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76-824: The Valley Gardens are 220 acres (0.89 km) of woodland garden , part of the Crown Estate located near Englefield Green in the English county of Surrey , on the eastern edge of Windsor Great Park . The Valley Gardens and the nearby Savill Gardens are Grade I listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens . They contain unrivalled collections of azaleas, camellias, magnolias and many other spring-flowering shrubs and trees. There are several acres of daffodils. A heather garden of 10 acres (40,000 m) gives pleasure even in winter. The gardens were planted from 1946 onwards by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth . It

152-539: A "grove" planted by 1746 in the garden of William Shenstone , describes what would today be called a woodland garden: ... opaque and gloomy, consisting of a small deep valley or dingle, the sides of which are enclosed with regular tufts of hazel and other underwood, and the whole shadowed with lofty trees rising out of the bottom of the dingle, through which a copious stream makes its way through mossy banks, enamelled with primroses, and variety of wild wood flowers. "Enamelled" or "embroidered" (Shenstone's own preferred term)

228-552: A bush, evergreen privet, pyrocanthus, Kalmia, Scotch broom.... The rhododendrons from Europe and America known in England by 1800 were "pale-pink and mauve" in flower, and the arrival from India in the 1820s of a large species with "brilliant scarlet" flowers began a phase of plant collecting in the Himalayas and adjacent regions, also covering many other types of plants, that would last over a century. The three-year expedition to

304-506: A distant view from above of the impressive ruins of Fountains Abbey . By 1762 Belmont Mansion near Philadelphia had "a wood cut into Visto's [avenues and walks giving views], in the midst a chinese temple, for a summer house, one avenue gives a fine prospect of the City, with a Spy glass you discern the houses distinct, Hospital, & another looks to the Oblisk". Thomas Jefferson was

380-705: A forest of pine trees brought from Provence , and the first artificial grotto in France. The Château de Chenonceau had two gardens in the new style, one created for Diane de Poitiers in 1551, and a second for Catherine de' Medici in 1560. In 1536 the architect Philibert de l'Orme , upon his return from Rome, created the gardens of the Château d'Anet following the Italian rules of proportion. The carefully prepared harmony of Anet, with its parterres and surfaces of water integrated with sections of greenery, became one of

456-466: A keen garden visitor during his years in France and England in the 1780s. He generally had a high opinion of English gardening, writing: "gardening in that country is the article in which it surpasses all the world", if often a rather acerbic critic of individual gardens, as shown in his notes and letters. Seeing the new shrubberies filled with American plants in England, he realized that back home "gardens may be made without expense. We have only to cut out

532-471: A large number of flowering shrubs and trees that grew well in temperate climates, and often preferred acid soils that were little use for agriculture. Woodland gardens work well, arguably best of all, on sites with sharp but small contouring; the original habitat of most of the waves of new Asian plants was steep valleys or hillsides. The steep garden at Cragside in Northumberland , created from

608-449: A lawn or glade. But under the beaming, constant and almost vertical sun of Virginia, shade is our Elysium. In the absence of this no beauty of the eye can be enjoyed... He continued: Let your ground be covered with trees of the loftiest stature. Trim up their bodies as high as the constitution & form of the tree will bear, but so as that their tops shall still unite & yeild [sic] dense shade. A wood, so open below, will have nearly

684-570: A problematic invasive plant . It is native to western Spain and Portugal, from where the British stock seems to have come, as well as north-eastern Turkey . It was first introduced to England in 1763 by the Loddiges family of nurserymen , but initially it was thought it needed the same damp conditions as the American species. By the 19th century it was realized that this was not the case, and

760-440: A result of the development of several new technologies. The first was géoplastie , the science of moving large amounts of earth. This science had several technological developments. This science had come from the military, following the introduction of cannon and modern siege warfare, when they were required to dig trenches and build walls and earth fortifications quickly. This led to the development of baskets for carrying earth on

