves in Thessaly raised with gravel
and sand, having seats and banks of camomile,
all this delights the mind, and brings health to
the body." The latest instance of a mount
seems to have been the mount at New Park, in
Surrey, which was laid out at the end of the
seventeenth century, probably by London and
Wise. The mount here was placed in the
extreme upper right-hand corner to overlook
the whole of the garden.

Grass walks have been already referred to in
dealing with paths. Bowling-greens exisfed in
almost every old English garden of any size.
Borde refers to them, and Markham distin-
guishes between three sorts of bowling-grounds :

^ See A Platform for Ponds, reproduced from Markham.

VI BOWLING-GREENS 139

(i) The bowling-alley; (2) "open grounds
of advantage" — that is, bowling-greens with a
fall one way ; (3) level bowling-greens. In
Country Contentments (chap, viii.) he says,
" Your flat bowles, being the best for close
allies, your round byazed bowles for open
grounds of advantage, and your round bowles
like a ball for greene swarthes that are plaine
and levell." A terrace or raised walk about
2 feet high often ran round the bowling-
green, as at Cusworth, in Yorkshire. At
Badminton a raised walk ran round two sides
of the green, and at one end was a second
raised alley for skittles. The shape of the
green was usually square, and it seems to have
been placed indifferently at the back or sides
of the house. In later work the bowling-green
was sometimes placed at a distance from the
house, and laid out circular. At Cashiobury,
laid out by Cook for Lord Essex, the bowling-
green was placed at the end of a long avenue,
and surrounded by a circular belt of fir-trees.
At Penshurst the green was put out in the
middle of a field. At Hampton Court the
bowling-green is over half a mile from the
palace. It is oval in plan and lies at the end of
the Long Walk. This bowling-green is now
planted over with trees. One of the pavilions
remains ; the other was destroyed in this cen-
tury. Bowling-greens continued to be laid out
in the eighteenth century. \\\ Kip's view of

I40 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

Knole in Britannia Illustrata no bowling-green
is shown ; but in Badeslade's view,^ made about
twenty years later, a beautiful bowling-green is
shown on the south side of the house. This
was oval in plan, about 70 paces by 40, sur-
rounded by a high clipped hedge with arbours
on the east and west sides, and openings on the
north and south. It was reached by a double
flight of steps from the lower parterres in front
of the house. From the fact that this is not
shown in Kip, it is probable that it was made
early in the eighteenth century. At Radley Col-
lege, near Oxford, there is a long bowling-alley,
probably of the same date as the original house —
about the middle of the eighteenth century. At
Stratford-on-Avon there exists a square bowling-
green in excellent order, where, on the long
summer evenings, the game is still played with
much gravity and science. The object of a
bowling-green as a playing-ground was never
lost sight of in England. London and Wise
mention that a custom had been introduced of
planting tall trees round public bowling-greens
" rather to pleasure their customers than for
any advantage to their greens " ; but the green
itself was always kept open. From England
bowling-greens were introduced into France,
probably by Le Notre. The French called
them houlingrins^ and quite lost sight of

^ Badeslade's Vieivs of Noblemen' s and Gentlemen's Seats in the County of
Kent.

VI GRASS THEATRES 141

their original purpose, for they made them of
all shapes and sizes, and as often as not put
a statue or a fountain in the middle of the
grass. In the French system the houlingrin
only differed from the parterre in that the latter
was planted round with shrubs only, while
boulingrins were planted with trees — such
as elms, horse-chestnuts, and acacias (James).
In James's translation, boulingrins are defined
as " hollow sinkings and slopes of Turf, which
are practised either in the middle of very large
grass walks and green plots, or in a grove,
and sometimes in the middle of a parterre,
after 'the English mode.' It is nothing but
a sinking that makes it a Bowling-green, to-
gether with the grass that covers it." The
depth of these bowling-greens would be about
2 feet in the larger instances, about 18 inches
in the smaller. They were divided into two
kinds — plain, consisting simply of grass-work,
with fine rolled paths between ; and composed,
which were laid out with trees, box, and palisades
of pleached work. In the latter case fountains
or statues were sometimes placed in the middle
of the green.

The French further included in their classi-
fication of grass-work ''ascents" of various
elaborate forms, which were generally sub-
divided into two heads — the glacis which was a
gentle slope, and the talus which was steep.
Besides the above varieties, theatres and banks of

142 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vi

different designs were formed in grass-work.
Grass theatres were more common on the con-
tinent than in England. The author of the
Theorie et Pratique talks of a " salle avec des
gradins servant d'amphitheatre et de theatre
pour jouer la comedie." In the gardens of the
Prince Bishops of Wurzburg there was a famous
amphitheatre formed of banks of turf, with clipped
hedges for scenery. This practice of designing
banks and recesses of grass-work might well be
revived on simpler lines, provided always that
geometrical forms are kept to — such as plain
curves or rectangular shapes — and that there is
none of that vague amorphous sloping in which
the landscape gardener dehghts. There is no
reason why a croquet lawn should not be laid
out on the lines of a bowling-green, with regular
sloped grass banks at the sides ; and at one end
a semicircular bay in grass might be formed,
or what the older writers used to call a cabinet
— that is, a regular recess with a well-trimmed
pole-hedge. There are great possibilities about
such a lawn properly handled — that is, if the
scale given by the dimensions of the croquet
ground itself is sedulously adhered to, and the
features introduced are kept sufficiently large
and simple. To make it a really valuable
part of the garden it is not enough to lay
out a sufficient expanse of grass, which loses
itself at the earliest opportunity in shrubs
and flower-beds. The lawn should be taken

VI GRASS-WORK 143

as a definite problem, and designed as an
integral part of the garden. And this applies
to all grass-work. The mistake of the land-
scapist is that he considers grass only as a
background, not as a very beautiful thing
in itself. Grass-work ought to be designed
with reference to its own particular beauty.
The turf of an English garden is probably
the most perfect in the world, certainly it is far
more beautiful than any to be found on the
continent, and even the French admitted this
two hundred years ago. It is wilfully throwing
away a most valuable means of delight to treat
grass-work as a mere affair of hap-hazard con-
venience. Here, perhaps, most of all, in order
to get out of grass-work its full possibility of
beauty, is necessary that decent order and
restraint, that fine sobriety of taste that once
reigned paramount over all the arts of design in
England.

lfcitlD»tKVJt^a>tMiKUtiUMfcV^iuVM&m;kyit.Ui:i.tfntMS..?fal

CHAPTER VII

FISH-PONDS, PLEACHING, ARBOURS,
GALLERIES, HEDGES, PALISADES, GROVES

The double purpose of a garden — for use and
pleasure — has been forgotten in landscape
gardening. You either get a kitchen garden
useful but ugly, or a pleasure garden not useful,
and only redeemed from ugliness by the flowers
themselves. The charm of the older garden is
in the combination of the two, or rather the
way in which grounds and water laid out, not
solely for their beauty, were made beautiful by
their reasonable order. The old fish-pond with
its regular grass banks is a charming thing in
itself, yet this was at first as much a matter of
necessity as the poultry-house or the dove-cote.
Here lived the lazy carp, the pike, the perch,
the bream, the tench, and other fish that might

VII FISH-PONDS, PLEACHING, ARBOURS 145

be wanted for the table. A slow stream of
running water kept the fish-pond fresh, and at
one end was formed a "stew," or small tank,
to keep the fish that were netted. Markham
describes the formation of a fish-pond in some
detail {Cheape and Good Husbandries book ii.,
London 1638). First drain your ground and
bring all the water to one head or main reser-
voir. From this you form your canal to supply
the pond. The sides of the canal are to be
formed with piles, 6 feet long and 6 inches
square, of oak, ash, or elm, to be driven in in
rows and the earth well rammed behind them.
You then form the sides of your pond with
sloping banks covered with large sods of plot
grass laid close and pinned down with small
stakes. " On one side you are to stake down
Bavens or faggots of brushwood for the fish to
spawn in, and some sods piled up for the
comfort of the eels, and if you stick sharp
stakes slantwise by every side of the pond that
will keep thieves from robbing them." To
explain his advice, Markham gives " a platform
for ponds" (reproduced in the text), which
shows a perfectly symmetrical arrangement of
a square with a triangular extension on the
entrance side. The walks between the canals
and ponds were to be planted with willows or
fruit-trees. Markham also describes another
method of dealing with marshy ground, by
which an orchard might be combined with a

L

M

mSi^mmimt^^

From Markham's Cheape and Good Hustandrie.

G. The Gate. P. The Ponds.

D. The Ditch and quickset hedge. I. The Peniles.

W. The Walkes. M. The Mount.

B. The Bridge. | Br. The Brooke. S. The Springhead.

The walkes about the pond may be planted with fruit-trees or willows.

VII FISH-PONDS, PLEACHING, ARBOURS 147

fish-pond. You dig a series of ditches 16 feet
broad and 9 deep, 12 feet apart in parallel rows,
the banks between to be 7 feet high and 12 feet
wide, planted with osier at the sides and fruit-
trees on the banks — " Thus you will get a sort
of maze and pleasant fish-ponds." Perhaps
the gardens at Theobalds described by Hentzner
(see chap, ii.) were laid out in this manner.
Six feet of water and 2 feet for the banks are
given by Markham as maximum depths. The
size would be arbitrary. Lawson, who had a
keener eye for beauty than Markham, advises
that the pond should be large enough for swans
and other water birds. The fish-pond gradu-
ally lost its practical character and developed
into the ornamental water ; it became part of
the scheme of the garden design, grass banks
and all. There is a good instance of this in the
Brickwall gardens, where the fish-pond, which
measures 32 paces by 12 wide, occupies one of
the two main plots. There is another instance
at Pendell House, near Bletchingley, where the
fish-pond divides the lawn from the flower
gardens beyond. At Sydenham, in Devonshire,
there is an oblong piece of water in the middle
of the lawn with a circular basin for a fountain
in the centre. The grass banks required a
good deal of attention to keep them trim, and
this led to the substitution of brick or stone
sides instead of grass in more important work ;
and when the influence of Le Notre extended

VII FISH-PONDS, PLEACHING, ARBOURS 149

to England, the fish-pond as a fish-pond dis-
appeared in the vast sheets of water which
formed an essential feature in his system of
design. Great canals and basins, as at Wrest,
in Bedfordshire, took its place, and the transi-
tion from this to the artificial lakes of the

THE FISHPOm> :tvrest : BEDFOKDSHIRE^I

Fig. 30.

landscape gardener was easy. The great canal
at Wrest measures about 250 paces by 50, with
transepts at the north end and a large pavilion
at the south. There is also at Wrest a pond
called " the Ladies' Canal," with grass banks
measuring about 90 paces by 40. This is
surrounded by a broad grass verge and yew-
hedges 20 feet high, with a statue at the west

150 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

end. The fish-pond at Penshurst measures
about 2S P^ces by 21.0 ; it has brick side walls,
a grass verge 10.9 wide, and yew-hedges 7.6
high on all four sides. The water pieces at
Melbourne are rather elaborate, one, with a
fountain in the centre, is laid out as an oblong
with circular bays on the sides. The main
piece is formed by an oblong 72 paces by 43,
with a half-quatrefoil extension on the farther
side. This is surrounded by grass verges on
either side of a gravel path, and yew-hedges
with recesses for seats and statues. Opposite
the centre, on the farther side, is the famous
wrought-iron garden-house. The Long Canal
at Hampton Court, measuring 150 feet by
3.500, and formed in the reign of Charles II.,
is probably the largest instance of the kind in
England.

" Pleaching " is probably the best abused of
the many iniquities of the formal garden. The
man of " nature " says it is unnatural, and it
gives an occasion for cheap ridicule too obvious
to be resisted. But those who have a weakness
for the vicious old practice are in good com-
pany. The Romans used to do all sorts of
things in pleaching, and so did everybody else
down to the end of the seventeenth century
and later. The word "pleach" means the
trimming of the small boughs and foliage of
trees or bushes to bring them to a regular
shape, and, of course, only certain species will

V II FISH-PONDS, PLEACHING, ARBOURS 1 5 1

submit to this treatment — such as lime, horn-
beam, yew, box, holly, white-thorn, and privet,
kinds that are " humble and tonsile," as an old
writer calls them. Pleaching must be dis-
tinguished from another old word still in use,
" plashing," which refers to the half-cutting of
the larger branches and bending them down to
form a hedge. Markham explains ''plashing"
to be " a half-cutting or dividing of the quicke
growth almost to the outward barke, and then
laying it orderly in a' sloape manner, as you see
a cunning hedger lay a dead hedge, and then
with the smaller and more plyant branches to
wreathe and bind in the tops." Pleaching was
employed to form mazes, arbours or bowers,
green walks, colonnades, and hedgerows, besides
the infinite variety of cut-work in yew and box.
Mazes were formed all through the seven-
teenth century. The one at Hatfield is a perfect
instance. The maze at Hampton Court is
another familiar example. This appears to have
been planted in the time of William III., and it is
not probable that many were laid out after that
date. The bower or green arbour existed in the
mediaeval garden, but probably in a somewhat
artless form. The earliest account of arbours is
found in The Gardener s Labyrinth ; the writer
classifies arbours as upright or winding. The
upright arbour was simply a lean-to, the winding
or arch arbour an independent arbour standing
by itself. At the end of the seventeenth century

