5. France

‘France’ explains how in early French estates the house and garden were usually designed independently. Distinctive features of 16th-century French gardens were the presence of a canal and plantings arranged in the flat ornamental flower gardens known as parterres. The apogee of French garden art is the 17th-century formal garden known as the jardin à la française, characterized by geometry. The greatest and most influential exponent was André Le Nôtre, who was responsible for the gardens at Versailles. The principal innovations of the 18th century were the jardin anglo-chinois, the ferme ornée, the fabrique, and the jardin anglais. French garden design in the 19th and 20th centuries is also discussed.

3. The East Asian garden

‘The East Asian garden’ considers the garden history of China and Japan, where the design emphasis is often on rocks and water. The Chinese see the garden through the prism of a set of philosophical assumptions and values that differ from those through which Westerners view gardens. The three contending worldviews pertinent to Chinese garden history are Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism, and all of these religions affect the design and the use of gardens in China. The origins of the spiritualized landscapes of Japanese gardens lie in Shinto, the native religion of Japan, but the arrival of Buddhism and Daoism in Japan had an important impact on later designs.

2. The Islamic garden

The origins of the Islamic garden are a subject of considerable debate, focusing on the relative importance of two earlier traditions: ancient Rome and ancient Persia. Some argue that the linear axis and peristyle courtyard of the Roman garden is the only significant influence on the great Islamic gardens of Spain. Others champion the influence of ancient Persia, where the walled palace garden was a rectangle divided into quadrants by intersecting irrigation channels—a design known as chahar bagh (‘four gardens’). ‘The Islamic garden’ describes the Mughal gardens of the Indian subcontinent and moves westwards to the gardens of Spain and Portugal, explaining how Islamic gardens were (and are) centred on water.

6. Spain and Portugal

‘Spain and Portugal’ highlights the key garden designs of Spain and Portugal from the 16th century to the present day. The two greatest gardens of the Spanish Golden Age were commissioned by King Philip II at Aranjuez and the Escorial, which showed the influence of both Flemish and Italian gardens. Other key Spanish gardens described include La Granja de San Ildefonso in Segovia and Antoni Gaudí’s Parc Güell in Barcelona. Portuguese gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries incorporated glazed tiles—azulejos—and Arabic water tanks. Gardens described include the Golden Age Quinta da Bacalhoa and Castelo Branco, the 18th-century garden of the Palácio Nacional de Queluz; and Jacques Gréber’s modernist Parque de Serralves.

7. Northern Europe

‘Northern Europe’ considers the garden history of the Low Countries, Germany, and Russia. Dutch and Flemish gardens of the 16th century had a markedly different character from the Renaissance gardens in Italy; garden art is one of the forms in which the differences are readily apparent. Gardens described include the gardens of Jan Vredeman de Vries, which contained medieval and Erasmian elements laid out with a painterly attention to detail and form; the Honselaarsdijk estate of Prince Frederik Hendrik, between The Hague and the Hook of Holland; the Hortus Academicus at Leiden; Germany’s first important public garden, the Englische Garten in Munich; and Pavlovsk in Russia, one of the world’s greatest landscape gardens.

1. The ancient and medieval garden

‘The ancient and medieval garden’ considers the earliest documented gardens from around the world. It begins with the gardens of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean, such as the gardens of the Assyrian kings, Sennacherib and Ashurbanipal, at Nineveh; the villa gardens of Greece and Rome; the ancient gardens of South Asia, including Sigiriya, a Buddhist site in central Sri Lanka; medieval European gardens; the gardens of the Byzantium Empire, which provided the link between the Roman garden and the Islamic garden; and the Mayan, Aztec, and Inca gardens of Central and South America. It explains how gardens and their plants were early players in the process of globalization.

Introduction

What is a garden? What do gardens mean? The Introduction considers these questions and also how, at a deeper level, the garden represents the interdependence of humans and other parts of the natural world. The garden is a space designated for a partnership between human activity and a compliant natural world. Gardens can be in numerous forms and mean many different things to different people. This VSI provides a short survey of garden history, using examples of gardens that no longer exist as well as ones that do and that can be visited all around the world. It also attempts to set gardens in the context of cultural memory.

Postscript: the future history of the garden

Planting and garden design have never stood still, in part because fashions change, but also because of external factors. The most conspicuous fashion in recent decades has been the rise of organic gardening, a movement originating in the 1920s, which aspires to sustainability achieved by a synergy with natural systems of soil enrichment and pest and disease control. Another driver of change is the reduction in biodiversity. The Postscript considers the likely impact of climate change on garden design and suggests gardens will continue to evolve, as they have since remote antiquity. Garden design will adapt to changing conditions, but gardens will continue to provide havens of beauty and respite for the weary.

9. America, Africa, and Australia

‘America, Africa, and Australia’ provides highlights of garden history in North America, Central America, South America, South Africa, and Australia. North America’s earliest traditional gardens were influenced by the settlers from Spain, France, the Netherlands, and England. After independence, garden design was transformed by designers such as Frederick Law Olmsted, the Colonial Revival movement, the Prairie School, and the California Style. The most important gardens in Central America are in Mexico and, in South America, the move away from European styles was led by the Brazilian plantsman and designer Roberto Burle Marx. Australia’s most important and influential garden designers have been William Guilfoyle and Edna Walling.

8. Britain

‘Britain’ considers the garden history of the British Isles through the Renaissance to the present day. The burgeoning of English gardens in the 18th and 19th centuries often obliterated earlier gardens on the same sites, so earlier English gardens are usually known only from written and pictorial documentation, or from earthworks. The impact of key gardens and garden designers throughout this time are discussed: Salomon de Caus; Inigo Jones; William Shenstone’s The Leasowes; the great landscape designers Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton; Sir Joseph Paxton; Hidcote Manor; Christopher Lloyd’s Great Dixter; Gertrude Jekyll’s Sissinghurst; Beth Chatto; and the Eden Project in Cornwall.