836-579: A system of canals bringing water from the Seine, and the construction in 1681 of a huge pumping machine, the Machine de Marly , there was still not enough water pressure for all the fountains of Versailles to be turned on at once. Fontainiers were placed along the routes of the King's promenades, and turned on the fountains at each site just before he arrived. A related development took place in hydroplasie ,

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912-480: A theatre of water, decorated with fountains and statues of the infancy of the gods (destroyed between 1770 and 1780). Full-size ships were constructed for sailing on the Grand Canal, and the garden had an open-air ballroom surrounded by trees; a water organ, a labyrinth , and a grotto. The architects of the garden à la française did not stop at applying the rules of geometry and perspective to their work. In

988-493: A year. Palace records from 1686 show that the palace used 20,050 jonquil bulbs, 23000 cyclamen , and 1700 lily plants. Most of the trees at Versailles were taken from the forest; they included hornbeam , elm , linden , and beech trees. There were also chestnut trees from Turkey and acacia trees. Large trees were dug up from the forests of Compiègne and Artois and transplanted to Versailles. Many died in transplanting and had to be regularly replaced. The trees in

1064-530: Is a different concept, mostly concentrated on food production. In Europe the large gardens of country houses often included in the enclosed area a park, whether used for deer or grazing by horses and farm animals, and often woodland. Beyond the formally arranged gardens, paths through the woodland and park were known in England as "wood walks". These were probably mostly given little alteration from their natural state other than some attention to bridging streams and keeping paths open and easily navigable, but there

1140-525: Is at the center of this strict spatial organization, which symbolizes power and success." The Gardens of Versailles , created by André Le Nôtre between 1662 and 1700, were the greatest achievement of the garden à la française . They were the largest gardens in Europe, with an area of 15,000 hectares, and were laid out on an east–west axis followed the course of the sun: the sun rose over the Court of Honor, lit

1216-510: Is essentially a late 18th- and 19th-century creation, though drawing on earlier trends in gardening history . Woodland gardens are now found in most parts of the world, but vary considerably depending on the area and local conditions. The original English formula usually features tree species that are mostly local natives, with some trees and most of the shrubs and flowers from non-native species. Visitable woodlands with only native species tend to be presented as nature reserves . But for example in

1292-508: The Baroque period of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the garden aspired to reach into the surrounding landscape, much of the space of the further garden away from the house was occupied with bosquets , dense artificial woodland divided into geometric compartments surrounded by high hedges, in large gardens like the Gardens of Versailles as much as 20 feet high. The English term for these

1368-685: The Gardens of Versailles designed during the 17th century by the landscape architect André Le Nôtre for Louis XIV and widely copied by other European courts . The jardin à la française evolved from the French Renaissance garden , a style which was inspired by the Italian Renaissance garden at the beginning of the 16th century. The Italian Renaissance garden, typified by the Boboli Gardens in Florence and

1444-646: The Himalayas by Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker , later Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , in 1847–50 had a rapid impact on large English gardens, beginning the "rhododendron garden". The new Asian plants were generally easier to grow successfully in northern Europe than the American arrivals of the previous century, and tended to replace them. One species, rhododendron ponticum , is now all too prominent in Britain, Ireland and New Zealand as

1520-646: The Netherlands . An important ornamental feature in Versailles and other gardens was the topiary , a tree or bush carved into geometric or fantastic shapes, which were placed in rows along the main axes of the garden, alternating with statues and vases. At Versailles flower beds were found only at the Grand Trianon and in parterres on the north side of the palace. Flowers were usually brought from Provence , kept in pots, and changed three or four times

1596-797: The Savill Garden and the Valley Gardens in Windsor Great Park in a "new style in which glades and vistas became the major means of organizing the composition, and in which colour massing was downplayed", at least in the former. Another influence in the years around 1900 was the Japanese garden , whose distinct aesthetic was promoted in the West by Josiah Conder 's Landscape Gardening in Japan ( Kelly & Walsh , 1893). Conder

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1672-518: The Villa Medici in Fiesole , was characterized by planting beds, or parterres , created in geometric shapes, and laid out symmetrical patterns; the use of fountains and cascades to animate the garden; stairways and ramps to unite different levels of the garden; grottos , labyrinths , and statuary on mythological themes. The gardens were designed to represent harmony and order, the ideals of