152 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

a further distinction was made between bowers
and arbours ; a bower was always long and
arched, an arbour was either round or square,
domed over at the top. The older arbours were
formed with poles of juniper or willow framed
square and bound with osiers, and were covered
with roses trimmed and trained to the framing,
or with jessamine, rosemary, juniper, or cypress
(Markham) ; or with bryony, cucumber and
gourd. " Mountaine " adds that as arbours of
roses required a great deal of attention " the most
number in England plant vines for the lesser
travaile to nurse and spread over the upright
and square Herbers, framed with quarters and
poles reaching abreadth." These arbours fell
into disuse for four excellent reasons, given by
WorJidge : " (i) they quickly fall out of repair ;
(2) the seats are damp ; (3) the rain drips
longer here than anywhere else ; (4) they are
draughty, and on a hot day it is pleasanter to sit
under a lime-tree than to be hoodwinked in an
arbour." Besides the arbours there were the
long covered walks and galleries, arched over at
the top, with a solid hedge on the outer side,
and openings or " windows properly made to-
wards the garden, wherebye they might the more
fully view and have delight of the whole beauty
of the garden." Bacon contemplated a green
gallery such as this to run round the sides of his
outer garden. There were some remarkable
instances in the old gardens at Wilton. The

154 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

views published by Isaac de Caux show long
green galleries arched over with pavilions at the
ends and in the centre ; and some less elaborate
galleries are shown in Logan's views of Pem-
broke, Oxford. The prints reproduced from
The Gardener s Labyrinth and The Hortus
Floridus of Crispin de Pass show their general
character. The long yew walk at Melbourne
is really a green gallery without the openings.
It was planted early in the eighteenth century.
Its length from the top to the fountain is 1 20
paces, its width inside 12 feet. The yew has
grown into an impenetrable vault of branches
overhead, so thick that it is proof against an
ordinary shower of rain. The green gallery was
not an importation of the sixteenth century, but
a direct survival of the mediaeval garden. In
" The Romance of the Rose " there are several
beautiful illustrations of these green galleries,
formed of light poles framed square, as described
in The Gardener s Labyrinth^ and overgrown with
roses, red and white. They continued in use
till the end of the seventeenth century, when,
as was the case with nearly all that was beautiful
in the formal garden, they were elaborated out
of all reason, and only continued in use in quiet
country gardens where the master loved his
garden, and liked the old ways better than the
new. In The Retired Gard'ner^ by London and
Wise, full directions are given for the information
of green galleries and porticoes and colonnades of

156 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

cut-work. The galleries should be 8 to 10
feet broad and 12 or 15 feet high, the outer
side solid, the inner side open as a gallery,
with pillars formed by the trunks of the trees,
set 4 feet apart, with a low hedge 3 feet high
between each trunk. These were generally
formed of lime or hornbeam. "Natural
arbours " as opposed to arbours of trellis-work
were formed of elm, lime, and hornbeam in the
same way. A rough framework of wood or
iron seems to have been used in the first instance
to start the trees on the required lines. After
they were fairly set, the trees were brought into
shape by wreathing the boughs together and
constant clipping. There is a good example of
a pleached alley at Drayton House, Northants,
"just as Sir John Germain brought it from
Holland," as Horace Walpole wrote in 1763.

Hedges, of course, could only be formed by
pleaching. The older gardeners preferred a
close-grown hedge, white-thorn or privet, to any
other form of fencing round a garden. It was
pleasant to look on, and more difficult to get
over than any wall. The Gardener s Labyrinth
says " the most commendable enclosure for
every garden plot is a quick-set hedge, made
with Brambles and white -thorn." Lawson
advises a double ditch and a hedge of thorn,
though " it will hardly availe you to make any
fence for your orchard, if you be a niggard of
your fruite." These hedges were planted in two

VII GALLERIES, HEDGES 157

or three rows, kept behind shelter for three or
four years, and cHpped at every possible oppor-

FiG. 33.

tunity ; about 6 or 7 feet was a usual height.
Worlidge, who was nothing if not practical,

158 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vir

again classifies the reasons for preferring white-
thorn for hedges : ( i ) it grows quickest, and is
most easily trimmed ; (2) it is stronger and
most durable ; (3) it is of a delicate colour ;
(4) it puts out its leaves the earliest in spring.
Markham allows five to seven years for a quick-

Fig. 34, — Hedge, from Markham's Country Farm.

set of white-thorn. In The Country Farm he
gives some designs for the shaping of hedges.
The quarters of his garden are to be fenced with
" fine curious hedges made battlement-wise in
sundrie forms according to invention, or carrying
the proportions of Pyllasters, flowers, shapes of
beasts, birds, creeping things, shippes, trees and
such-like." A framework is to be formed of

VII GALLERIES, HEDGES 159

square framing bound with osiers and wire.
At the foot of this in the spring or autumn
" you shall set white - thorn, eglantine, and
sweet-briar mixt together, and as they shall
shoot and grow up, so you shall wind and pleach
them within the lattice -work, making them
grow and cover the same," and always trimming
to the shape required. In about two or three
years, he says, you will get an excellent, strong
hedge. Evelyn in his Sylva (Hawthorn)
criticises Markham's directions as to plashing,
and gives very full particulars as to the proper
method of forming a quick -set hedge. In
Herefordshire he notices that a crab-tree stock
was invariably planted every 20 feet apart in
the quick-set. For many years after Markham
wrote the custom of cutting the tops of hedges
into fanciful shapes continued in use. There is
a good example in yew at Cleeve Prior manor-
house, in Warwickshire, and the doves at Risley,
mentioned before. Evelyn claims that he was
the first to bring yew into fashion, not only for
hedges, but also as " a succedaneum to cypress,
whether in hedges or pyramids, cones, spires,
bowls, or what other shapes." Buttresses and
ramps, little square towers, finials of various
forms, archways and canopies were cut in yew
as late as the beginning of this century in out-of-
the-way places and in the smaller gardens. The
well-known instances at Arley, in Cheshire, and
Penshurst are not more than thirty-five years

i6o THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

old. Besides white-thorn, privet, and yew, the
sweet-briar, pyracantha, and holly were commonly
used for hedges. Holly was the special favourite
of Evelyn, because of its power of defence and
the sheen of its leaves. At Sayes Court he had
a holly-hedge 400 feet long, 9 feet high, and 5
feet thick. This hedge was his special pride
till Peter the Great came to live at Deptford,
and formed a habit of amusing himself after his
labours in shipbuilding by charging the hedge
in a wheel-barrow. Evelyn says he had seen
hedges of holly 20 feet high " kept upright, and
the gilded sort budded low, and in two or three
places one above another, shorn and fashioned
into columns and pilasters, architectonically
shaped and at due distance, than which
nothing can possibly be more pleasant, the berry
adorning the intercolumniations with scarlet
festoons and encarpa." The worst possible bush
for a hedge is the laurel. It starts with great
promise, and everything goes well for two or
three years, after which it gets thin and straggly
underneath, and becomes shabbier and shabbier
every year. The only chance with it is to cut
it and clip it without remorse. In some old-
fashioned gardens, where fruit-trees and flowers
are allowed to grow together, beautiful hedges
are formed by apple-trees grown as espaliers.^

^ In Mr. Robinson's Paj-ks and Gaj'defis of Paris there is a useful
description of the French methods of forming treUis-hedges of pear and
apple and other fruit trees.

VII PALISADES, GROVES i6i

Palisades or pole -hedges were high hedges
formed of trees — such as lime, elm, or horn-
beam. These were usually of great length and
height, and the point to be aimed at was to
keep them entirely smooth and even, making, as
it were, a great wall of green tapestry, " all the
beauty of which consists in being well filled up
from the very bottom, of no great thickness,
and handsomely clipped on both sides as per-
pendicularly as possible." Where the palisades
had to be very high the stems of the trees were
kept bare of branches, and the intervals up to
the level of the lowest branch planted with yew
or box trimmed to form a solid screen. At
Brickwall there is a palisade of lime-trees along
one side of the garden. The branches are
trained and trimmed to form a continuous
curtain, starting about lo feet from the ground,
and behind the trees is an old red-brick wall
up to the level of the boughs. A palisade of
this sort is delightful in colour, and easily kept
in shape if properly pleached ; and in this
respect it is more satisfactory than very great
walls of yew, which are apt to lose their
symmetry and become obese and corpulent as
soon as they have reached maturity. Evelyn
particularly commends the hornbeam. " Being
planted in small fosses or trenches, at half-a-
foot interval and in the single row, it makes
the noblest and stateliest hedge for long walks
in gardens or parks . . . because it grows

M

1 62 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vn

tall and so sturdy as not to be wronged by the
winds ; besides it will furnish to the very foot
of the stem, and flourishes with a glossy and
polished verdure, which is exceedingly delight-
ful." He mentions the long walk of the
Luxembourg and " the close walk with that
perplext canopy which lately covered the seat
in his Majesty's garden at Hampton Court,"
and the hedges at New Park, as instances
of hornbeam hedges. At the end of the
seventeenth century much money was spent in
forming palisades of different architectural forms.
Twenty thousand crowns were spent in work of
this sort at the gardens of the Hotel de Conde.
London and Wise are minute in their directions.
The arcades were to be formed of elm, lime,
or hornbeam — elm for preference. The elms
were to be planted in a straight line 8 to
lo feet apart. Elms about 6 feet high and
"as thick as your arm" (the two dimensions
do not quite agree) were to be used. In the
second year after planting you began to form
the columns by selecting the likeliest boughs
and binding them with osiers to a wooden post,
and cutting off the rest. The arches were
formed by binding hoops of wood to the posts
and training the boughs to these as before. In
the spandrels will be left a tuft of foliage, which
you trim to the shape of an apple or any other
form you please. Each column will be about
1 6 feet high — 6 feet of plain stem, and lo feet

VII PALISADES, GROVES 163

for the column itself formed of the boughs and
foliage. James's translation gives twice the
breadth as the right proportion for the height
of the arches, and adds that a hedge breast-
high should be made between the columns, and
niches and recesses for statues and seats formed
in the palisade. The palisade was to be double —
that is, planted in two rows with a grass walk
in between, and between each column there was
to be a border set with double gillyflowers,
roses, or Indian pinks ; on the outer side there
was to be a dwarf hedge of hornbeam 1 8 inches
high. London and Wise describe other varieties
of pleached work which sound suspicious. For
instance, along the sides of walks or the borders
of parterres elms might be planted and trimmed
into round-headed standards, the stem quite
bare for 6 feet or so from the ground, and the
branches clipped into balls of foliage ; or horn-
beam might be planted round the elm, and cut
low to form the base, or balls of rose-trees
formed between the standards. These could
only look well if used with delicate tact and the
greatest reticence ; unfortunately these were just
the qualities in which the gardeners of the early
eighteenth century were wanting. But a lilac
walk formed with standards 12 feet apart, with
stems 10 feet high, and a palisade of hornbeam
in between, sounds better ; and London and
Wise mention a hedge of pyracantha to go
round a narrow place enclosed with walls, which

1 64 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

in colour and form might be quite beautiful.
At regular intervals cypress - trees were to be
planted, with stems kept bare for 8 or lo feet,
and the spaces between were to be filled up with
a hedge of pyracantha cut close against the wall.
At the end of the seventeenth century the
laying out of groves was regularly included in
garden design. In the earlier Renaissance
garden little was done in this direction except
in the way of mazes ; a space outside the
garden was often reserved for a wilderness
such as Bacon describes, in which design
was purposely abandoned. But the growing
tendency was to reduce the garden to a system,
till it reached its climax in the school of Le
Notre, and the bosquet or grove of regular
form took the place of the wilderness. Chapter
vi. of The Theory and Practice of Gardening
is entirely devoted to ''woods and groves."
" Their most usual forms are the star, the
direct cross, the Saint Andrew's Cross, and
goose-foot.^ They nevertheless admit of the
following designs, as cloisters, quincunxes.
Bowling-greens, Halls, cabinets, circular and
square compartments, halls for comedy, covered
halls, natural and artificial arbours, fountains,
isles, cascades, water galleries, green galleries,
etc." These groves were to be laid out with

^ The ^^ goose-foot," patte-d'oie, consisted of three avenues radiating
from a small semicircle. The three great avenues at Hampton Court,
with the semicircular garden, form a goose-foot.

.5r
5

1 66 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vii

walks from 12 to 24 feet wide, separated from
the trees by palisades. The trees in these
groves were not supposed to exceed 40 feet in
height or thereabouts, and they might either
have underwood or not, as desired. Where
there was no underwood, trees — such as limes,
elms, or horse-chestnuts — were to be planted in
regular lines at right angles to each other, the
stems kept bare for 10 feet and the trees
set out about 15 feet apart. The ground
underneath was either fine gravelled, or laid
with grass. In the latter case a circle about
4 feet across, without grass, was to be left
round each tree. There are good examples of
groves laid out to a regular design at Wrest
and Melbourne, but the best instances of this
sort of work are to be found in France. In
many towns and villages on the banks of the
Seine between Paris and Rouen, and elsewhere
in France, there are charming groves of
lime-trees, symmetrically planted and regularly
clipped. The groves at Versailles are still
much as Le Notre left them. The great
walks of lime-trees, close trimmed for 20 feet
or more, and the halls cleared in the groves
and set out with statues are very beautiful
on a sunny day ; but the rest of the work
is dull, and there can be no doubt that this
kind of work does require great space and
great expense to be seen to perfection. In The
Theory and Practice of Gardening forty-four

vn

PALISADES, GROVES

167

different designs are given for the largest groves.
Some are simple enough, but most of them are
absurdly elaborate, more particularly a design
of a labyrinth (like a Catherine wheel) with
cabinets and fountains, which it would be quite
impossible to carry out. Over -elaboration,
incapacity for self- suppression, these were the
vices which wrecked the formal garden, and
opened the way for every kind of imposture.
With evident complacency, London and Wise
remarked that it is certain " the Industry of
Gard'ners was never equal to what it is now."
It is also certain that this misapplied industry was
foredoomed to failure, and that the disappearance
of the formal garden was its inevitable result.

k^i

jlUlliJlJl

^^1

^ GAmoEM GXTM : j^yEiainor s 'wiur shiiue. ^

CHAPTER VIII

Garden Architecture

BRIDGES, GATEHOUSES, GATEWAYS, GATES,
WALLS, BALUSTRADES, STAIRS

Since the disappearance of the formal garden,
the necessity of scholarly design for garden
buildings has been forgotten, and the result is
seen in buildings and details, which are not
simple and childlike, but wholly pretentious
and bad. This is not solely due to the
enterprise of the landscape gardener. The
fault lies also with his employer, who, perhaps,

VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 169

prefers the cast-iron finials and meagre wood-
work of his conservatory, and possibly takes
pleasure in the grotesque impossibilities of
his rustic summer-house, but who on any
showing, has not realised that art has to be
taken as a whole, that it must penetrate every-
where, that it is not enough to have a well-
designed house, if everything inside it is vulgar ;
or a house complete, with a meaningless garden ;
or a fair house and garden, with no thought
given to its walls and gateways. Till the end
of the eighteenth century a tradition of good
taste existed in England — a tradition not con-
fined to any one class, but shown not less in the
sampler of the village school than in the archi-
tecture of the great lord's house. It might be
said to have lingered on into this century in
sleepy country towns. Behind the lawyer's
house, with its white sash-windows and delicate
brick work, there may still survive some de-
lightful garden bright with old-fashioned flowers
against the red-brick wall, and a broad stretch
of velvety turf set off by ample paths of gravel,
and at one corner, perhaps, a dainty summer-
house of brick, with marble floor and panelled
sides ; and all so quiet and sober, stamped with
a refinement which was once traditional, but
now seems a special gift of heaven.

