English Romantic

Gardens
Introduction - influences
The English landscape garden was an entirely different concept to the formal Renaissance gardens and its origins were varied:

1. The English countryside with its rolling hills, winding streams, and scattered trees, which was inherently unsuited to the
French garden, was inevitably a strong influence.

2. The formal gardens of France which were associated with despotic government were distasteful to the democratic and
rights-conscious Englishmen of the eighteenth century. An antithesis to the formal garden the French Government
promoted would thus be more acceptable.

3. The emerging Romantic Movement produced poetry and paintings, which extolled the beauties of nature and landscape.

4. Another influence which extolled the beauty of nature came from the Orient, which was opened to trade in the seventeenth
century. Scenes on imported porcelain and lacquer work depicted natural gardens, lakes, and waterfalls and the aesthetic
and attitude, which they represented, were influential in the development of a new system of gardening in England.

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 5. Finally the grand tour which all cultured Englishmen made through the Alps to Italy brought them in contact with rugged,
picturesque scenery. Scenes such as they would see on the tour were represented on the canvases of Nicolas Poussin,
Salvador Rosa, and Claude Lorrain.

These paintings were not actual views but compositions of typical elements selected and arranged for emphasis - craggy mountains,
rivers, pastoral plains, ruined castles and monuments, lakes, and wind-blown trees. Many included classical temples and groups of
allegorical figures.

In addition to the landscape and its stylisation in the paintings, the visitor to Italy saw the famous villas and their gardens in an
appealing, romantic state of disrepair. The travellers began to see landscape through the eyes of the painter and consequently on
their return to England found their stiff formal gardens uninteresting and unattractive.

The landscape garden was a product of the Romantic Movement. Its form was based on direct observation of nature and the
principles of painting. Surprise, variety, concealment, and the development of idyllic prospects became the goals of the art of the
English landscape garden.

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A painterly approach
The manipulation of nature's undulating contours according to Hogarth's serpentine line of beauty" (what we would now call
‘biomorphic’ lines) and the articulation of light and shade much as a painter would do became the preoccupation of all men of taste
and culture in eighteenth century England and ultimately all over Europe and in America in the nineteenth century.

Landscape painting by Claude Lorrain.

Inspired by the Claude Lorrain’s painting; Stourhead, showing the bridge at the starting point of the walk

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Where they existed, the parterre and terrace of the formal garden were replaced with rolling grassland, clumps of trees, lakes,
meandering rivers, and serpentine drives. In the early examples the scene was embellished at suitable points with temples, bridges,
and sculptures.

Of fundamental importance was the elimination of the visual break between garden and landscape. One of the techniques for
eliminating this break was the sunken fence (Ha-ha).

The ha-ha was an English invention, to keep game animals out

of the main garden around the house without a visible barrier.

This allowed the eye to see straight out to the countryside while at the same time keeping deer and stock out of the garden proper. It
is a technique with potential for use today in contemporary landscape design.

Moral integrity & Classical origins?

William Kent argued that the validity of the Romantic design system was due to two important factors: first its moral integrity and
second its Classical derivations. For example, he said:

 that bronze fountains cast

to look like trees, trees
clipped to look like stone,
and other such trappings
found at Versailles were
dishonest or at least foolish.

 a natural cascade or
serpentine stream was
purer in concept than a jet
of muddy water drawn up at
great expense from a
marsh.

The taste for the irregular and natural

was thus considered highly moral.

Blenheim Palace 

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 The Classical origins of irregularity were more difficult to identify.
However, with a little interpretation of historic gardens, it was found that
Classical authority practiced regularity in building and irregularity in
gardens. It was decided that The Valley of the Tempe at Hadrian's villa
(an area of natural beauty maintained in the villa’s grounds) was
evidence of this. So, just as Palladian architecture (architecture based
purely on ancient Roman architectural teachings) was established as
Classically correct, so too was the irregular garden.

The Emergence of a truly English Style - Stourhead

By the third decade of the century, the revolution in English garden design was well under way. It was led at first by so-called
amateurs such as Henry Hoare, who started work at Stourhead in 1725.

This garden was set in a valley in which a stream was dammed to create an irregular lake. This cannot be seen from the house
above, a Palladian villa, and, conversely, the house is not seen from the garden. The only connection between the two is an obelisk,
which can be seen both from the house and from a specific point in the garden.