1748-474: The 1860s until about 1880, "may be regarded as the pioneering example" of this type of woodland garden, copied by several other gardens in the next three decades. The very large areas of garden developed by the rich in the early 20th century therefore used relatively cheap land, that was often already woodland. Some woodland gardens, like Sheffield Park Garden in East Sussex , took over a park laid out in

1824-593: The 18th-century English landscape garden style, in that case worked on by both Capability Brown and Humphry Repton . They also needed fewer gardeners per acre than intensive formal Victorian plantings. The style spread from the rich to the comfortably-off suburban middle-class. According to Charles Quest-Ritson , "The William Robinson style of woodland garden, colourfully planted with exotic shrubs and herbaceous plants, dominated English horticulture from 1910 to 1960". After World War I new trends appeared in woodland garden design. Eric Savill (1895–1980) designed both

1900-563: The 19th century to English landscape gardens and have not been reinstated. The designers of the French garden saw their work as a branch of architecture, which simply extended the space of the building to the space outside the walls, and ordered nature according to the rules of geometry, optics and perspective. Gardens were designed like buildings, with a succession of rooms which a visitor could pass through following an established route, hallways, and vestibules with adjoining chambers. They used

1976-514: The Chinese style, brought to France by Jesuit priests from the Court of the Emperor of China. These styles rejected symmetry in favor of nature and rustic scenes and brought an end to the reign of the symmetrical garden à la française . In many French parks and estates, the garden closest to the house was kept in the traditional à la française style, but the rest of the park was transformed into

2052-636: The Crown Estate backed down and deferred these plans. The Crown Estate will conduct "extended monitoring of horticultural and landscape management issues over the next few years. Other proposals ...such as the provision of a land train, children's adventure play area and closure of the Valley Gardens car park are also subject to further review". 51°25′02″N 0°36′16″W  /  51.4173°N 0.6044°W  / 51.4173; -0.6044 Woodland garden The woodland garden style

2128-566: The Marble Court, crossed the Chateau and lit the bedroom of the King, and set at the end of the Grand Canal, reflected in the mirrors of the Hall of Mirrors . In contrast with the grand perspectives, reaching to the horizon, the garden was full of surprises – fountains, small gardens filled with statuary, which provided a more human scale and intimate spaces. The central symbol of the garden

2204-636: The Renaissance, and to recall the virtues of Ancient Rome . Additionally, the symmetry of French gardens was a continuation of the Renaissance themes of harmony. French gardens were symmetrical and well manicured to represent order, and this idea of orderliness extended to French society at the time. Following his campaign in Italy in 1495, where he saw the gardens and castles of Naples, King Charles VIII brought Italian craftsmen and garden designers , such as Pacello da Mercogliano , from Naples and ordered

2280-504: The United States, many woodland gardens make a point of including only native or regional species, and often present themselves as botanical gardens . But in both countries, very many woodland gardens rely heavily on Asian species for large flowering shrubs, especially the many varieties of rhododendron : "What the pelargonium was for Victorian bedding schemes , the rhododendron was for the woodland garden". Forest gardening

2356-409: The West were garden varieties, though the plant collectors still made some useful finds in the wild. French formal garden The French formal garden , also called the jardin à la française ( French for 'garden in the French manner'), is a style of " landscape " garden based on symmetry and the principle of imposing order on nature. Its epitome is generally considered to be

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2432-468: The Western woodland garden as it had by then developed. Initially Japanese gardens in the West were mostly sections of large private gardens, but as the style grew in popularity, many Japanese gardens were, and continue to be, added to public parks and gardens, and Japanese plants and styles spread into the wider Western garden. The Japanese had been breeding garden plants for centuries, and most imports to

2508-410: The age. The gardens he created became the symbols of French grandeur and rationality, setting the style for European gardens until the arrival of the English landscape park in the 18th century. Joseph-Antoine Dezallier d'Argenville (1680–1765) wrote Théorie et traité de jardinage , laid out the principles of the garden à la française , and included drawings and designs of gardens and parterres. It