It would be impossible here to give more
than a general sketch of the details of garden
architecture. The field is a wide one, and

I70 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND viii

could only be fully handled in relation to the art
of the time. Such subjects as bridges and gate-
houses, for instance, would take their place in a
specific treatise on architecture. Where the house,
as was often the case, was surrounded by water,
the enclosure was reached by a bridge, sometimes
of wood, more often of brick or stone. There
is only one point to be noticed here in regard to
these bridges, and that is, that as much thought
and architectural knowledge were devoted to
their details as were spent on those of the house.
No such ragged and rickety structure as "the
rustic bridge " would have been tolerated in the
formal garden. The bridge at Clare (College),
Cambridge, designed by a builder-architect, is a
simple and very beautiful example, and perhaps
there is no better instance in the whole range of
garden architecture in England which shows
more clearly the absolute interdependence of
architecture and garden design. On the other
hand these bridges were sometimes unnecessarily
sumptuous. The well-known example at Blen-
heim is a standing monument of Vanbrugh's
megalomania. The Palladian bridge at Wilton
is a fine piece of academical design, but it is
rather unreasonable in England. When the
landscapists were destroying the formal garden
they preserved some of its worst features, among
them the Palladian bridge, which was repeated
literally both at Stowe and Prior Park.

The gatehouse in the sixteenth century

VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 171

usually formed part of the block of house build-
ings, and was marked by rising one storey above
the rest. The gateway of a college quadrangle
is a familiar instance. When the fore court

Fig. 36.

developed into a well-defined courtyard the
gateway was detached from the house, but still
continued to be a building of two or more
storeys, with wing walls to the right and left
joining the side walls of the court. Charlcote,
in Warwickshire, and Burton Agnes, near

172 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vm

Bridlington, in Yorkshire, are good examples in
brick and stone. At Lanhydrock, in Cornwall,
there is a curious two-storey gatehouse in stone,
standing at the end of a fine avenue of syca-
mores, 37 paces wide, with counter avenues of
beeches i6 paces wide. Another remarkable
gatehouse is that of Westwood, in Worcester-
shire, shown in Kip's views. This is probably
Elizabethan. The gateway is set back between
two projecting bays with stone gables. The
wall between is of brick, the upper part of open
strapwork in stone. Over the centre of the
building rises a square stage of oak framing,
slated, for a clock or bell. In Atkyns's Glou-
cestershire (p. 340) a view is given of Shipton
Moyne, showing a gatehouse flanked with
turrets, and a room over the arch, apparently
reached by steps from a raised terrace running
round the fore court. There is a somewhat
similar instance at Bolsover Castle. The gate-
way stands in a polygonal wall of sufficient
thickness to admit of a walk along the top all
round the court, this walk being reached from a
small door from the first floor of the keep.
The gateway of Hardwick House, with its open
strapwork, is a very ugly instance of a gate-
house to the fore court in one storey. The
gateway was sometimes flanked on either hand
by small one-storey buildings for a porter's lodge,
as at Ribston, in Yorkshire ; or the gateway
was simply an archway in the courtyard wall,

VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 173

with a cornice and gable or pediment over.
There is a curious instance at Bradshaw Hall,
in Derbyshire, 1620. With the introduction
of long avenues a further change was made.
The gatehouse in front of the house interfered
with the view of the facade. The fore court
was accordingly enclosed with wrought -iron
railings on a low wall, and elaborate entrance
gates between piers of masonry or brickwork,
and the gatehouse was shifted to the other end of
the avenue. There are many instances of these
gatehouses or lodges dating from the eighteenth
century. In all cases their details follow those
of the architecture of the house. The later
instances of the eighteenth century degenerated
into various versions of little Greek temples,
rather ridiculous to look at, and quite unsuit-
able for the lodge-keepers to live in. The best
position for the gatehouse would be high level
ground overlooking the park. The one place
where it should never stand is on the side of
a hill, for the simple reason that while the
gates are being opened carts and carriages have
to stand on a slope. There is an instance of
this at Prior Park, near Bath.

The main entrance gateway was usually
placed in the centre of the fore court, opposite
the front door, though this position was varied
to suit particular cases. In smaller houses the
gateway stood at the end of a broad flagged
path leading up to the house, and visitors had

174 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vm

to alight in the road outside. These gateways
were sometimes arched, and sometimes consisted
simply of stone or brick piers. There is a
good instance in the town of Wilton of a small
gateway with a circular arch, flanked by pilasters,
with a circular pediment over and stone brackets
at the sides. On either side of the gateway
are wing walls completing the semicircle. There
are instances at Bradford-on-Avon and many
other places. They are usually quiet and simple
in detail and excellently built, for the masonry
•of the eighteenth century is probably the best
that ever was done in England. The piers on
either side of the gates show every variety of
design. The most familiar instance is the
square pier of brick or stone with moulded base
and top, and a great stone cannon-ball. These
seem to have come into use in the latter part of
the seventeenth century, and to have lasted to
the beginning of this. There are many instances
in London. Those at Ashburnham House
are well known. There is a late but very
well - designed example (about 1780) in the
Euston Road, at the entrance to Maple's
timber-yard. At Eyam Hall, Derbyshire, the
piers are of stone, divided by bands into three
carved panels. At Risley the piers are of
brick for a height of 8 feet 6 inches ; above this
is a stone pedestal 2 feet 9 inches high, with
cannon-ball finials. The piers are 9 feet apart,
and the wing walls with the gate form half an

VIII

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE

75

ellipse 38.0 long. There are fine examples at
Swarkestone, in Derbyshire, and Mapperton,
in Somersetshire. Besides the cannon-balls,
urns of all sorts were placed on the top of
the piers, as at Okeover, in Staffordshire, and
the great brick piers in Lincoln's Inn Fields,
attributed to Inigo Jones ; or obelisks, as at

EYAMSI^EKBYSHIRE.!

Fig. 37.

Canons Ashby and Hardwick ; or eagles, as
in the Gray's Inn gardens ; or heraldic beasts
or devices, as at Montacute and Canons Ashby ;
or trophies of arms, as in the gateway at
Hampton Court. The piers themselves were
varied indefinitely. Those at Groombridge
Place have an additional pier on the outer side,
with a niche for a seat. At Scalby, near Scar-
borough, the piers consist of two small towers.

176 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND viii

about 3 feet in diameter, with cornices and stone
domed roof. The most difficult of all to design
satisfactorily is the plain pier and cannon-ball.
Besides the main gateway, there were the gate-

FlG.

ways in garden-walls, leading from the fruit to
the flower garden, or from one part of the
garden to another, or from the paddock to the
garden. Markham says " the false gate (other-
wise called the back or field-gate) in that side
toward your medow, made for vour going in

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE

"^11

or out alone, shall be set out and garnished
with two chevrons, set upon one maine timber
and no more, and foure
or five battlements." At
Coley Hall, near Halifax,
there is a garden gateway
of stone not unlike Mark-
ham's description. It is
dated 1649, ^^^^ there are
good seventeenth-century
examples at Orwalle, in
North Hants, and Stibb-
ington Hall, in Hunting-
donshire. The stepped battlement form was
commonly used for brick and stone gateways ;
there is a curious seventeenth-century example

Fig. 39.

SWAIVKSTON H2VII. : IBERBY5HIRESg|

Fig. 40.

on the terrace at Risley. The gateway stands
at the head of a flight ot steps leading to the
terrace. In the centre is a square-headed door

N

178 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vm

flanked by niches on both sides, and above is
a blank piece of wall with a stepped gable, with
stepped side walls descending to the lower walk.
These walls draw in as they approach the
centre wall. The gateway to the churchyard at
Martock (1627) is another simple instance of a
stone gateway at the head of a flight of steps.
The gateway at Tissington, in Derbyshire, is
rather unusual ; it appears to date from the
middle of the seventeenth century. In the wall
to the side terrace at Penshurst there is a good
brick gateway of about the same date or a little
earlier.

The gates themselves were usually of wrought
iron of every degree of elaboration, from the
plain bar and rail to such intricate work as
Tijou's splendid gates for Hampton Court.
The hundred years, from the Restoration on-
ward, is the golden age of smith's work in
England. Tijou's example gave the craft an
impetus in an entirely new direction ; wrought-
iron gates of beautiful design and admirable
workmanship were turned out in every part of
the country, and it is not easy to account for the
strong family resemblance between instances as
far apart as Sydenham, in Devonshire, Chid-
dingstone, in Kent, or the Chelsea gates, the
delicate work at Oxford or Cambridge,' and the
various examples scattered about in Derbyshire
and the north. The gates and railings to New
College Gardens and the Trinity gates at Oxford

W!«ii.|«gg

Fig. 41.

i8o THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND viii

are characteristic instances of eighteenth-century
work. It appears, from the diary of Celia Fiennes,
that these gates were usually painted blue and gold.
The worst of it is that about the time that the
ironwork is supposed to want repainting, the
blue reaches the very perfection of its colour.
It has taken its place in nature, and this is the
difficulty about all external painting. It is no
use starting with delicate shades of green and
blue ; the colour flies and a cold uninteresting
gray is left. It is best to start with a good
strong coat of honest green, and leave it to the
sun and rain to bring about the refinements of
colour seen in old painted work. This beautiful
art of wrought -iron work might well be
employed again more freely in garden gates
and grilles. It is very unobtrusive, and it is
pleasant to come upon its subtle workmanship,
set in the rough surface of the garden -wall.
Like many other handicrafts, it has gone down
before the cry for cheapness. People supposed
that they got the sort of thing in cast-iron work
at a tenth of the price, and they are quite satisfied
with "the sort of thing," the a peu pres,
provided it is cheap, forgetting first that there is
no pleasure in a mechanical repetition even if
the original is good, and secondly, that cast iron
is a perfectly unsuitable material for gates. Cast
iron is brittle and heavy ; it is well enough for
stationary work, but it is apt to fly at a sudden
jar, and to gain the necessary strength it must be

VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE i8i

made clumsy and awkward. A wrought-iron
gate can be made as light as you please, and
instead of being an inert mass, it has a tough
vitality of its own. The craft as usual lingered
longest in the country. In the villages of
Somerset and Devonshire there are still to be
seen pretty little wrought-iron gates to the
cottage gardens, not yet supplanted by the
odious castings of the hardware dealer.

The garden-walls should be of brick or stone,
brick for preference, because it is better adapted
for nailing fruit-trees, and retains the heat better
than stone, and the creepers cling to it more
readily. Rea gives 9 feet as the proper height
for the outer wall of the garden, and 5 or 6 feet
for cross- walls. Markham says that "James or
offshoots" should be built 12 or 14 feet apart
as buttresses to reduce the amount of brickwork
and shelter the fruit. Worlidge, who repeats
this advice, adds that pieces of wood should be
built in, or iron hooks to project about 3 or 4
inches from the wall, to carry wooden rails to
which the fruit-trees can be fastened. There is
a good instance of plain walling at Hampton
Court beside the Long Walk. The offsets are
18 inches wide, composed of blocks of stone
alternating with five courses of brickwork ; a
moulded stone coping covers the top, the section
of which is changed when it returns round the
offsets. The copings can be of brick on edge
with tile Greasings, or of stone, or of brick

1 82 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vni

variously arranged. The garden-walls of Ham
House have a rather elaborate brick coping.
The buttresses came to be treated as piers with
moulded cornices and finial balls or urns, and
the wall space between was treated variously,
either kept low with an iron grille between the
piers, as was commonly done at the end of
walks or where any particular view was desired ;
or the wall and its coping was shaped as a curve
rising to the piers on either side. At Pendell
House the wall along the raised walk at the end
of the garden is built with great flat curves
between the piers some i^S ^^^^ apart.
Instead of buttresses, the wall was sometimes
built on a serpentine line, as at Stubbers,
in Essex. By means of the resistance of the
curves on plan, a thin wall would stand without
buttresses ; but the effect is not pleasant, and
a good deal of ground is wasted. A thin wall
in the garden looks poor ; the old garden-walls
were seldom less than i8 inches thick, and
some were thick enough to contain bee-hives and
peacock -hutches. At Packwood House, in
Warwickshire, on the south side of the terrace-
wall there are thirty small niches for bee-hives,
two and two between the piers ; and at Riddles-
den, in Yorkshire, there still exist the cells for
peacocks, built into the thickness of the garden-
wall. There are four of these, two above and
two below, with shelves for nesting. The lower
pair have hooks for doors, which are gone, the

VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 183

upper pair have shaped stone heads. The
gardens of Edzell Casde have a remarkable
stone wall, divided into bays, 10 to 11 feet
wide, by engaged shafts rising up into a string
course. These bays have alternately a single
recess 3 feet by 2.6, and three rows of smaller
recesses about 1.4 inches square arranged
chequer-wise — all the recesses appear to have
been used for planting flowers in them. Above
the single recesses there are bas-reliefs represent-
ing emblematical figures ; above the smaller
ones three stars. Over the centre of each bay is
a niche with a circular pediment.

