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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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.