2584-478: The appearance of open grounds. Then, when in the open ground you would plant a clump of trees, place a thicket of shrubs presenting a hemisphere the crown of which shall distinctly show itself under the branches of the trees. This may be effected by a due selection & arrangement of the shrubs, & will I think offer a group not much inferior to that of trees. The thickets may be varied too by making some of them of evergreens altogether, our red cedar made to grow in

2660-463: The architect Ange-Jacques Gabriel designed elements of the gardens at Versailles, Choisy (Val-de-Marne), and Compiègne . Nonetheless, a few variations in the strict geometry of the garden à la française began to appear. Elaborate parterres of broderies, with their curves and counter-curves, were replaced by parterres of grass bordered with flowerbeds, which were easier to maintain. Circles became ovals, called rotules, with alleys radiating outward in

2736-769: The arrangement of the flowers is designed to create a harmonious interplay of colours. Frequently found in French Baroque gardens are water gardens , cascades , grottos and statues . Further away from the country house , stately home , chateau or schloss the parterre transitions into the bosquets. Well known examples are the gardens at the Palace of Versailles in France and the Palace of Augustusburg at Brühl, near Cologne in Germany, which have achieved UNESCO World Heritage status. As fashions changed, many parterres de broderie of stately homes had to give way in

2812-434: The art and science of shaping water into different shapes as it came out the fountain. The shape of the water depended upon the force of the water and the shape of the nozzle. New forms created through this art were named tulipe (the tulip), double gerbe (the double sheaf), Girandole (centerpiece) candélabre (candelabra), and corbeille (bouquet), La Boule en l'air (Ball in the air), and L'Evantail (the fan). This art

2888-400: The back, wheelbarrows, carts and wagons. Andre LeNotre adapted these methods to build the level terraces, and to dig canals and basins on a grand scale. A second development was in hydrology , bringing water to the gardens for the irrigation of the plants and for use in the many fountains. This development was not fully successful at Versailles, which was on a plateau; even with 221 pumps and

2964-467: The best of the new style of "forest or savage gardens". This was a style of woodland aiming at the sublime , a newly-fashionable concept in literature and the arts. It really required steep slopes, even if not very high, along which paths could be made revealing dramatic views, by which contemporary viewers who had read Gothic novels like Walpole's The Castle of Otranto (1764) were very ready to be impressed. The appropriate style of garden buildings

3040-398: The chateau or home was supposed to be the visual focal point. The different parts of the gardens were not harmoniously joined, and they were often placed on difficult sites chosen for terrain easy to defend, rather than for beauty. All this was to change in the middle of the 17th century with the development of the first real garden à la française . The first important garden à la française

3116-473: The chateaux, they laid out elaborate hydraulic systems to supply the fountains and basins of the garden. Long basins full of water replaced mirrors, and the water from fountains replaced chandeliers. In the bosquet du Marais in the gardens of Versailles, André Le Nôtre placed tables of white and red marble for serving meals. The flowing water in the basins and fountains imitated water pouring into carafes and crystal glasses. The dominant role of architecture in

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3192-490: The construction of Italian-style gardens at his residence at the Château d'Amboise and at Château Gaillard, another private résidence in Amboise. His successor Henry II , who had also travelled to Italy and had met Leonardo da Vinci , created an Italian-style garden nearby at the Château de Blois . Beginning in 1528, King Francis I created new gardens at the Château de Fontainebleau , which featured fountains, parterres,

3268-521: The design of gardens in France through the reign of Louis XV . His nephew, Claude Desgots , created the garden at Château de Bagnolet ( Seine-Saint-Denis ) for Philippe II, Duke of Orléans (1717) and at Champs ( Seine-et-Marne ), and another relative, Jean-Charles Garnier d'Isle  [ fr ] , created gardens for Madame de Pompadour at Crécy ( Eure-et-Loir ) in 1746 and Bellevue ( Hauts-de-Seine ) in 1748–50. The major inspiration for gardens continued to be architecture, rather than nature –