The retaining walls under terraces were often
treated in the same way ; niches for statues,
recesses for seats, as at Kilworthy, in Devon,
grottoes, and toolhouses were often built in
below the terrace level. There is a cellar of
this description under one of the terraces at
Penshurst. Worlidge describes a grotto to be
made under a terrace. It was to be arched over
with stone or brick, or the roof might be of
stone supported by pillars of marble. The
sides were to be of stone and the floors of
marble. If there were any secret rooms to
the grotto, they might be made with " tables "
of stone or marble. He mentions a grotto at
Wilton as famous in his time. In stone
countries the retaining walls were of stone ;
elsewhere they were usually of brick with stone
balustrades and flights of steps. The commonest

1 84 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND viii

form of balustrade, and on the whole the most
satisfactory, consisted of stone balusters with
moulded plinths and copings divided up by solid
piers. There is a good simple instance at
WooUey Green, near Bradford-on-Avon, and a
late example at Brympton, in Somersetshire.
At Brympton there is a broad flight of steps

Fig. 42.

in the centre, and two smaller flights arranged
at right angles to the terrace near the ends.
The piers have urns, with one exception, where
there is a sun-dial on the sides of a square die.
This terrace was built at the beginning of this
century ; its general effect is very good, though
the detail is poor, and the balusters are crowded
and too short. There is an excellent piece of

VIII GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 185

balustrading on either side of the entrance to
the fore court at Brympton. The balusters are
2 feet 6 high, 12 inches centre to centre, and
stand on a pHnth 3 feet 3 high. It appears to
have been built towards the end of the seven-
teenth century. About 2 feet 9 inches to 3 feet
from the ground to the top of coping is a good
height for the balustrade ; no rule, however, can
be given for its proportions, as these depend
entirely on individual circumstances and the
scale of the work. The solid piers ought not to
be too far apart, and the relation of the solids
to the voids — that is, of the piers to the open
spaces between the balusters — is a point of the
first importance. Many variations on this
simple type of balustrade are to be found. The
terrace at Risley has obelisks on the piers and
flat stone balusters between, a feature commoner
in wood than stone. The terrace at Haddon
has six small stone arches to each bay. The
height is 3 feet, width from centre to centre
of piers 1 1 feet 6 inches ; the steps measure 1 2
inches by 5. At Kingston House, Bradford-
on-Avon, the balustrade to the terrace (much
restored) is formed of panels of stone 3^ inches
thick, pierced with open work of alternate
lozenges and ovals, with engaged balusters to
the piers, and stone urns of various designs.
At Montacute the terrace-walls on either side
of the garden at the back of the house have
simple balustrades with obelisks to the piers,

1 86 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND viii

and in the centre of each side there is a curious
temple of stone ; six pillars support a circular
stone roof with a projecting cornice on brackets,
and an open cupola above, formed of three
stone ribs joining at the top and terminating in
an open ball formed of two intersecting circles
of stone. Instances of terraces w^ith retaining
walls but no balustrade are not common.
There is an instance at Cothele, in Cornwall,
where the two upper terraces have low retain-
ing walls of stone but no balustrade, and the
third terrace has a grass bank. The grass
bank is the better treatment and looks well
with simple flights of stone steps. The terrace
of Etwall Hall, Derbyshire, is a good example
of this.

In the French gardens the flights of steps
leading from the terrace to the lower levels
were very elaborate. In James's translation
several diagrams are given of the great French
instances. In England the steps were usually
laid out in plain rectangular flights, though
circular and curved steps were often used for
short flights. There is a good instance of
a semicircular flight at the end of the house
terrace to Eyam Hall ; and occasionally the
flight of steps widened out as it descended with
a winding balustrade, as in the steps to the
entrance of Wootton Lodge, in Staffordshire.
In the eighteenth century, when people were
more ambitious and the mason exulted in his

FITMIH>BBM S ^^^BJSipXBJSMSlIiliK.

Fig. 43.

1 88 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND vm

skill, flights of steps were formed of great
technical difficulty. There is a remarkable
instance at Prior Park. A flight of seventeen
steps leads from the terrace to a landing, and
then two flights of eighteen steps lead off from
either side of the landing, curving round and
widening out as they go. It is a masterpiece
of masonry, but not very beautiful, for the
staircase has an uncomfortable suggestion about
it of rolling down-hill. The simpler designs
are the best ; these tours de force of technical
skill are a sure sign of failing taste.

r TWE OU> GARDEJVeg.ORANGJEJlY:M0UNT-EDGCUMBE: CORNWALL

CHAPTER IX

Garden Architecture — continued

GARDEN-HOUSES, PERGOLAS, AVIARIES, COL-
UMBARIES, DOVE-COTES, HOT-HOUSES,

carpenter's WORK, FOUNTAINS, SUN-
DIALS, STATUARY.

Banqueting- HOUSES, gazebos, and garden-
houses, all mean pretty much the same thing in
an English garden. The origin of the word
gazebo is obscure. It was used in the last
century for the garden-house built at the corner
of the terrace at the farther end of the garden,
with outlooks to the ground or road outside.
It was in two storeys, and the first floor was
reached from the terrace. Pergola is, of course,
Italian, and signified originally a trellis of wood

T90 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

Fig. 44.

at the sides and overhead, supported at the
angles by stone piers and pillars ; over this
trellis was trained the vine, to form a green
arbour. " Pergola " itself
means a certain sort of grape.
The term came to be used
loosely for all covered look-
outs. Evelyn mentions a plane
and a lime-tree at Strasburg
" in which is erected a pergola
of 50 feet wide, and 8 feet
from the ground, having ten arches of 12 feet
high, all shaded with their foliage." Johnson
gives a passage where pergola is used for a part
of the banqueting -house: "He was ordained
his standing in the pergola of the banqueting-
house " — that is, in the covered approach lead-
ing up to the banqueting-house.
Few examples of older per-
golas remain. They were ruth-
lessly swept away by the land-
scape gardeners, and it is prob-
able that their life in its
original form would not be very
long, as the trees inevitably grew
out of shape. There is a beauti-
ful modern pergola formed of
apple-trees at Tyninghame.

The banqueting-house was a term in
common use in the seventeenth century. This
was a solid building of brick or stone, in one or

Fig. 45

IX

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE

191

Fig. 46,

two Storeys, with windows and fire-place, and
fitted up as an occasional sleeping-place as well
as for use by day. The commonest forms were
octagon or square, with a roof constructed either
as a cupola or with two or four
gables. Its position varied. It
was usually placed at the ends of
the raised terrace at the farther
end of the garden. The example
at Place House, Tenterden, has
been already described (chap, v.) ;
other instances are shown in many of Logan's
views of the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge.
If there was a raised mount, the banque ting-
house frequently crowned its top. Markham
placed his " curious and artificial banqueting-
house " over the ascent from the lower to the
upper garden. At Penshurst
the garden-house stands to one
end of the house terrace, at
some distance in front of the
house. Worlidge says it should
be placed at an angle of the
garden, with windows and doors
commanding " every coast, the
windows to be glazed with the
clearest glass, and to have
screens of printed and painted sarcenet for day
use, and shutters of thin wainscot for night use."
It is evident that the master of the house might
occasionally lodge there for a day or two if he

Fig. 4.7.

102 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

wanted quiet. At the opposite end of the
terrace there was to be a similar building for
roots and seeds, which Worlidge says was
usually termed a green-house. At Montacute
the pleasure-houses are in two storeys, square,

mm^fr:^::^:^mMM^S^^

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TTHE BM^QtyET-HQU5E : 3V^^\RKE5TpN

Fig.

with semicircular bays on all four sides, and a
slated cupola terminating in an open ball. At
Swarkestone there is a large seventeenth-century
building known as *' the Balcony" which was
the banqueting-house to the Hall, now destroyed.
This building stands in the centre of the further

IX

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE

193

side of a square walled-in enclosure, measuring
76.0 paces by 61, which was once a garden.
The building consists of two square towers with
a colonnade in three bays between, open on the
ground floor ; above this was the banqueting-
room, 16.3 X 14.0, covered in by a lead flat

BQXTED H^LLS SUFFOLK S|

Fig. 49.

with a stone parapet on both sides. The left-
hand tower was occupied by the staircase, which
communicated with the first floor and the flat ;
in the right-hand tower were rooms in three
storeys. The towers are covered with lead
cupolas. It is quite possible that the triangular
lodge at Rushton, built by Sir Thomas Tresham,
was intended to be used as a banqueting-house,

o

94 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

and there is little doubt that this was the inten-
tion of the building planned on pentagons at
Amesbury, in Wilts. Over the door is the
inscription, " Diana, her house," and the date.
Of eighteenth-century work there are still a
good many instances left. At Boxted Hall, in

Suffolk, the garden-
house stands at one
end of the fruit gar-
den. The ground
floor is open in front,
with entrance in the
centre between two
stone columns, which
support the upper
storey, and wood
balustrades between
the columns and the
wall. The upper
storey is of brick
with stone quoins,
and has a gable roof,
tiled, with a semi-
circular window.
There is a good instance of a brick gazebo on
the Wey canal, about 6 miles from Weybridge,
dating probably from the beginning of the
eighteenth century. This is a large' square
building with heavy projecting eaves, and a
curiously hipped tile roof. It stands at one end
of a raised walk some 7 feet high, with a solid

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Fig. 50.

GARDEN ARCHITECTURE

195

brick retaining wall and parapet, which overlooks
the garden on one side and the canal on the other.
A narrow strip of grass planted with flowers

Fig. 51.

separates the wall from the canal. In Lea Park
Lane, Guildford, there is a two-storey garden-
house, since converted to other uses, with a roof
of similar design. Buildings such as Walton

196 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

and Cotton's fishing -house at Beresford, in
Derbyshire (1674) (in stone and slate), and the
water pavilion at Wrest (brick with lead dome)
are to all intents and purposes garden-houses.
After the middle of the eighteenth century the
unpretentious comfort of these sober buildings
did not satisfy the taste of the time. Greek
temples and hermitages were thought more
elegant, and these in turn gave way to the rustic
summer-house with its draughts, its earwigs, and
its beetles.

In the sixteenth century aviaries were occa-
sionally built in the greater gardens. No
instances of these are left ; but a curious
account of the aviary at Kenilworth is pre-
served in the description of the Queen's enter-
tainment at Kenilworth in 1575. This aviary
was 20 feet high, 30 long, and 14 broad.
At about 5 feet from the ground there were
four windows in the front and two at each end,
with mullions, transoms, architraves, and circular
heads. Between the windows there were piers
with flat pilasters carrying an elaborate cornice,
the frieze of which was decorated with imitations
of precious stones, diamonds, rubies, emeralds,
and sapphires, carved and painted. The build-
ing was not roofed in, and the windows had no
glass, but instead fine wire netting was' strained
across the top and behind the windows. In
the walls at the back niches were formed for
the birds to roost in. The inside was planted

nOYECOTE AT TVOUSHAM'-OXTORW

Fig. 52.

198 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

with holly-trees. Columbaries or pigeon-houses
were, of course, quite indispensable to every
country house. These were always placed at
some distance from the house, and seldom inside
the garden-walls. They were usually square or
octagon, with gable roofs and a weather-cock
or cupola forming a small open-air dove-cote at
the top. Circular pigeon-houses are less com-
mon. There is an instance at Rousham in
the rose garden. The interior was arranged
with tiers of nesting-places built in the walls,
and in some cases, as at Melton Hall, in Norfolk,
and at Athelhampton, in Dorset, a revolving post
stood in a socket in the centre with a pro-
jecting arm, to which a ladder was hung. By
turning round the post access could be got to
any part of the building. Evelyn mentions
a " pigeon-house of most laudable example "
at Godstone, in Surrey. Many of these pigeon-
houses — such as the great square one at
Southstoke, near Goring — are so exceedingly
picturesque that there seems no reason for
excluding them from the garden, and they
are referred to for this reason, though, strictly
speaking, they are outside the range of garden
architecture. The ordinary barrel dove-cote
on its high post was often put up in the
garden. In an old garden near Southwater
a dove-cote such as this forms the centre-piece
of a square walled garden, with straight grass
paths leading up to a circle in the centre,

IX GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 199

and the effect is very good. In Badeslade's
viev/ of Sundridge Place, in Kent (1720), the
dove-cote is shown standing in the centre of the
fish-pond. The water-floor was
occupied by the ducks ; above this
was a room with a balcony all
round, and steps up from the
water ; and the upper part was
pierced with holes and perches for the
pigeons. A large octagonal wooden |isxjoKi^&:
dove-cote on a wood trestle is shown yig. 53.
in Logan's view of St. John's, Oxford.

Hot-houses and orangeries do not seem to
have been in use in England till the end of
the seventeenth century. One of the earliest
hot-houses is described by Olivier de Serres.
It was built for the Elector Palatine of Heidel-
berg, and appears to have been a movable
structure formed with great wooden shutters
and windows. Evelyn mentions the orangery
at Ham House ; but this may have been only
a plantation, and perhaps does not refer to the
existing orange-house. Neither Worlidge nor
London and Wise refer to the subject at all.
The first orange-house with a glass roof is said
to have been built at WoUaton in 1696.
Evelyn, however, writing in 1677, mentions
the conservatory at Euston, " some hundred
feete long, adorn' d with mapps, as the other
side is with heads of Cssars, all cut in alabaster."
In the eighteenth century a good many orange-

200 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

houses were built, in most cases from the designs
of architects, and therefore with some regard to
their effect. Sir W. Chambers's building at
Kew, now used as a museum of woods, or the
orangery at Mount Edgcumbe show that a
conservatory or hot-house need not be the
hideous thing to which the gardener has
brought it. The hot-house or conservatory is
necessary no doubt, but it is surely not neces-
sary to reduce the mullions to mere strips of
wood, and the power of the sun would not be
seriously reduced by a few sash-bars instead
of those vast sheets of blazing glass which
inevitably spoil the beauty of any garden.

