Garden Art Form Impressions

The garden that left the greatest impression on me was the English Landscape garden. I have written many blog posts and essays on this subject in particular, and that is because of the boundaries that are, sometimes literally, blurred by the English Landscape garden. Landscape designers like Kent, Bridgeman, and Brown are innovators in their field (pun intended) and revolutionized the art of garden design. Their progress was made on the conceptual idea of a garden, but more information can be found on some specific English Landscape gardens here: http://www.historyextra.com/feature/english-landscape-garden

The English Landscape garden redefined the idea of what a garden is. Before Bridgeman, and even partially during his reign, organized, geometrical, and symmetrical gardens were almost exclusively commissioned. Then the new fashion trend came in, wiping out the idea of ‘straight lines’ in the garden, and replaced them with contours. The laundry list of garden elements in eras like the Renaissance and the Baroque were thrown out for a much simpler set of elements: grass, trees, water, and contours. These were all just about in any garden at the time, so English Landscape designers stripped the unnecessary parts of the garden and made the public reconsider what a garden was. Was it meant to have flowers? Was it meant to be so sparse? Where are the classical statues? These new designers were redefining the genre of gardens and arguably opened the doors wide open for modern garden designers.

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The modern art movement could have been inspired by the English Landscape garden movement. It made designers think about what constitutes a garden. This goes back to the essential question, “What is a garden?” It could be defined as an area designated for a particular purpose and is maintained with intention. That is very vague, but that definition can cover a broad range of gardens from the English Landscape garden to even non-European gardens such as Zen gardens. The English Landscape designers were pushing the boundaries about what a garden was and were exploring the idea of fashion. This could have translated to the idea of modern gardens in which designers are attempting to make the viewer question their previous beliefs.

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(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Modern_garden_at_Ellerslie_Flower_Show.jpg)

I believe the English Landscape garden to be so important because of the conceptual exploration that was performed during this movement. It changed the world of garden art completely and from that point on it was never the same. There is much respect to be had for innovators. Bridgeman, Kent and Brown were innovators, and they changed gardens forever. Their work on English Landscape gardens were a magnificent step towards the future of garden art.

Arts and Crafts: The Individualized Gardens

                The Arts and Crafts garden was very much a retaliation against corporations and mass production. The movement emphasized the artisan and their skills, which could not be replicated by any machine. It was such a purely human, creative garden that only skilled designers could create one. The emphasis of these skills was epitomized by the collaboration of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens. The combination of gardening and architecture had the perfect artistic qualities to lead the Arts and Crafts movement away from the consumerist garden production.

                The reason that the Arts and Crafts movement opposed large corporate production of gardens is that it required a humanly artistic inspiration to configure this type of garden. Features such as painterly flower gardens needed the artistry that can only come from a designer working on an individual landscape. Painterly flower gardens take the plants and flowers themselves and use them as colors on a canvas. The flowers add color to the landscape and can transform the flowerbed into a work of art. The Arts and Crafts gardens are highly individualized, making them much more suited to the owner as well as the land it is designed for.

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                An even more skillful technique in the Arts and Crafts garden is not just the layout of the flowers in a painterly fashion, but the actual flowers themselves. The designer would have to work tirelessly on the individual garden to plan and make sure that everything worked well together. So many factors were put into the planting of an Arts and Crafts garden. Sun, spacing, size, maintenance, weather, shape, blooms and much more go into the design and implementation of a garden, and with so many flowers to be planned for in the Arts and Crafts garden, the planning was painstaking. It falls back onto the “Genius of the Place” and how each plot of land has a different character to it, and should be gardened differently. There are limitless elements that go into planning a garden, and a handful are detailed here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7k6b0VsJWI).

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                Other particular features of the Arts and Crafts garden were the geometric nature and lack of symmetry. Designers like Jekyll and Lutyens would create gardens like Munstead Wood with distinct geometrical shapes of features like ponds, rills, and arches, but would leave out any form of symmetry or main axis. This would organize the garden too similarly to the gardens of the past, and create a more industrialized style. Munstead Wood also displayed a particular lushness to the flower beds. The flowers bloomed fully during their peak season and would bring a new life to the garden, filling the viewer’s eyes with color. The colors and flowers would blend so well that the garden would look just right, a feeling that could only come from an artisan’s garden design.