3344-512: The design the Palais du Luxembourg , the Jardin des Tuileries , and the gardens of Saint Germain-en-Laye . Claude Mollet (ca 1564-shortly before 1649), was the chief gardener of three French kings: Henry IV , Louis XIII , and the young Louis XIV . His father was head gardener at the Château d'Anet , where Italian formal gardening was introduced to France and where Claude apprenticed. His son

3420-545: The earliest and most influential examples of the classic French garden. Today, water remains a key garden design in the form of round pools and long ponds. While the gardens of the French Renaissance were much different in their spirit and appearance than those of the Middle Ages, they were still not integrated with the architecture of the châteaux, and were usually enclosed by walls. In French garden design,

3496-406: The first published treatises on gardens, in the 17th century, they devoted chapters to the subject of how to correct or improve perspective, usually to create the illusion of greater distance. This was often done by having alleys become narrower, or having rows of trees that converged, or were trimmed so that they became gradually shorter, as they went farther away from the centre of the garden or from

3572-441: The following elements, which became typical of the formal French garden: Ornamental flowers were relatively rare in French gardens in the 17th century and there was a limited range of colours: blue, pink, white and mauve. Brighter colours (yellow, red, orange) would not arrive until about 1730, because of botanical discoveries from around the world brought to Europe. Bulbs of tulips and other exotic flowers came from Turkey and

3648-489: The foot of the chateau to the statue of the Farnese Hercules , and the space was filled with parterres of evergreen shrubs in ornamental patterns, bordered by coloured sand, and the alleys were decorated at regular intervals by statues, basins, fountains, and carefully sculpted topiaries. "The symmetry attained at Vaux achieved a degree of perfection and unity rarely equalled in the art of classic gardens. The chateau

3724-459: The garden did not change until the 18th century, when the English garden arrived in Europe and the inspiration for gardens began to come not from architecture but from romantic painting . The garden à la française was often used as a setting for plays, spectacles, concerts, and displays of fireworks . In 1664, Louis XIV celebrated a six-day festival in the gardens, with cavalcades, comedies, ballets, and fireworks. Gardens of Versailles included

3800-406: The house. This created the illusion that the perspective was longer and that the garden was larger than it actually was. Another trick used by French garden designers was the ha-ha (fr: saut de loup ). This was a method used to conceal fences which crossed long alleys or perspectives. A deep and wide trench with vertical wall of stone on one side was dug wherever a fence crossed a view, or a fence

3876-404: The language of architecture in their plans; the spaces were referred to as salles , chambres and théâtres of greenery. The "walls" were composed of hedges, and "stairways" of water. On the ground were tapis , or carpets, of grass, brodés , or embroidered, with plants, and the trees were formed into rideaux , or curtains, along the alleys. Just as architects installed systems of water into

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3952-507: The main walks. This irregularity, often expressed in the fashionable serpentine shape for walks, laid out like snakes, was almost invariably adopted for the new shrubberies, and later became normal for the woodland garden. A description of

4028-515: The mass planting of bulbs and other flowers, under and in front of deciduous trees and shrubs, which Robinson himself practised on an epic scale in his own garden at Gravetye Manor , bought in 1885. A second crucial influence from the years around 1900 was the opening up of south-west China, especially Yunnan , and parts of the Himalayan foothills to European plant collectors, including George Forrest and Ernest Henry Wilson . These regions had

4104-462: The modern US; Philadelphia was the main port for shipments. Leading figures in the trade included John Bartram , collecting, propagating and packing in America, and Thomas Fairchild and Philip Miller , distributing and promoting the new plants from London. Many of these were flowering shrubs, and by the mid-century the shrubbery had become established as a fashionable area to have in a garden;

4180-459: The new style, called variously jardin à l'anglaise (the English garden), "anglo-chinois", exotiques , or "pittoresques". This marked the end of the age of the garden à la française and the arrival in France of the jardin paysager , or landscape garden , which was inspired not by architecture but by painting, literature and philosophy. Jacques Boyceau , sieur de la Barauderie (c. 1560–1633)