The carpenter found plenty of work to do
in the old formal garden. In the first place
he had to make the solid frames of wood,
the deamhulat'iones ligneae horti, which were
necessary for the green walks and arbours.
These frames were made of timber, wrought
and square, nailed or pinned together, and
painted green, with curved ribs for the arched
tops. Instances are shown in De Caux's views
of Wilton and several of Logan's plates, such
as the view of Wadham Gardens. These
framings became very elaborate at the end of
the seventeenth century. Porticoes, colonnades
with cornices and pediments, niches arid shells,
domes, lanterns, and other architectural details
were carried out in wainscot and deal, and
the plain spaces filled in with trellis-work of

IX GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 201

wainscot oak, i inch square, framed into
chequers, 6 or 7 inches square, and covered
with roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle, or with
hme, elm, or hornbeam. Evelyn describes a
cupola in Sir Henry Capell's garden at Kew,
" made with pole work, between two elmes,
at the end of a walk, which, being covered by
plashing the elmes to them, is very pretty."
James gives a plate of designs for this work
which are not attractive. It was costly and
very soon fell out of repair, and was abandoned
without much loss to the garden. Plain
wooden arbours of planks or stout oak fram-
ing are often shown in old views of the
seventeenth century, but no instances remain
except one at Canons Ashby, which might
date from the end of the seventeenth century.
These were different in intention from the
garden-house, as they were only made to
shelter the garden-seat. There are two
eighteenth - century instances at Melbourne.
Worlidge says that the seats should
be of wood, painted white or
green, and set in niches in the
garden-wall, or at the end of
garden walks. They might be
circular or square in plan. In ^^^

the first case, half the circle
would be inside the niche, the other half
outside it, covered in by a cupola with a
cornice on three or four columns of wood or

202 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

stone, the roof to be covered with lead,
slates, or shingles. If they were square, about

2 feet would go inside the niche of the wall,
and as much outside. The details of the seats
would be much the same as that of the ordinary
seventeenth-century settle. There is a good
example at the end of the raised grass walk at
Bingham Melcombe, in Dorset. Garden-seats
of good simple design continued to be made till
the beginning of the last century. The backs,
instead of being framed in solid, were formed
with a trellis of bars about an inch square,
framed into panels of various design. The
fashion appears to have been started by Sir
William Chambers, who took it from the
Chinese, though something of the same sort
had been done before in wooden balustrades to
stairs. Of wooden fences several varieties were
in use. The commonest were palings — that is,
pieces of wood about 3 to 4 inches wide and

3 to 4 feet high, with variously shaped heads,
nailed to two rails. Worlidge gives as a varia-
tion a palisade of boards turned edgewise to the
garden, the rails passing through the boards.
The heads were to be shaped into two square
spikes, with a space between. These ought to
be raised above the ground on a low brick
plinth. Wooden balustrades were rarely used.
They are shown in Logan's view of Trinity,
Cambridge. A common form of fencing,
shown in Logan's views of Oxford and

IX GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 203

Cambridge, consisted of a stout single rail,
framed into square posts, the upper part of
which was turned as a baluster or finial. At
Tissington there is a good wooden railing next
the park, formed of a stout moulded rail at top
and bottom mortised into solid posts i foot by /\.^
inches. These posts are shaped like balusters.
The wooden gates were often solid and panelled,
and differ little from the doors of the time.
The upper panel was often filled with vertical
bars. There is a good example of a seventeenth-
century wooden gate at Eyam Hall, and
another at Canons Ashby. For large gates,
iron was more often used.

The orange-trees which were set out on the
terrace stood in cases, in order to be moved
into shelter in winter. London and Wise
recommended that the bottom should be
perforated and fiJled in with oyster shells
and potsherds, to let the water get away, and
each side should be made with hinges to open,
in order to get at the " hard, crusty, reticulated
roots," and to water them and put in fresh
earth. They give 18x18 inches to each side
as a dimension, but this is much too small. In
the gardens at the back of the Hotel de Ville,
at Rouen, there are some good examples which
measure 5 feet by 5, with angle posts 4 inches
square, and planking i^ inches thick. All the
sides are hinged.

Fountains of every description were always

IX GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 205

used in the garden. The beautiful conduit
shown in the garden scene from " The Romance
of the Rose," with its marble basin and runnel of
water in a marble channel, shows its use in the
mediaeval garden. The Rev. Samuel Pegge,
who wrote an account of Bolsover Castle in
1785, mentions that at Leigh Priory there used
to be a fountain in brick " of several stories,"
and probably dating from the time of Henry
VII I. At Nonsuch there was a marble foun-
tain with a pelican carved above it, and foun-
tains were made at Theobalds and Greenwich
for James I. The fountain at Kenilworth had
an octagonal basin 4 feet high, and large enough
for carp, in the centre of which were two
athletes of white marble, standing back to back,
and carrying a ball " 3 feet over," with the
bear and ragged staff at the top. The sides of
the basin were carved with Neptune, " Thetis in
her chariot, drawn by her dolphins, there Triton
by his fishes, here Proteus herding his sea-bulls,
then Doris and her daughters, solacing on sea
and sands," and with " whales and whirlpools,
sturgeons. Tunny s, conchs and wealks." In
the seventeenth century the ingenuity of the
designer was spent in practical jokes — such as
fountains which drenched you with water if you
stepped on a hidden spring. The copper-tree
at Chatsworth is a bad instance. But besides
these, water-toys were much in fashion. Both
Solomon and Isaac de Caux invented various

2o6 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

curious devices for waterwork. Solomon pub-
lished his book in French at Frankfort in
1 615. It contained designs for water organs
and imitations of the notes of birds, and designs
for raising water by means of air-tight vessels
placed in the sun, made of copper, with burning
glasses fixed in the sides. The work of Isaac
de Caux was translated by John Leak (London,
1659). Plate XIV. gives a method for " divers
birds, which shall sing diversely when an owl
turns towards them, and when the said owl
turns back again they shall cease their playing."
Plate XV. gives an engine by which " Galatea
shall be presented, which shall be drawn upon
the water by two Dolphins, going in a right
line and returning of herself, while a Cyclops
plaies upon a Flagolett." Evelyn in 1662 says
that at Hampton Court, "in ye garden is a
rich and noble fountain, with syrens, statues,
etc., cast in copper by Fanelli, but no plenty of
water." Boecklern's Hydragogica Nova^ pub-
lished at Nuremberg in 1664, contains many
designs for fountains, some of them in copper
and lead. Several varieties of fountains with
illustrations are given in Worlidge's book,
including one or two unseemly practical jokes.
Switzer wrote an Introduction to a general
System of Hydrostatics and Hydraulics . . .
for the Watering of Noblemen s ayid ' Gentlemen s
Seats ^ Buildings^ Gardens^ etc., but Switzer is
exceedingly dull, and his designs are detestable.

FOUKTACH AT BOLS0VER: BEHBYSHIRE

Fig. 56.

2o8 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

In many of Kip's views fountains of statuary
are shown. One of the largest was at Longleat.
Another famous fountain, that at Bolsover, is
still left, though in a mutilated state. It was
described by Pegge as consisting of an octagon
reservoir, 6 feet deep, in which stood the
fountain with engaged semicircular pedestals
carrying griffins. In the angle were satyrs,
sitting astride of eagles ; in the sides (of the
reservoir) were arched niches with busts
of eight of the Roman emperors, made of
alabaster. The centre-piece consisted of a
square rusticated pedestal carrying a circular
basin ; above this was a figure of Venus in
alabaster, standing on a pedestal with one foot
raised. This fountain was fed from a lead
cistern 20 feet square. The objection to
fountains on such an elaborate scale as this is
that they are very expensive to maintain, and
without a constant supply of water they soon
become squalid. The neglected fountains in
the groves at Versailles are most melancholy
to look upon. The fine marble curbs are
falling to pieces, and, where bright water should
be playing, weeds and grass are forcing their
way through the cracks of the broken pavement.
It is wiser to keep the fountain simple, and to
be content with a plain well-built basin of brick
or stone and some little figure in lead, as at
Melbourne.

Sun-dials have always held an honoured place

SIJNDIM- :^^7?KE.ST '. KEJ3FOTU3 SHIRE.

Fig. 57.
P

2IO THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

in the formal garden, sometimes on the terrace,
sometimes as the centre of some little garden of
lilies and sweet flowers. Every one loves them
because they suggest the human interest of the
garden, the long continuity of tradition which
has gone before, and will outlive us. "Pereunt
et imputantur," " Scis horas, nescis horam,"
" Sine sole sileo," " Horas non numero nisi
Serenas," " I mark time, dost thou ? " Such
were some of the mottoes used to point the
lesson of the sun-dial. Instances of eighteenth-
century sun-dials are still fairly common. There
is a graceful example on the side terrace at
Hampton Court and another rather similar
instance at Wrest. At Wroxton Abbey, in
Oxfordshire, there is a remarkable sun-dial ; the
plate is fixed on a moulded circular top, carried
by four draped female figures, who stand on a
square pedestal, the angles of which are decorated
with rams' heads and swags of fruit and flowers.
The pedestal stands on a circular step. The
whole is executed in white marble, and, unless it
is an importation, appears to date from the end
of the eighteenth century, though the base looks
much earlier. The dial plates were always of
bronze, many of them very well engraved, and
were, of course, designed by specialists who
understood the intricate process of dialing,
whether for side or top plates. In Scotland
and the north of England sun-dials were often
made of stone polygonal balls set on a pedestal

S0NDIMLAT CHEESEBXrai^ |
&NOKTH0MBEKLaJrtl3 ^

Fig. 58.

212 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

and carved into various mysterious scoops and
hollows, which look exceedingly picturesque, but
to the lay mind are unintelligible. There is
a curious instance in the market-place at
Wilton, apparently dating from the seventeenth
century.

Statuary has never played such an important
part in the English garden as it did on the
continent, and this is probably due not merely
to difference of climate, but to the greater
sobriety of English taste. Wood, stone, marble,
bronze, and lead have all been used for the
purpose in England. The wooden beasts in
Henry VIII. 's garden at Hampton Court have
been already mentioned ; these were painted
no doubt in all sorts of cheerful colours, any-
how in red and green and white. Wood, how-
ever, is not a very suitable material for garden
sculpture. Unless its forms are very simple,
the sun and rain soon destroy its effect. Marble
was often used in the more important seven-
teenth-century gardens, not only for fountains
but for pieces of isolated statuary. In the
gardens at Kenil worth in the centre of each of
the four plots there stood obelisks 15 feet
high, formed of a single piece of porphyry.
The obelisks stood on a base 2 feet square 5
and were pierced, and carried a ball at the top
10 inches in diameter. At Wilton there were
statues of Bacchus and Flora in white marble 8
feet high- Fortunately marble was found too

WHITE MARBLE SUNDI?iL^
WROXTON ABBEY ". OXFORD^

Fig. 59.

214 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

costly for outside work. Marble statuary is a
mistake in an English garden. To attain its
full effect it wants strong sunlight, a clear dry
light, and a cloudless sky. In the soft Hght

and nebulous atmo-
sphere of the north
marble looks forlorn
and out of place. It
does not colour like
stone, and the qualities
of which it is most
capable — such as re-
finements of contour
and modelling — are
simply lost under an
English sky. The
same objection applies
to bronze casts. Apart
from their cost, bronze
figures always retain
their original hardness
of form. They do not
lend themselves to the
modelling of nature ; they do not grow in with
nature, as stone or lead. To the sculptor this
would be a strong point in its favour, as, of
course, it should be where houses and palaces
and cities are concerned. But in the garden one
wants something different ; man's handiwork
should be in suggestion rather than in evi-
dence, and bronze figures are too trenchant.

MELBOllRyiE :itEKBY5H

Fig. 6o.

IX GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 215

too strong, if you like, to take their pJace among
the gentler beauties of the garden. The only
point in their favour is the beautiful patina they
may acquire with age. Bronze or brass figures,
as the older writers call them, were, however,
occasionally used. At Wilton there was a statue
of the gladiator in ''brass," and James in his
translation mentions such statues as common.

Stone is the proper material for carved work
in an English garden, especially Portland stone.
It is hard and weathers well, and few if any
stones profit so much by exposure to the sun
and rain. The harshness of its outlines becomes
softened by time, and it will take on the most
delicate colours, from the green stains of the
pedestal to the pure white of the statue that
gleams from under the deep canopy of yew.
Instances of stone statuary in gardens earlier
than the eighteenth century are not common in
England. When the old formal gardens were
destroyed by landscape gardeners, the stone
terminal figures, the statues of Pan and Diana,
were broken up to make the paths, or pitched
aside into builders' yards, where a few melancholy
survivors may still be found. Switzer, writing
in 17 1 8, refers to the great skill of the masons
of his time, and even suggested that it would be
a '' work worthy of the Royal munificence to
erect an Acamedy (sic), as is common in all
other countries, especially in France and Italy,
for the improvement of statuary. At present,"

K;f'... •'<

lit' <sl

ii

STQIIE m^B AT HaJKPTOW CQIIKT

mrnMr

Fig. 6 1.

IX GARDEN ARCHITECTURE 217

he continues, "we have only a few leaden tame
copies."