The Garden tells a Story

A path was laid out around the shore of the lake connecting a series of "events," and the garden was properly experienced by
following the route in the prescribed direction. The tour might take a day even though the distance was not great.

The garden was arranged according to the rules of landscape painting, and in fact in this particular case the garden was based on a
painting by Claude Lorrain. The bridge at the starting point, the Temple of Flora, and the Pantheon set out in the garden are similar
in form and disposition to those in the painting.

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 Stourhead today

A further level of appreciation was the mythological or literary allusions associated with each feature. As one walked, new vistas and
views were revealed and the visitor was brought obliquely to buildings and places seen earlier. At one point the path leads
underground into a cool grotto with a moss-covered statue of Neptune; ferns, and the sound of running water. It is a conscious
change in environment to evoke physiologically as well as intellectually images of a legendary underwater kingdom. A rocky opening
at water level reveals the Temple of Flora across the lake already visited.

Stourhead is thus a sequence of experiences. Many have intellectual meaning and are conceived and appreciated on the basis of a
knowledge of mythology and poetry. In addition, the environmental qualities of light, temperature, texture, and sound together with
visual impressions add sensations which, combined with the first level of reaction, make a complete experience

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Bright flowering plants were not favoured in the landscape garden. The rhododendrons that can be seen at Stourhead today were
not part of the original planting. These were planted later and now stimulate a controversy between "purists" and the National Trust,
who own' and maintain the garden for the public. The National Trust say that the visiting public like azaleas. The purists would like
the rhododendrons removed.

William Kent
William Kent was the first professional to design gardens in the new manner. At Rousham, built between 1738 and 1740, Kent
planned the entire view from the existing house and built a miller's cottage and a ruin on a distant hill to complete the romantic
composition.

Thus the design consideration extended to the entire landscape visible from the house. The cumulative effect of this approach has
resulted in the way the English landscape looks today. It has been designed and is a composite of views from many country houses.
The garden at Rousham lies to one side of the house and includes a classical arcade, a serpentine rivulet, a grotto, cascades, and
evocative statues placed within clearings in a woodland and connected with vistas and walks.

Capability Brown
By the mid-eighteenth century, the new style in gardening was widely accepted. Lancelot Brown, called Capability Brown, became
the leading exponent and was in great demand. Unlike Kent, he did not approve of architectural features in the garden. Terraces and
parterres were to be cleared away from the base of the house until nothing was left except grass, which came right up to the
foundations. A sunken fence would eliminate the visual boundary, and the seemingly contiguous landscape would be planted
irregularly with trees in clumps or groups on undulating ground. If possible, a stream would be dammed to form a lake as at
Blenheim, and made to fit naturally without awkwardness into the landscape.

The appearance of these landscapes depended on good estate management and productive agriculture, for they encompassed
working farms and fields. In addition, the making of picturesque landscapes, which would blend visually into the existing natural
system, depended on an understanding of ecological principles.

Humphrey Repton
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Humphry Repton published a theory of landscape gardening and became the
leading exponent of the style. Repton modified Brown's ruthless formula and favoured the restoration of the terrace to connect the
house to the garden. In a satirical essay Repton was referred to as Mr. Milestone because of a trick whereby the milestones set on
the driveway leading to the house were set at less than a mile apart. In this we see evidence of appreciation based on quantity and
size reflecting on the prestige of the owners.

A technique of more importance were his "redbooks" which illustrated his proposals with "before" and "after" drawings or
watercolours. Comparison of these showed how a quiet, uninteresting meadow and stream could be transformed into a beautiful
landscape with a serpentine lake and irregular plantations as an environment for castle-like establishment set on a broad terrace.
Repton’s ideas were eventually translated into a love of the natural landscape, woods, and the subtleties of natural form.

America & the future

In due course the romantic garden was adopted in America. For a while many gardens in America were designed using these
principles, but over time as gardens got smaller the style eventually disintegrated into a hodge podge of flower beds and
shrubberies.
In its heyday, many large private estates (especially along the Hudson River) were developed along these lines. Later large public
parks like Central Park in New York were modelled on ideas from the English Romantic Period.

The principles of the English Romantic Gardens are still used today in large private estates and public spaces.

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