English

Landscape
Gardens
Submitted By
Akhila N Menon
19m801
Submitted To
Ar. Amanjeet Kaur
Origins
∙ the later sixteenth and early
seventeenth-centuries.
∙ The Tradescants collaborated
with William and Robert
Cecil and Sir Francis Bacon
on garden designs
∙ combined botanical
discoveries from New World
exploration with the
discipline of natural history.

Stourhead gardens
Source: Twitter
Elements of
English Landscape
Gardens
∙ The main ingredients of the landscape gardens in England are sweeps of gently rolling ground
and water, against a woodland background with clumps of trees and outlier groves.

∙ The continental European "English garden" is characteristically on a smaller scale and more
filled with "eye-catchers" than most English landscape gardens: grottoes, temples, tea-houses,
belvederes, pavilions, sham ruins, bridges and statues

∙ The dominant style was revised in the early 19th century to include more "gardenesque“
features, including shrubberies with graveled walks, tree plantations and flowers, in skirts of
sweeping planted beds.

4
Blenheim Palace Source: Architectural Digest
Plan of Stourhead
showing the features
Source:
Characteristics of
English Landscape
Gardens
Rejection of
formalism
∙ With the Glorious Revolution of
1688, William III brought a
freer Dutch gardening style to
England.
∙ the earlier Stuart monarchs
had embraced the formal
gardens of the French court
∙ it now became fashionable to
create gardens that rejected
authoritarian formality in
favour of rustic simplicity
Claremont landscape garden
Source: Pinterest
Classical
influences
∙ Ancient Greek notions of the
Arcadian pastoral landscape
influenced early eighteenth-
century landscape gardens
∙ Lancelot 'Capability' Brown
(1715-1783) designed gardens
at Stowe and Chatsworth in
this style
∙ Created serpentine water
features, elegant vistas, rustic
Greek temples, and natural-
looking treescapes.
Stowe Gardens
Source: Flickr
Romantic
wilderness
∙ picturesque came to be valued
in the later eighteenth-century
∙ the pastoral gave way
increasingly to the wild and
Romantic.
∙ Humphry Repton (1752-1818)
and his contemporaries began
to add artificial ruins and
wildernesses to the gardens at
Blaise Castle and Woburn
Abbey.
Blaise Castle
Source: Photographers United
Landscapes of
meaning
∙ To garden in the informal style
was to state one’s opposition to
Stuart tyranny
∙ Capability Brown’s eighteenth-
century pastoral gardens
expressed the polite civility
∙ Repton’s Romantic landscapes
embraced the savage freedom of
the natural world, which hinted
at social and political disruption.
∙ Rejection of industrial England
Chatsworth by Capability Brown
Source: Architectural Digest
Later
developments
∙ evolve over the nineteenth
and twentieth-centuries with
the Arts and Crafts
Movement
∙ turn toward the cottage
garden, which combined
function with aesthetic
appeal.
∙ Eg. - Gertrude Jekyll’s
designs at Munstead Wood
and in Vita Sackville-West’s
gardens at Sissinghurst
Castle. Munstead Wood by Edwin Lutyens
Source: Phaidon
Plans of English
Landscape
Gardens
Plan of the Garden and Views
of the Dwellings at Chiswick

Source: Artsmia
Plan of Blenheim Palace

Source: Wikipedia
Above - Bird’s eye view of Stowe Gardens
Source : Wordpress

Left - Plan of Stowe Gardens

Source : Pinterest
 Timeline
Late 16th to early 17th century
Freer Dutch gardens and
inspirations from Oriental gardens
introduced instead of formal French
gardens
18th century
Classical Greek elements in the
Pastoral style garden with large
open areas, rolling hills and
water bodies
Late 18th to early 19th century
Romantic wildernesses of Picturesque
style evolved. Denser tree plantations,
compositions with foreground, middle
ground and background.
Late 19th to 20th century
Gardens of working class people
with beauty and utility, medieval
ideas brought back by Arts &
Crafts movement
 Inferences

∙ English gardens were influenced by natural landscapes around the world and the
Oriental gardens.
∙ Also influenced by works of painters, writers, poets, philosophers and other
important people in the society who idealized the countryside.
∙ Such gardens were used for many social activities and buildings therein became
temporary residences.
∙ Promoted planting of indigenous varieties to avoid invasive species.
∙ The design was always in context with the site.
 References

∙ https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/how-has-the-english-
landscape-garden-developed by Allison Adler Kroll, University of Oxford
∙ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_landscape_garden