Of all the materials, that most commonly
used was lead. It was abundant in England
and easily cast, and throughout the eighteenth
century, particularly in the early part of it,
leadwork was a very flourishing and important
industry. It was used in the garden for tanks,
cisterns, figures, and fountains, and vases of
every description. There is a remarkable
instance of a lead tank at St. Pagan's, near
Cardiff, in front of the house. It is octagonal,
about 8 feet in diameter and about 4 feet high ;
the sides are decorated with a band of foliage
and arcading, such as is commonly found in
seventeenth-century panelling. Lead was used
for statues of every degree of importance. The
equestrian figure of George I. at Canons,
known as the Golden Horse, was of lead gilt
all over. Statues from the antique were
reproduced in lead — such as the figures in the
courtyard at Knole, or the flying Mercury at
Melbourne. Diana and her stag, the Seasons,
Flora or Pan, the garden god, were favourite
subjects for lead figures. Original work was
also done, such as figures of haymakers, skaters,
and gamekeepers. At Canons Ashby, at the
end of the avenue leading up to the fore court,
there is a lead figure of a shepherd in the dress
of the eighteenth century playing on a flute ; the
figure is about 5 feet high. On a terrace over-

2i8 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

hanging the Ouse at Nun Monkton, in York-
shire, there are set out allegorical figures of lead
with gilded trappings. There are six lead
figures over life size at Hardwick Hall. Four

of these stand on
pedestals in niches of
the yew-hedge round
the great circle at the
intersection of the
paths ; one represents
painting, another a
young man playing a
shepherd's pipe, the
third a female figure
with a violin, the fourth
a figure with a trum-
pet. The gardens at
Melbourne are rich in
lead figures ; there are
two of blacks carrying
vases on salvers, rather
like the one in the
Temple gardens.
These are painted black with white drapery.
Besides these there are heroic figures of Perseus
and Andromeda beside the great water, and
several cupids in pairs and single. The single
figures are about 2 feet high. One has fallen
off his tree, another is flying upward, another
shooting, another shaping his bow with a
spokeshave. All of these are painted and

UElMi T1G(VI|]& OF CUPID
MEUaOURHE -. XIEKBY.

Fig. 62.

LEm -VASM AT HAMPTSM COUItT

Fig. 63.

2 20 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

some covered with stone-dust to imitate stone,
a gratuitous insult to lead, which will turn to
a delicate silvery gray, if left to its own de-
vices ; but there is no doubt that these figures
were often gilt and painted different colours.
Melbourne also possesses the most magnificent
lead vase in England. It stands on a stone
pedestal some 5 feet 3 from the ground. The
vase itself, which is over 7 feet high, is supported
by four monkeys and richly ornamented ; its
modelling is admirable.

Other good instances are to be found at
Hampton Court, Wrest, and Penshurst. At
Sprotborough, in Yorkshire, there are some
vases, apparently from the same mould as those
at Penshurst. At the same place there are
two lead toads about 9 inches long, said
to have belonged to the fountains, and no
doubt suggested by those at Versailles. At
Wootton, in a fountain behind the house, there
is a lead duck suspended so as to swim on
the water and spout water from its bill. There
are many other instances of the use of lead
for the details of garden ornament. It is a
material that might well be brought into use
again for the same purpose. It is durable
and inexpensive, though it must not be used
in a niggardly way. Lead statues very easily
lose their centre of gravity, and when once
they begin to move over they become ex-
ceedingly comic. The flying Mercury at

I^EAD TaSE : PEWSHUUST, KfiWT

Fig, 64.

22 2 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND ix

Melbourne is slowly taking a header into the
grass in front of his pedestal. Lead has a
beautiful colour of its own, and it is not, like
bronze or marble, a material too grand and
sumptuous for use in the quiet English garden.
These figures are invaluable for giving a point
of interest here and there. They are charming
in summer, when "the lilac waves its plumes
above them, and the syringa thrusts its flowers
under their arms," ^ and when autumn has
dropped its last red leaf at their feet, they will
carry the memory of summer through the
dreary days of winter.

^ W. R. Lethaby, Mr. Lethaby says that during the War of Inde-
pendence many of those lead figures were exported to America as " works
of art " in order to be melted down into bullets.

CHAPTER X

CONCLUSION

The disregard of conditions which the land-
scape gardener shows in dealing with the
house and garden is even more conspicuous in
his treatment of public grounds. For some
inscrutable reason the laying out of public
grounds is usually left either to the engineer
or to the landscape gardener. The engineer is,
no doubt, a man of ability and attainment, but
there is nothing in his training to qualify him
to deal with a problem which is in the main
artistic ; and the landscape gardener makes it
his business to dispense with serious design.
The result is that our public spaces are seldom
laid out on any principle at all. For instance,
a London square is an entirely artificial affair.
It is bounded by rectangular blocks of buildings,
and straight roads and fences. It would only
be reasonable to adhere to this simple motive ;
but hand this over to the landscape gardener
and he will at once set to work to contradict

2 2+ THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x

the whole character of the place by means of
irregular curves and irrelevant hummocks. His
dislike of a simple straight line and a plain
piece of grass amounts almost to a mania. In
Bloomsbury, till within the last few years,
there existed a good old-fashioned square
garden, laid out in four grass plots, with a
lime walk and a border of flowers running
round the sides. It was restful and pleasant
to look at. The grass plots were good for
lawn-tennis and the lime walks kindly to the
citizen ; but the landscape gardener appeared
on the scene and speedily put all this to rights.
He cut up the grass plots and destroyed two
sides of the lime walk, and heaped up some
mounds, and made the most curiously un-
reasonable paths ; and went his way, having
destroyed one of the few square gardens in
London with any pretence to design. Instead
of trying to treat the square as a whole, or,
better still, instead of leaving it alone, he de-
liberately turned his back on the adjacent archi-
tecture, and produced a result which has no dis-
tinction but that of immense vulgarity.

Much more might be done in the way of
planting avenues of trees along the approaches
to towns and in the towns themselves. Evelyn
mentions the road from Heidelberg to Darm-
stadt, which was planted all the way with walnuts,
and an avenue of 4 leagues long and 50 paces
wide, " planted with young oaklings, as straight

X CONCLUSION 225

as a line, from the city of Utrecht to Amers-
foort." The road from Hoorn to Alkmaar, in
North Holland, and from Hoorn to Enkhuizen,
passes for miles under an avenue of elms. "Is
there," Evelyn says, " a more ravishing or
delightful object, than to behold some entire
streets and whole towns planted with these
lime-trees in even lines before their doors, so
as they seem like cities in a wood ? " Mr.
Robinson's views to the contrary are signifi-
cant. In his Garden 'Design^ p. 50, he asserts
that "the ugliest things in the fair land
of France are the ugly old lines of dipt
limes which deface many French towns." In
regard to this assertion, I would only repeat,^
that the depth of colour, the play of re-
flected light, the extreme brilliancy of the
isolated spots of sunshine, which result from
these close-clipt masses of leafage, must surely
appeal to a person of quite ordinary sensi-
bility. But the point of serious moment in
Mr. Robinson's pronouncement is its hopeless
modernism in the worst sense. It shows an
insensibility to what has been done in the past,
and an unconsciousness of a whole world of
thought, which together constitute one of the
most fatal tendencies of modern design. Out
of a mind well stored with knowledge and tradi-

^ Preface to the second edition of this book. I may also refer to
a paper on " Public Spaces, Parks, and Gardens," in a series of lectures
on the building and decoration of cities, by members of the Arts and
Crafts Society (Rivington, 1897).

Q

226 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x

tion good original ideas may come, but what
are we to expect from a mind stored with the
ideas of the Great Exhibition of 1 8 5 1 ? We
are to expect exactly what we have got in
most of our modern parks and public gardens,
and we cannot feel very sanguine as to any
prospects of improvement. The London
County Council have shown a wise anxiety to
secure public spaces whenever possible, but
when they have got them their advisers seem
very uncertain as to how they should deal with
them. They waste the public money in humps
and earthworks, and economise in kiosques
and cast-iron fountains, and this, though there
are admirable models to follow in the gardens
of the Luxembourg and the Tuileries and in
most of the important cities of Europe. No-
where is the provincialism of modern English
thought more clearly shown than in our State
and municipal dealings with art.

In dealing with great spaces the landscape
gardener seems to have little idea of mass. He
is for ever breaking up the outline with little
knots of trees, and reducing the size of his
grounds by peppering them all over with
shrubs. The consequence is that though one
may feel weary with traversing his interminable
paths, no permanent impression of size is left
on the mind. Such a place, for instance, as
Battersea Park is like a bad piece of architecture
full of details which stultify each other. The

X CONCLUSION 227

only good point in it is the one avenue,
and this leads to nowhere. If this park had
been planted out with groves and avenues
of limes, like the boulevard at Avallon, or the
squares at Vernon, or even like the east side
of Hyde Park between the Achilles statue
and the Marble Arch, at least one definite
effect would have been reached. There might
have been shady walks, and noble walls of
trees, instead of the spasmodic futility of
Battersea Park, and without pedantry the
principles of formal garden design should
be applied to public grounds and parks.
A dominant idea should control the general
scheme. Merely to introduce so many
statues or plaster casts is to begin at the
wrong end. These are the accidents of the
system, not the system itself, and this is why
the attempt at formal gardening at the head
of the Serpentine was such a failure. The
details were not particularly well designed,
but even if they had been, it was essentially
inartistic to plump them down in the midst of
incongruous surroundings.

Perhaps of all the unsatisfactory public places
in England the worst is the public cemetery.
Here again one finds the same disregard of
decent order, the same hatred of simplicity, the
same meanness of imagination. Here, if any-
where, all pettiness, all banalities should be
avoided. We want rest, even if it is sombre in

2 28 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x

its severity ; but instead we are offered narrow
winding roads and broken pillars under weep-
ing willows, everything that can suggest the
ghastly paraphernalia of the undertaker. Why
not have long walks of yew at once, with
cypress-trees or junipers ? But the landscape
gardener is nothing if not " natural," and so he
gives us a bad copy of an ill -chosen subject.
Only nature left alone can create her own
particular beauty, and only in the churchyard
of some far-away village can her work be
judged, where the grass grows tenderly over
the dead, and the graves are shaded by im-
memorial yews, and the sun-dial patiently wears
away on its gray stone base while it counts the
silent hours.

As was pointed out in an earlier chapter,
the landscape gardener attempts to establish a
sort of hierarchy of nature, based on much the
same principle as that which distinguishes a
gentleman by his incapacity to do any useful
work. Directly it is proved that a plant or a
tree is good for food, it is expelled from the
flower garden without any regard to its intrinsic
beauty. The hazel-hedge has gone, and the
apple-tree has long been banished from the
flowers. Of all the trees an apple-tree in full
bloom, or ripe in autumn, is perhaps the
loveliest. Trained as an espalier it makes a
beautiful hedge, and set out as in an orchard
it lets the sun play through its leaves and

X CONCLUSION 229

chequer with gold the green velvet of the grass
in a v^ay that no other tree will quite allow.
Nothing can be more beautiful than some of
the walks under the apple-trees in the gardens
at Penshurst. Yet the landscape gardener
would shudder at the idea of planting a grove
or hedge of apple-trees in his garden. Instead
of this he will give you a conifer or a monkey-
puzzler, though the guelder-rose grows wild in
the meadow and the spindle-tree in the wood,
and the rowan, the elder, and the white-thorn ;
and the wild cherry in autumn fires the wood-
land with its crimson and gold. Every one
admires these as a matter of proper sensibility
to nature, but it does not seem to occur to
people that they would grow with as little
difficulty in a garden, and at the very smallest
expense. It would undoubtedly injure the
business of the nursery gardener to allow that
they were possible. Again, the pear-tree and
the chequer-tree, the quince, the medlar, and the
mulberry are surely entitled by their beauty
to a place in the garden. It is only since
nature has been taken in hand by the land-
scapist and taught her proper position that
these have been excluded. When there was
no talk about nature, and man had not learnt
to consider himself as something detached from
nature and altogether superior, the fruit-
tree was counted among the beauties of the
garden. It is of fruit-trees that Homer

2 30 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x

tells us in the garden of Alcinous : " Without
the palace, near the doors, was a great garden,
four acres by four, and round it on every side
was driven a fence. There grew tall trees and
beautiful pears and pomegranates, and apple-
trees with gleaming fruit, and luscious figs and
teeming olive-trees." -^ Or again, in the ground
of a mediaeval tapestry all beautiful flowers and
fruits grow together, the strawberry next the
violet, and columbines among the raspberries,
and fair roses twine among the apple boughs.
So again with flowers : " The dahlia has
banished the hollyhock, with its old friend the
sunflower, into the cottage garden, where it
still flanks the little walk that leads from the
wicket to the porch — not the only instance in
which our national taste has been redeemed by
the cottage against the vulgar pretensions of
luxury and wealth." ^ It is more of this un-
sophisticated liking for everything that is
beautiful that ought to be allowed full play
in the gardens ; less of the pedantry that lays
down rules about nature and is at heart in-
different to the beauty about which it preaches.
If there were any truth in his cant about
nature would the landscape gardener bed out

^ Odyssey^ vii. 112-116 —

eKToadev 5' avXrjs fieyas opxcTos a7%t dvpawv '
Terpdyvos' irepl 5' epKos iXrfKaTaL diKporepwdev,
'ivda 8e devdpea /xaKpa wecpvKet. TrjXedocovra
oyx^cLL Kai poiai, Kai firfKeai dyXaoKapTroL
avKot re yXvKepai, Kai eXatat rrjXeddojcrai,

^ James, in I'/ie Carthusian.

X CONCLUSION 231

asters and geraniums, would he make the lawn
hideous with patches of brilliant red varied by
streaks of purple blue, and add his finishing
touch in the magenta of his choicest dahlia ?
Would he plant them in patterns of stars and
lozenges and tadpoles ? would he border them
with paths of asphalt? Would he not rather
fill his borders with every kind of beautiful
flower that he might delight in ? It is impos-
sible to take his professions seriously when he
so flies in the face of nature, when he trans-
plants exotics into impossible conditions, when
rarity, difficulty, and expense of production are
his tests of the value of a flower. The beauty
that he claims for his garden is not his but
that of the flowers, the grass, the sunlight, and
the cloud, which no amount of bad design can
utterly destroy.