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                The Arts and Crafts garden is an interesting protest to the industrialization of the gardens across Europe. It emphasizes the careful planning and humanistic touch of creativity that only designers can imagine. Designers like Jekyll and Lutyens worked on making gardens that focused on the specific landscape and owner themselves, creating a truly individual garden that only an artist could formulate. The lush flowers and painterly layouts were intended to evoke a feeling of beauty in the viewer and make the garden feel as if there are no other ones just like it in the entire world. 

Victorian Villa Gardens

                The Victorian villa garden was an expression of taste, wealth, education, fashion, and possession. The owners of these villa gardens showed that they were important members of society in a significant way. It was a status symbol for these citizens. The garden was a lush expression of their potential and it was a way to communicate this message to everyone.

                The Victorian villa gardens were privately owned and the owner employed a gardener to design and shape their leisurely landscape. There were several commonalities between the different villa gardens that united them to each other, and the Victorian style. The villas garden commonalities included a formal garden close to the house itself. The formal structured gardens included various elements such as parterres, flower beddings, and historical references through sculpture. The formal garden then made way for the informal garden which extended further from the house. Once the visitor walked further from the house, the geometrical layout and ordered patterns left the garden as long stretching and looping pathways, fields, forests, and vistas were the main focus of the informal garden. While these elements tied villa gardens together, there were items that made the villa gardens particularly Victorian. A great variety of foreign and colorful flowers was a Victorian garden trait. Plant hunters would send back samples to Europe and have them replicated for all wealthy landowners to place in their gardens. Another Victorian age element was beddings. Orchids were particularly rare and sought after. Flower beddings were low-growing flowers that were colorfully arranged in aesthetically pleasing shapes and figures. With the higher availability of flowers for this particular type of feature, the flower beddings could become more and more complicated and impressive. More features of the Victorian Gardens can be found here: http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/article-1356400599248/

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                Inspiration for the Victorian villa garden came from the oscillation of fashion in the gardening world. Before the Victorian garden, the English Landscape garden was very popular. There has been a constant struggle between natural and controlled in gardens. In the English Landscape garden, the layout was much more natural. By the time that the Victorian age came about, the sponsors were interested in swinging the interest back to making the garden more controlled. They were interested in reviving classical ideas and making elements that showed the structured control of flowers in the garden. Yet, the full swing of fashion interests did not quite reach the intensity of the Baroque, and still retained elements of informality and nature. The natural elements of English Landscapes were not quite eliminated from the garden and were maintained throughout the Victorian villa gardens.

                Victorian villa gardens were a unique fusion of typical Victorian garden design and personal adjustments. The villa and personal ownership allowed tweaking and editing of the Victorian elements in the garden. Yet, designers always included classic Victorian features in their gardens. Parterres, flower beds, and a mix of formal and informal gardens were unique to Victorian villa gardens.

Urban Parks in Copenhagen

            Urban gardening in Copenhagen is very progressive and innovative. Denmark has taken the initiative to make a park within walking distance for every single person within the upcoming years. The city sees the necessity in the creation and maintenance of parks, and emphasizes how important they are for a healthy lifestyle. With the initiative to create parks close to every citizen, they also need a variety of parks and purposes. On the walking tour of Copenhagen, several parks are within walking distance of the center of Copenhagen. They all vary significantly through their purpose and design.

            The first park near the center of Copenhagen is Ørsted Park. It is essentially a retreat from the busy city life into the calm quiet of the urban park. The park is sloped from the ouside-in, so that when a visitor enters, they sink below the ground level and become immersed in the scenery. Trees surround the park and essentially block off the city form the park’s view, enclosing the visitor in the greenery. Despite the claustrophobic description of the park, it is rather spacious and can carry a large capacity of citizens ready to escape the busy city life. Ørsted Park allows visitors to enter a quiet zone of relaxation and nature. 

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            The next park is the University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden. Around the premises of the greenhouse is a park. The park has every plant labeled and organized based on their ideal environment. There are several local and several native plants in the park surrounding the greenhouse. Inside the greenhouse is the collection of plants that is tended by the University Botany students. The purpose of the greenhouse is both for science and for the public. The university students tend to the plants and study them, while the greenhouse is still open to the public for open enjoyment. It is a combination of intellectual development and enjoyment that is not often found in public parks.

