Garden history ...

Renaissance Garden in Pieskowa Skała, Poland

Gardens ... now that Spring is springing, or Autumn autumning round the corner on the other side of the world ... and as my brain has been having a blip or two in its overwhelmed befuddled state ... I thought I’d write about some of Britain’s finest gardens that I pass on my trips to Cornwall ... but

... I will save those for another day .. because when I looked up Garden in Wikipedia .. I found an amazing array of garden pictures .. and thought these will be just fine and with a few short annotations will be a delight to look and wonder at.  (and yes I am doing the A - Z challenge .. so you will get short posts - surprisingly!)

Click here for more information on the A - Z Challenge



Plan of St Gall

 So saving my brain a little ... which is being stretched in other directions .. here goes, and for more information please just check back to Wikipedia. However I have to get the history bit in ... the etymology of the word refers to enclosure - from Middle English ‘gardin’, from Anglo-French jardin of Germanic origin; akin to Old High German 'gard', 'gart', an enclosure or compound, as in Stuttgart.

The words 'yard', 'court', and Latin 'hortus' (meaning garden, hence horticulture and orchard) are cognates – all referring to an open space. In Britain we refer to an enclosed area near a residential building as a ‘garden’, whereas in American English this would be referred to as a ‘yard’. Isn’t it interesting how the words travel?



Copy of the Plan

 So much for the short and saving my brain .. but well I enjoy it! This Plan of Saint Gall brings together the Latin ‘hortus conclusus’, with the word 'enclosure', 'garden' and 'yard' derivations we use today - as it is the only surviving major architectural drawing from the 700 year period since the fall of the Roman Empire to the 13th century (1200s).

The Plan depicts an entire Benedictine monastic compound including churches, houses, stables, kitchens, workshops, brewery, infirmary, and even a special house for bloodletting. However it appears never to have been built.

Despite those unknowns, much has been learned about medieval life from this architectural design. The absence of heating in the dining hall, for instance, may not have been an oversight but was meant to discourage excessive enjoyment of meals. In the quarters for the 120-150 monks, their guests, and visitors, the ratio of toilet seats was better than those which modern hygienic codes prescribe.


  

Cottage Garden

To me this Plan epitomises gardens as we know them today ... their history, their variety, their specialities and how all scholarly disciplines have drawn and will draw on them; having said that .... the ancient rulers of Egypt, Persia, Greece and Rome for over 4,000 years had their gardens ... then Byzantium and Moorish Spain kept garden traditions alive in Europe during this 700 year dearth of interest in gardens.

By this time a separate gardening eastern tradition had arisen in China, which was taken up in Japan, including miniature landscapes centred on ponds, and separately into the severe Zen gardens of temples.

 

 

A typical Italian garden at Villa Garzoni, Italy



The Italians rediscovered descriptions of antique Roman villas and gardens which led to the creation of a new form - the Italian Renaissance Garden; these designs were carried north into the rest of Europe, where they prevailed until the English style of landscape gardening took over.

 The predecessors of the landscape garden in England were the great parks such as those created by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664–1726) and Nicholas Hawksmoor at Castle Howard (1699–1712); Blenheim Palace (1705–1722), the Landscape Garden at Claremont House (1715–1727). These parks featured vast lawns, woods, and pieces of architecture, such as the classical mausoleum at Castle Howard.

The gardens of the great and the good continued to develop owing much to the Age of Exploration, while the spread of scientific knowledge gave us new species; specialist gardens came into being, such as botanical gardens .. along with new gardening specimens and wonders to behold.

Chatsworth - a grand English Garden

I’d like to give you a description of The Pleasure Gardens at Eglinton Castle, Scotland .... where you can really “see” the grounds as described in the 1840s:

“Its princely gates soon presented themselves and we thought we should easily find our way to Irvine through the park. It was a rich treat to wander in these extensive grounds. We soon made way through a handsome avenue to the gardens. The hot-houses for fruits and flowers are on a magnificent scale, and on reaching the parterre we were delighted with the elegance which pervaded it.



Movable stone blocks in the
old heated wall of the walled
garden, Eglinton

 A glassy river with a silvery cascade came gliding gently through these fairy regions, as though conscious of the luxuriant paradise which it was watering. Nor was the classic taste wanting, nor horticultural skill, to render this a region of enchantment. Two elegant cast-iron bridges, vases, statues, a sun-dial; these pretty combinations from the world of art could not fail to please the beholder.

Leaving these luxurious regions we again wandered among thick woods, and occasionally obtained glimpses of the proud castle, peering over the trees. At length we found our way to a seat beneath some noble weepers of the ash tribe, and here we had a fine view of the castle, towering majestically over the dense foliage.”

In the late 1700s and early 1800s some walled gardens would have one hollow side with openings into which a fire could be set, allowing the heat to spread along the wall protecting the fruit growing against it, while the additional heat would escape into the garden. Hot houses were being engineered.
 

Côté du dôme de la Roseraie du Val-de-Marne



Garden history moved with the population’s growth, the rise of the middle classes and then the factory workers as they had a little extra money to enjoy – we still get the magnificent gardens, that transformed themselves into commercial ventures, but cottage gardens came to the fore, the Arts and Craft Movement, at the end of the 1800s, brought further design and experimentation through wild gardens, colour plantings, cottage inspired borders ...

... all manner of gardens are to be found around the world .. which now include so many types: community, container, sustainable, sensory, raised, roof and living-wall gardens – where there’s a space plant in-fill can give us so much pleasure.



Farmers paint a picture of a water buffalo
using flowers at FuLi Town by the
Huatung Highway in Taiwan

 At the start of Spring and the wonders of the Summer to come .. enjoy your walks in the park, trips to country estates, strolls through the bluebell woods, tennis in between the herbaceous borders or rose gardens and your own little area of green wealth that bring our homes so much pleasure (and work!), through their abundance.



Here’s to all gardens ...





Checkered garden in Tours, France


Dear Mr Postman – my mother was an excellent gardener and still comes up with the Latin names for plants, loves having fresh flowers around, especially those with scent – but all flowers give of that freshness ... which cannot be captured through chemical essences. She will love the reference to the toilet spaces, and the bloodletting room ...



She always comments on Washington’s teeth, or lack of .. we’ve had some sad news which I’m working through with her –hence my hiatus in posting ... I’ll be back! Keep well ... here’s to Spring too!

Hilary Melton-Butcher

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