A garden is so much an individual affair —
it should show so distinctly the idiosyncrasy
of its owner — that it would be useless to offer
any hints as to its details. The brief sketch
which has been given of the development of the
formal garden will indicate the very wide field
of design which it includes, and the abuses and
extravagance which led to its decay and ulti-
mate extinction. The study of its history will
at least show the dangers to be avoided, and
they can be summarised in the faults of over-
elaboration and affectation. The characteristic
of the old formal garden, the garden of Mark-

2 32 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x

ham and Lawson, was its exceeding simplicity.
The primary purpose of a garden as a place
of retirement and seclusion, a place for quiet
thought and leisurely enjoyment, was kept
steadily in view. The grass and the yew-trees

PEIISHIIRST FLACE. : l^EHT S A MOPEUM CajRIJEK

Fig. 65.

were trimmed close to gain their full beauty
from the sunlight. Sweet kindly flowers filled
the knots and borders. Peacocks and pigeons
brightened the terraces and lawns. The paths
were straight and ample, the garden-house
solidly built and comfortable ; everything was
reasonable and unaffected. But this simple

X CONCLUSION 233

genuine delight in nature and art became
feebler as the seventeenth century grew older.
Gardening became the fashionable art, and this
was the golden age for professional gardeners ;
but the real pleasure of it was gone. Rows of
statues were introduced from the French, costly
architecture superseded the simple terrace, intri-
cate parterres were laid out from gardeners'
pattern books, and meanwhile the flowers were
forgotten. It was well that all this pomp
should be swept away. We do not want this
extravagant statuary, this aggressive prodigality.
But though one would admit that in its
decay the formal garden became unmanageable
and absurd, the abuse is no argument against
the use. An attempt has been made in this
book to show the essential reasonableness of
the principles of Formal Gardening, and the
sanity of its method when properly handled.
The long yew -hedge is clipped and shorn
because we want its firm boundary lines and
the plain mass of its colour ; the grass bank
is formed into a definite slope to attain the
beauty of close-shaven turf at varied angles
with the light. The broad grass walk, with
its paved footpath in the centre, is cool to walk
upon in summer and dry on the pavement in
winter ; and the flower border on either side
is planted with every kind of delightful flower,
so that the refinements of its colour may be
enjoyed all through the summer. It is not

PgSUMPIMi IW A aCOTC^HgaJlDEliC^

Fig. 66.

X CONCLUSION 235

filled with bedded-out plants, because for long
months it would be bare and desolate, because
there is no pleasure in a solid spot of hard
blazing colour, and because there is delight in
the associations of the sweet old-fashioned
flowers. There is music in their very names : —

" In the garden, what in the garden ?
Jacob's ladder, and Solomon's seal, ^
And love lies bleeding, with none to heal,
In the garden."

Gillyflowers and columbines, sweet-williams,
sweet-johns, hollyhocks and marigolds, ladies'
slipper, London pride, bergamot and dittany,
fine-haired jacint, pease everlasting, bachelor's
buttons, flower of Bristol, love in a mist, apple
of love, crown imperial, shepherd's needle, sage
of Bethlehem, floramor or flower-gentle, good-
night at noone, herb Paris, Venus's looking-
glass — these are a few old names to contrast
with the horrors of a nursery gardener's cata-
logue, and these, too, are the sort of flowers for
the garden. The formal garden lends itself
readily to designs of smaller gardens within the
garden — such as gardens of roses and lilies, or
of poppies, or " coronary gardens," as they used
to be called, filled with all flowers for garlands,
such as Spenser names : —

^ See Gerard's Herbal, chap. 324. Gerard remarks that this flower
was a sovereign remedy for any bruises due to "women's wilfulness in
stumbling upon their hastie husbands' fists."

236 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND x

" Bring hither the pinke and purple columbine,

With gillyflowers,
Bring sweet carnations, and sops in wine,i

Worne of paramours,
Strew me the ground with dafFa-down-dillies
And cowslips, and king-cups, and loved lilies.

The pretty paunce

And the chevisaunce
Shall match with the faire flower de luce." ^

These and many another fancy, such as
Enghsh men and women loved three hundred
years ago, might be carried out, not for
archaeology, not for ostentation, but because
they give real pleasure and delight. This, after
all, is the only principle. It is nothing to us
that the French did this or the Italians that ;
the point is, what has been done in England,
what has been loved here, by us and by those
before us. The best English tradition has
always been on the side of refinement and reserve ;
it has loved beauty — not the obvious beauty of
the south, but the charm and tenderness, the
inexpressible sweetness of faces that fill the
memory like half-remembered music. This is
the feeling that one would wish to see realised
in the garden again, not the coarse facihty
that overwhelms with its astonishing cleverness,
but the delicate touch of the artist, the finer
scholarship which loves the past and holds
thereby the key to its meaning.

^ "Sops in wine" is given by Gerard in his chapter on Clover Gilly-
flowers as a variety of that flower.
2 Iris.

APPENDIX I

EVELYN'S GARDEN BOOK

Bray's Memoirs of Evelyn, vol. ii. p. 107. — "Amongst
Mr. E.'s papers was found this printed sketch of the
intended work above mentioned under the title of

ELYSIUM BRITANNICUM

In Three Books

Pr^emissis prce mittendis, tie

Book I

CHAP.

1. A garden derived and defined, with its distinction and

sorts.

2. Of a gardener, and how he is to be qualified.

3. Of the principles and elements in generall.

4. Of the fire.

5. Of the aire and winde.

6. Of the water.

7. Of the earth.

8. Of the celestial influences, particularly the sun and

moon, and of the climates.

9. Of the four seasons.

10. Of the mould and soil of a garden.

11. Of the composts and stercoration.

12. Of the generation of plants.

2 38 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND
Book II

CHAP.

1. Of the instruments belonging to a gardiner and their

several uses.

2. Of the situation of a garden with its extent.

3. Of framing, enclosing and plotting and disposing the

ground.

4. Of a seminary and of propagating trees, plants and

flowers.

5. Of knots, parterres, compartiments, bordures, and em-

bossements.

6. Of walks, terraces, carpets and allies, bowling-greens,

maills, their materials and proportion.

7. Of groves, labyrinths, dsedales, cabinets, cradles,

pavilions, galleries, close walks, and other relievos.

8. Of transplanting.

9. Of fountains, cascades, rivulets, piscinas, and water-

works.

10. Of rocks, grots, crypts, mountains, precipices, porticos,

ventiducts.

11. Of statues, columns, dyalls, perspectives, pots, vases,

and other ornaments.

12. Of artiiiciall echoes, musick, and hydraulic motions.

13. Of aviaries, apiaries, vivaries, insects.

14. Of orangeries and conservatories of rare plants.

15. Of verdures, perennial greens, and perpetuall springs.

16. Of coronary gardens; flowers and rare plants, how

they are to be propagated, governed, and improved,
together with a catalogue of the choycest trees,
shrubs, plants, and flowers, and how a gardiner is to
keep his register.

17. Of the philosophico-medicall garden.

18. Of a vineyard.

19. Of watering, pruning, clipping, rolling, ^weeding,

etc.

20. Of the enemies and infirmities to which a garden is

obnoxious, and the remedies.

21. Of the gardiner's Almanack, or Kalendarium Hortense,

APPENDIX I 239

directing what he is to do monethly and what
flowers are in prime.

Book III

HAP.

1. Of conserving, properating, retarding, multiplying,

transmuting, and altering the species. Formes and
substantial qualities of flowers.

2. Of chaplets, festoons, flower-pots, nosegaies, and posies.

3. Of the gardiner's elaboratory, and of distilling and

extracting of essences, resuscitation of plants, with
other rare experiments.

4. Of composing the Hortus Hyemalis and making books

of natural arid plants and flowers with other curious
wayes of preserving them in their naturall.

5. Of planting of flowers. Flowers enamell'd in silk-

work, and other artificial representation of them.

6. Of Hortulane entertainments, to show riches, beauty,

wonder, plenty, delight, and use of a garden
festival, etc.

7. Of the most famous gardens in the world, antient and

moderne.

8. The description of a villa. The corollarie and con-

clusion."

APPENDIX II

COUNT TALLARD'S GARDEN AT
NOTTINGHAM

Marshal Count Tallard, the commander of the French
forces, was taken prisoner at the battle of Blenheim, or
Hochstedt as the Germans called it, and interned at
Nottingham. London and Wise laid out a garden for him
in 1706, of which they have left a detailed description in
The Retired Gardiner. The reproduction is taken from the
plate in Les Delices de la Grande Bretagne, In front of the
house was a terrace about 60 feet long and 14 wide. In
front of this was a parterre of grass-work, generally called
a " fund of grass," laid out in cut-work [gazon coupe) all
in grass. The paths of this parterre were filled in with
different coloured materials, such as brick dust, ,coal slag,
sand, etc. There seem to have been no flowers to this
parterre, except some plants in pots, and this particular
part of the design sounds rather puerile.

Above this parterre on the right was another parterre
with a grass terrace on a higher level. Below it and in
front of it was a third parterre in grass, reached by a flight
of seven steps. At the farther end of the garden was a
raised walk of grass, with a border of flowers on one side,
and pyramidal trees and flower-pots on the other. At the
left-hand corner was a banqueting-house, reached from the
raised walk, with a room under it, entered from the level

APPENDIX II

24:

of the third parterre. The walks were about 8 feet wide ;
the entire garden appears only to have measured 150 feet

MTALLARD'5

Garxien att

i^otti:s:gha.m

!r::aar,i.ai!KSi!:^giiiMiiiii

Fig. 67.

long by 140 wide in the widest part. It is interesting as
a contemporary account of a small town garden written by
the actual designers.

R

APPENDIX III

LIST OF PRINCIPAL WORKS REFERRED TO

"The Romance of the Rose." Harleian MS. 4425.

Dr. Andrew Borde — " The Boke for to lerne a man to be
wyse in buyldyng of his house." 1540. 8vo.

Thomas Hill — "A most briefe and pleasaunt treatyse
teachynge how to dress, sowe, and set a garden."
London, 1563. 8vo.

"The proffitable Arte of Gardening." London,

1568. 8vo.

DiDYMus MouNTAiNE — "The Gardener's Labyrinth."
London, 1577. 4to.

Olivier DE Serres — "Le Theatre d'Agriculture et mesnage
des Champs." Paris, 1603. Folio.

Bacon's " Essays." Golden Treasury Series.

Hentzner — "Itinerarium Germaniae Galliae Angliae,
etc." Nuremberg, 161 2. 4to.

Crispin de Pass — " Hortus Floridus." Arnhem, 1614.

Gervase Markham — "The English Husbandman."
London, 16 14. 4to.

"A Way to get Wealth." London, 1638. 4to.

"The Country Farm." 161 5.

William Lawson — "A New Orchard and Garden." "The
Countrie Housewife's Garden." London, 161 8. 410.

APPENDIX III 243

De Caux (Solomon) — " Le Jardin de Wilton." London,
161 5. Folio.

(Isaac) — "Waterworks." London, 1659. Folio.

" Les Raisons des Forces." Frankfort, 161 5. Folio.

MoLLET (Andre) — "Le Jardin de Plaisir, etc." Stockholm,

165..

Sir Hugh Platt — "Flora's Paradise." London, 1618.
i2mo.

"The Garden of Eden." London, 1653. 8vo.

Evelyn — "Kalendarium Hortense." London, 1666. 8vo.
"Sylva." London, 1664. Folio.

"The Compleat Gardener," etc. 1693. Folio.

" Of Gardens ; four Books first written in Latin Verse

and now made English by J. E." 1673. 8vo
(Rapin).

Bray's " Memoirs," etc. 18 18. 4to.

B0ECK.LERN — " Architectura Curiosa Nova." Nuremberg,
1664. Folio.

John Rea — " Flora, Ceres, and Pomona." London, 1665.
Folio.

Leonard Meager — " The English Gardener." London,
1670. 4to.

"The New Art of Gardening." London, 1697. i2mo.

David Logan — "Oxonia Illustrata." Oxford, 1675. Folio.

^ " Cantabrigia Illustrata." Cambridge, 1688. Folio. ^

John Worlidge — " Systema Horticulture." London,
1677. 8vo.

Sir William Temple — "Miscellanea." "Upon the
Gardens of Epicurus." 1685.

Kennett's — " Parochial Antiquities," etc. At the theatre,
Oxford, 1695. 4to.

R 2

244 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

London and Wise — "The Retired Gard'ner." London,
1706. 8vo.

Kip — " Britannia Illustrata." London, 1709. Folio.

John James — "The Theory and Practice of Gardening, etc.,
done from the French Original printed at Paris, anno
1709, by John James of Greenwich." London, 17 12.

Atkyns (Sir Robert) — "The Ancient and Present State
of Gloucestershire." London, 17 12.

DuGDALE (Sir William) — "Antiquities of Warwickshire."
2 vols. London, 1730.

Badeslade's "Views." London, 1720. These were
apparently made for Harris's " History of Kent," but
were also published separately.

Stephen Switzer — " Ichnographia Rustica, or the Noble-
man's, Gentleman's, and Gardener's Recreations."
London, 171 8.

"Hydrostatics and Hydraulics." London, 1729. 4to.

James Beeverell — " Les Delices de la Grande Bretagne et
de rirlande." Leyden, 1727.

"The Beauties of Stowe." London, 1746. 8vo.

Thomas Wheatly — " Observations on Modern Garden-
ing." 1770.

Horace Walpole — " Essay on Modern Gardening." 1785.

Price (Sir Uvedale) — "An Essay on the Picturesque."
London, 1794. 8vo.

" On the Decorations near the House."

Humphrey Repton — " Landscape Gardening." London,
1803. Folio.

S. Felton — "Gleanings on Gardens." London, 1829. 8vo.

Ernest Law — " History of Hampton Court Palace."