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            Rosenborg gardens are a place for all to sit and congregate when the weather is warm. The gardens are open to all and many take advantage of the wide open grass areas for several purposes. When the weather is nicer, classes from Copenhagen University take students outside to teach out on the lawns. It is a space utilized for many reasons. The crown jewels are housed in the Rosenborg Castle, for tourist purposes. The lawn can be used for relaxation and entrance by the public. It is a very casual park and open for all to visit including several gardens designed to capture the eye and allow interpretation and admiration.

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            Urban parks in Copenhagen are relaxed and open to all. The purposes and designs vary widely, but they are all open to the public. These parks were created for the public to enjoy and for everyone to access. It encourages exploration, fitness, and bonding within the community. Urban parks are an important parks of Copenhagen, and even more will be established in the near future.

Famous Figures of the English Landscape Movement

        18^th Century English landscape artists were just that- artists. They wanted to design landscapes that looked like they were right out of a painting themselves. English landscapes were thought to break the traditional thought of a confined garden and open it up to the world around the viewer. They were vast and natural, showing the fluidity and expression that nature has in and of itself. It diverged from the baroque period by taking away the controlling aspect of humans in the garden, and showed a different side, allowing nature to take its rightful place in garden art.  There were a handful of famous English landscape artists of the 18^th century: Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown. For a brief background on the English Landscape Movement and numerous examples of gardens in this style, please refer to this link (http://www.britainexpress.com/History/landscape_gardens.htm).

Charles Bridgeman was a major artist at the onset of the English landscape movement. He started to take the formality out of the baroque period gardens, and redesign the style to become more like the English landscapes we know today. However, he did not completely revolutionize the art. He did keep some of the formal structures of previous gardens, such as the main axis, parterres, and geometric symmetry. Yet he did begin to transition in the newer art form through use of lawns, amphitheaters, vantage points and Ha-Has. He wanted to break the rules of formality, and so he did with the garden at Stowe. There he emphasized the use of the landscape around the garden to be seen, and not hidden away (thus the use of the Ha-Ha’s dip in the field, as pictured below). (https://austenonly.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/p1100432.jpg)

William Kent was another master of his time, his reputation exceeding the work of Bridgeman’s. Kent was first, and foremost, a painter. He painted and sketched landscapes to make them look beautiful. Oscar Wilde was quoted saying “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Kent must have believed that to be true, because he would take the beautiful sketching he drew and make them a reality. The landscapes he made were meant to be beautiful: a work of art. In Kent’s style, they were much less formal than Bridgeman’s because he needed them to fit into his “pictureframe imagination.” One example of his gardens, Rousham, not only expressed beauty in sight, but also in mind. He designed the garden to make you experience different feelings from place to place. The informality leads the viewer to the unexpected journey ahead, filled with classical inspiration as well as allegory.

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‘Capability’ Brown was often hailed as one of the greatest English Landscape gardeners of the 18^th century, even more so than Bridgeman and Kent. Brown emphasized informality, which can be seen in his famous garden at Chatsworth. He strayed far from the baroque lines and main axes of the period long before him. In this fashion, he made the layout of his landscapes curved, in almost every aspect. Hills, fields, hedges, and rivers were all curved to express informality. Brown wanted to keep away from what was already known about gardens, and push the limits even more. His gardens were barely what people would consider a ‘garden.’ Brown would include trees few and far between in his landscapes, and flower beds were not used in excess. He still emphasized the use of landscape and incorporating scenery in his landscapes; he used his predecessor’s Ha-ha design to include the countryside in his landscapes. 

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No One Man Should Have All That Power

                The French baroque period was entirely about showing wealth, power, and a French identity. Taking the gardens of Versailles as the epitome of the French baroque period gardens, these three aspects can be seen throughout the history and layout of the garden. King Louis XIV had this palace and garden build up from a humble hunting lodge to the world’s most iconic baroque garden to show that he was the one true and divine ruler of France.

                The gardens at Versailles were, in a large part, constructed to show off King Louis XIV’s vast wealth. During a French time of prosperity, he was able to spend millions to build and maintain his garden. 

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The Machine de Marly is an enormous example of his wealth. This machine was essentially a very large water pump that was constructed and used for the sole purpose of supplying millions of liters of water to King Louis XIV’s fountains at Versailles. The amount of engineering, construction, and planning that went into this device was a marvel. Anyone who walked around the gardens would be able to see how much water is being pushed through every day, and could tell that large sums of money were being spent on it. The machine itself also plays a part in displaying how massive of an operation it was to run the gardens, and how much power it took a King to organize it.