W. C. Hazlitt — " Gleanings in old Garden Literature."
London, 1887.

INDEX

Addison, 14, 80
Althorp, 96, 99
Amesbury, Wilts, 194
Apple-trees, 190, 228, 229

„ espaliers, 160, 228
Arbours, 151, 152, 201
Arley, 91, 159

Arts and Crafts Society, 225 note
Ashburnham House, 174
Ashmole, Mr,, 51
Athelhampton, Dorset, 198
Atkyns, 62 note, 172
Avallon, 227
Aviaries, 196

Bacon, 32, 33
Badeslade, 62
Badminton, 62, 95, 139
Balustrades, 184
Banqueting-house, 190
Barncluith, 89
Barry, Sir C, 88
Base court, 94
Battersea Park, 226
Batty Langley, 82
Bellair, 122
Beresford, 196
Bingham Melcombe, 202

Blackett, Sir W., 96

Blanc, C, 16

Blenheim, 170

Bloomsbury, square in, 224

Boecklern, 206

Bolsover, 94, 172, 208

Borde, 35

Bosquet, 164

Boughton, 61

Bower, 152

Bowling-greens, 138 et seq.

Boxted, 194

Eradshaw, 173

Bretby, 95, 99

Brickwall, 17, 109, iii, 147, 161

Bridges, 170

Bridgeman, 80, 84

Britannia lUustrata, 61

Brompton, 75

Bronze, 214

Brown, "Capability," 14, 85, loi

Brympton, 87, 184

Burleigh, Lord, 28, 38

Burton Agnes, 171

Bushey Park, 61

Cabinets, 164
Camden, 113

246 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

Canals, 149
Canons, 217
Canons Ashby, 175, 201, 203,

217
Carpenter, 200
Cashiobury, 139
Caux, de, 54, 205
Cavendish, 25
Cemetery, 13, 227
Cerceau, du, 53

Chambers, Sir W., 83, 200, 202
Charlcote, 171

Chatsworth, 18, 96, 114, 205
Chiswick, 99

Clevedon Court, Somerset, 115
Cleeve Prior, 159
Clipped work, 31, 70
Coke, 65
Coley Hall, 177
Collinson, 72
Columbaries, 198
Compton, 76
Conde, Hotel de, 162
Cook, 76
Cothele, 186

Cotton's fishing-house, 196
Counter walks, 120
Country Life, 91 note
Crystal Palace, 17
Croquet lawn, 142
Cusworth, 139

Delices de la Gi-ande Bretagne,

62
Delille, 16
Delisle, Lord, 91
Desiderata Curiosa, 30
Dethicke, Henry, 38
Devey, 91
Devonshire, 181

"Diana" basin, Hampton Court,

61
Doddington, 67
Dove-cotes, 198, 199
Drayton House, Northants, 156
" Dulippos," 131
Dunham Massie, 67, 136
Dutch gardeners and manners, 70,

78

Eaton Hall, old, loi

Edzell, 18, 183

Essex, Earl of, 76, 139

Etwall, 96, 186

Euston, 199

E. V. B., 91

Evelyn, 57, 159, 161, 198, 224

Exhibition, Great, of 1851, 226

Eyam Hall, 97, 203

Felton, 89
Fences, 202
Fiennes, Celia, 180
Fishponds, 145 et seq.
Fontainebleau, 132
Fore court, 94, 96
Foster, Mrs. F., 91
Fountains, 203

Gallery, 1^2 et se<q.

" Garden," 19

Garden Design (Robinson), 225

Gardener'' s Labyrinth, 38

Gardening, Landscape, by Repton,

85
Gardening, Thecry and Practice oj,

164, 166
Gatehouse, 170 et sej.
Gates, 178, 203
Gazebo, 14, 189

INDEX

247

Gerard, 51, 128 note, 235 note, 236

note
Germain, Sir John, 156
Glacis, 141
Glossop, 13
Godstone, Surrey, 198
Goose-foot, 164
Grass-work, 1 3 5 e^ seq.
Groombridge, 175
Groves, 164 et seq.

Haddon, 17, 114, 185

Ha-ha, 88

Ham House, 182, 199

Hampton Court, 24, 27, 60, 75,

150, 162, 210
Hanging gardens, in, 113
Hardwick, 94, 175, 218
Hatfield, 131
Hazlitt, Mr., 22, 24, 50
Hedges, 156 et seq.
Hentzner, zj et seq.
Herbals, 51
Hill, 35 et seq.
Holdenby, 113
Holland, North, 225
Hot-houses, 199, 200
House court, 95, 96
Hydrostatics and Hydraulics (S witzer),

206
Hypnerotomackia PoUphili, 32

Ichnographia Rustica (Switzer), 79
Italian gardens, 17
Italian workmen, 27

James, 78, 95, 132
Jar din a V Anglaise, 86
„ brode, 56

Jar din de Plaislr (MoUet), 56
Jones, Inigo, 56, 175

Kelso, 89

Kenilworth, 32, 196, 205, 212

Kennett, 97

Kent, 14, 82, 84

Kew, 200

Kilworthy, 183

Kingston House, 104, 185

Knole, 140, 217

Knots, 125 e? seq.

Knyff, \ .

■' ' I 01, lOI
Kip, J '

Lawson, 45, 116, 122, 128 note,
138

Lead work, zij et seq.

Leak, John, 206

Leigh Priory, 205

Leland, Itinerary, 136

Le Notre, 58, 65, 69

Lethaby, 222

Lett, Master Nicholas, 128 note

Levens, 72

Lincoln's Inn, 175

Lanhydrock, 172

Logan, 67, 68

London and Wise, 76, 119, 162

London County Council, 226

Longleat, 76, loi, 208

Lordship House, Hadham, Hert-
fordshire, 124

Lucre, 76

Luxembourg, the, 19, 162, 226

Mansard, 58
Mapperton, 175
Marble, 212, 214

248 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

Markham, 41, 93, 94, 116, 117,

130, 138 and note, 145
Marlborough, 137
Martock, 178
Matthiolus, 128 note
Mazes, 37, 131, 151
Meager, 6g, 117
Mediaeval gardens, 22
Melbourne, 65, 150, 154, 201, 217,

218, 222
Melton, Norfolk, 198
Mercury, statue of, 220
Midwinter, 61
Millar, 89
Milner, 7, 8, 13, 16
Milton, 89
Modern Gay-dening, Essay on (H.

Walpole), 86
Modern Gardening, Obser'uations on

(Wheatly), 86
MoUet, Andre, 56

„ Claude, 131
Montacute, 94, 103, iii, 185
Moor Park, 35
Mortier, publisher, 61
Mount Edgcumbe, 200
Mountaine, 38 e? seq.
Mounts, 136 e? seq.

" Nature " and " natural " garden-
ing, II, 12
Nesfield, 91

Newnham Paddox, 95, loi
New Park, 99, 115, 138
Nonsuch, 21, 27, 57, 86, 205
Nun Monkton, 218

Okeover, 175
Orangeries, 199

Orange-tree cases, 203
Orchard Portman, 10 1
Orwalle, Hants, 177
Overton, 61

Packwood, 72, iii, 182

Palings, 202

Palisades, 161

Parterres, 131 ^^ seq.

de Pass, Crispin, 154

Paths, X16 et seq.

Paxton, 114

Peck, 30

Pegge, 205

Pendell House, 147, 182

Penshurst, 91, 150, 159, 191,

229
Pergola, 189, 190
Perrault, 58
Peter the Great, 160
Piers to gates, 174
Place House, Tenterden, 108
Plashing, 151
Piatt, Sir Hugh, 52
Pleaching, 150, 156
Plein ped, 115
Pliny, 31
Pole-hedges, 161
Pope, 14, 80 et seq.
Portland stone, 215
Powis Castle, 85
Price, Sir Uvedale, 14, 87
Prior Park, 87, 173, 188
Privy Garden, Hampton Court,

III

Queen Mary's Bower, 114
Quincunxes, 164

Radley, 140

INDEX

249

Rea, 68, 122, 127

Repton, 85

Retired Gar d' tier, The, 78

Riddlesden, 182

Risley, 72, iii, 174, 177, 185

Robinson, Mr., 7, 15, 19, 160, 225

Roman gardens, 31

" Romance of the Rose," 22, 24

Rose, 75

Rousham, 198

Rushton, 193

Rycott, 109

Sainte-Beuve, 16

St, Catherine's Court, Bath, 115

St. Fagan's, Cardiff, 217

St. Germain-en-Laye, 59, 132

St. James's Palace, 59

Saresden, 97

Sayes Court, 160

Scalby, 175

Scott, Sir W., 84, 89

Seats, 201

Serpentine, 17, 227

Serres, de, 42, 199, 126, 136, 137

Sevigne, de, 69

Shenstone, 84

Shipton Moyne, 172

Sites, 93

Slopes, 104, 106

Smith, publisher, 61

Southstoke, 198

Sprotborough, Yorkshire, 220

Statuary, 212

Staunton Harold, 72

Steps, 186

Stibbington, 177

Stobhall, 18

Stone, 215

Stowe, 14, 84

Sun-dials, 208 et seq.

Sundridge, 199

Swarkestone, 175, 192

Switzer, 70, 79, 118, 103, 106,

206, 215
Sydenham, 147
j Systema Horticulture (Worlidge), 70

Tallard, Marshal, 78, 103, App.

i II-

! Taine, 86 note

Talus, 141

Temple, Sir W., 21

Terraces, 102 et seq.
\ Theatre des Plant es et Jardinages, 56
i Theobalds, 21, 28, 205
1 Theory aiid Practice of Gardening, 89,
164, 166

Thorpe, J., 53

Tijou, 178

Topiarius, 3 1

Tradescant, 51

Trentham, 88

Tresham, 193

Tuileries, 132, 227

Tyninghame, 190

Vanbrugh, 170

Van House, Somerset, in

Versailles, 59, 127, 208, 220

Villa d'Este, 30

Villa Albani, 86 note

Wadham, 137
Walpole, Horace, 21,

156
Westwood, 10 1, 172
Wey Canal, 194
Wheatly, 5, 6, 15, 86
William III., 21

85, 86,

2 so THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND

Wilton, 54, 152, 212, 215

Wimple, 72, 96

Wise, 61, 67, 76, 119, 162

WoUaton, 94, 199

Wolsey, Cardinal, 24, 26

Wood, 87

Woolley Green, 184

Wootton, 97, 186, 220

Worlidge, 60, 70, 117, 137,181, 183
Wrest, 61,96, 149, 196
Wresehall, 136
Wroxton Abbey, 210
Wurzburg, 142

„ Duke of, 30

Xystus, 31

THE END

Printed by R. & R- Clakk, Limited, Edinburgh.

THE FORMAL GARDEN IN
ENGLAND

BY

REGINALD BLOMFIELD, M.A., F.S.A.

AUTHOR OF • A HISTORY OF RENAISSANCE ARCHITECTURE IN ENGLAND

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

F. INIGO THOMAS

SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF THE FIRST EDITION

TIMES. — " Is a charming book, full of delightful illustrations.
. . . Mr. Blomfield's historical sketch of the art of gardening in
England is full of interest and instruction, and his polemic against
the so-called landscape gardeners is vigorous, incisive, and to our
mind convincing."

GIOBE. — ■" A charming little book — charming alike in the
letterpress, which we owe to Mr. Blomfield in the first instance, and
in the illustrative drawings."

SCOTSMAN— '' Khe2i\xX.\ivi\ subject is beautifully treated."

OBSERVER. — "It is a delightful little volume which no
country-house should exclude. It is a complete handbook to garden
design and all its accessories, such as bowling-greens, sun-dials, and
ornaments ; and it is quite beautifully illustrated. . . . The book
is a gem ; the study of it cannot fail to benefit every one who takes
an interest in their gardens, be they large or small."

NATIONAL REVIEW.— ''Ux. Blomfield's very delightful
book."

SA TURD A V RE VIE IV.— " The reviewer's difficulty with this
book consists in the fact that, at whatever page we open, the desire
is not so much to express an opinion as to quote, and to go on
quoting."

PRESS OPINIONS— Continued.

DAILY TELEGRAPH.— '' T\:\i dainty little work is sure to
be appreciated by all lovers of ' things old-fashioned,' in which
we delight."

QUEEN. — " The good sense and sincerity of this little book are
fit company for its dainty binding and attractive woodcuts. It is
evident that the authors have their subject at heart, and knowing
that they have a logical basis to go upon, they are not afraid to speak
their minds in favour of a mode of gardening now decried as stiff and
ugly, nor to face the tide of modern criticism and fashion. "

BUILDER. — " Mr. Blomfield's book ... is closely reasoned
and gives evidence of a considerable amount of study of the older
literary works on the subject."

ST. JAMES'S GAZETTE.— ''^\x. Blomfield talks of the
narrow-mindedness inherent in vestries and municipal bodies. Prob-
ably he means absence of taste ; and this is certainly seen as clearly
when a London square is ' managed ' by a committee of the house-
holders and key-renters. Many of these gentlemen are *^he owners
of fine estates in the country ; and whether they are considering
garden architecture from the point of view of a country-house or of
a London square, we cannot recommend them a better book than
' The Formal Garden in England.' "

GLASGOW MALL.— ''ThosQ who have just entered, or are
about to enter, upon some new suburban villa residence could not do
better than buy, read, and digest, this little book."

ACADEMY. — " A daintier little volume than this we have
seldom handled. Its white vellum cover, eml^eliished with a suit-
able design in gold, its illustrations, taken from early paintings or
reduced from the bird's-eye views in our older county histories, its
excellent type and paper combine in lending additional attractions
to a subject in itself already attractive."

NA TLONAL OBSER VER.—' ' A charming book ! As you turn
the page you taste the scent of the gilly-flowers, you see the quaintly
carved trees, the grassy walks, the curious sun-dials, yqu hear the
splash of water from the jaws of triton and dolphin. You lament, as
you read, the trophies of an art clean gone as the stately period of
Elizabethan prose, the brave attire of an age of heroes."

MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON.

r(

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