                The gardens at Versailles were also constructed to demonstrate power. This is shown through the immense size of the gardens that were typical in the baroque period. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/1920s_Leconte_Map_of_Paris_w-Monuments_and_Map_of_Versailles_-_Geographicus_-_ParisVersailles-leconte-1920s_-_2.jpg) 

The gardens stretched on for miles and were designed to look as if they went on even further. Looking out from the palace was supposed to give the feeling of looking out to the horizon, filled with only the garden. If a patron were to walk the grounds, they would be able to tell that the owner was powerful. The gardens were so large that you could get lost in them, while still discovering new features with every turn. The size of the garden was directly proportional to the owner’s power in the baroque period.

                Finally, the French baroque period was meant to show a nationalistic identity. It was supposed to show the world the pure, unadulterated French attitude. One feature, in particular, showed French influence and that was the parterre de broderie. This intricate groundwork of trimmed hedges shaped like waving scrolls or other ornamental art pieces was intrinsically French. With features in the garden like the Parterre du Midi (shown below) and the Parterre de Nord, the gardens at Versailles displayed a very French atmosphere. 

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The grounds were filled with parterre de broderie and were meant to show that King Louis XIV was looking out, not only for himself, but for France.

              The gardens of Versailles were a very important part of King Louis XIV’s rule. With them in hand, King Louis was able to show his guests and fellow noblemen that he was, indeed, the most wealthy, powerful, and influential king at the time. He believed in France as a nation and was able to lead through his own divine right.

The Purpose of Water Features in Garden Art

                Water features have been used across European gardens since the time of the Roman Empire. From simple still ponds to intricate river divergent systems, the use and purpose of the water features in garden art has progressed and changed. Several themes have governed the inception of water features in gardens, yet the most prevalent seems to be the ability to impress others. From roman, to Islamic, to Renaissance gardens, water features were meant to impress.

                Some of the earliest European gardens were found within the Roman Empire, and even then, water features could be seen in the layout and designs. One example was the reconstruction of the House of Vettii in Pompeii

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_gardens#mediaviewer/File:Ricostruzione_del_giardino_della_casa_dei_vetii_di_pompei_(mostra_al_giardino_di_boboli,_2007)_01.JPG) which contains very simple water fountains. The fountains were used for several reasons, one of which being the outward show of wealth. The wealthy aristocracy decided to show the money they owned by these seemingly simple water features, but it was actually very difficult to come by. The water would have to be diverted from nearby streams or rivers, isolated, and sent directly to their villa. Even a small display of moving water showed immense private wealth in the Roman Empire, and the development of water would only get more elaborate for viewers.

                In contrast, the Islamic gardens employ a different shift on the classical purpose of water features. The main use of water in the Islamic gardens is religious. The Islamic style focuses more on the expression of art for God and to impress God with their works, but the other styles in garden art focus more on the impression of others with your own power. Islamic garden water features include the central pool with four rills pouring out in four directions.

(https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/04/fc/e0/04fce080fb23735162adbef2171236b9.jpg) This is meant to symbolize the four rivers from Eden, which shows a dedication to God and the Qur’an.  While recreating images from the Qur’an, it is creating images that will please God. The importance of gardens to Go din the Qur’an can be researched more thoroughly through the interpretive seminar titled ‘Origin of Islamic Gardens’ which explores quotes from the holy book of Islam and their meaning behind garden art. (http://www.academia.edu/1861364/Origin_of_Islamic_Gardens) The gardens are not made to impress other worldly beings, but they are made in shadow of the word of God and meant to impress Him.

                Water features in the Italian Renaissance, however, returned back to the classical Roman and Greek purposes. In the example of the Villa D’Este, the Cardinal wanted to show visitors of his immense power and wealth. At that point, he did not get elected into the position of Pope, but he still wanted to show the world that he was a force to be reckoned with. So he constructed this immense garden with several water features to demonstrate that force.

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(http://www.benvenutolimos.com/images/tours/cities/tivoli-walk-of-100-fountains.jpg) In these two examples of fountains in the Villa D’este, the Cardinal had the water diverted from one of the major rivers running through Rome directly into his garden. The force of the river into the gardens is powerful that the main fountain of the villa does not even require a hydraulic system to allow the water to flow out of the fountain. This spectacular feat of engineering was meant to impress all visitors to the villa and provide a status symbol for the D'este family.