4256-527: The park were trimmed both horizontally and flattened at the top, giving them the desired geometric form. Only in the 18th century were they allowed to grow freely. The parterres de broderie (from the French French : broderie meaning 'embroidery') is the typical form of French garden design of the Baroque . It is characterised by a symmetrical layout of the flower beds and sheared box hedging to form ornamental patterns known as broderie . Even

4332-534: The public". As the Valley Gardens entered the 21st century, the Crown Estate were proposing to fence Valley Gardens with a 1.7 metre steel deer fence and charge for entry. Many residents from Berkshire and Surrey and all the parishes around Windsor Great Park opposed this scheme. They were joined by a nationwide and international protest from all those who know and love the gardens as a magnificent and unique woodland landscape. The Valley Gardens Action Group were formed to fight these proposals. After an intense campaign,

4408-608: The scenery of exotically remote and distant landscapes, mostly Asian, which their owners and designers often knew only from books. Woodland gardens began to become a particular focus of gardening attention from the publication in 1870 of The Wild Garden by the opinionated gardener and writer William Robinson . In his "Preface" to the 1881 edition, Robinson explains that this essentially means "the placing of perfectly hardy exotic plants in places and under conditions where they will become established and take care of themselves". For woodland gardens Robinson's influence meant especially

4484-446: The shape of an 'x', and irregular octagon shapes appeared. Gardens began to follow the natural landscape, rather than moving earth to shape the ground into artificial terraces. Limited colors were available at the time as well. Traditionally, French gardens included blue, pink, white, and mauve. The middle of the 18th century saw spread in popularity of the new English landscape garden , created by British aristocrats and landowners, and

4560-615: The species began to thrive. By the 1840s landowners were spreading the seeds in woodland to create game coverts. Another gardening form that fed into the woodland garden in the 19th century was the arboretum and its specialized sub-type of the pinetum , specimen collections of trees in general, but mostly exotic, and of conifers . Various schemes for arranging these rose and fell in fashion, and were also used for woodland gardens: by botanical groups, by geographical origin, by size and shape, and finally and most popularly, by colour. Many woodland gardens set out to replicate as far as possible

4636-498: The superabundant plants...", which is more or less what he did in "The Grove" at Monticello , with extra planting, some of imported plants. He cleared much of the undergrowth, and trimmed the lower branches of the large trees. In hot American summers, shaded garden areas were extremely welcome, as he wrote to the leading American gardener William Hamilton , in 1806: They [the English] need no more of wood than will serve to embrace

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4712-415: The superintendent of royal gardens under Louis XIII , became the first theorist of the new French style. His book, Traité du jardinage selon les raisons de la nature et de l'art. Ensemble divers desseins de parterres, pelouzes, bosquets et autres ornements was published after his death in 1638. Its sixty-one engravings of designs for parterres and bosquets made it a style book for gardens, which influenced

4788-451: The word is first documented in 1748. Gradually, the woodland garden evolved from these three styles of garden, as shrubberies gradually replaced the now unfashionable wilderness, and began to expand into the wood walks. The wilderness had already begun to lose its French geometrical strictness, first in the smaller walks within the hedged "quarters" or blocks, which were already winding and curving before 1700, and then, from perhaps 1710, in

4864-480: Was André Mollet , who took the French style to the Netherlands, Sweden and England. André Le Nôtre (1613–1700) was the most important figure in the history of the French garden. The son of the gardener of Louis XIII , he worked on the plans of Vaux-le-Vicomte , before becoming the chief gardener of Louis XIV between 1645 and 1700, and the designer of the Gardens of Versailles , the greatest garden project of

4940-468: Was Gothic rather than Neoclassical , and exotic planting was more likely to be evergreen conifers rather than flowering plants, replacing "the charm of bright, pleasant scenery in favour of the dark and rugged, gloomy and dramatic". A leading example of the style was Studley Royal in North Yorkshire , which had the great advantage, at what was known as "The Surprise View", of suddenly revealing

5016-647: Was J.B. Stevenson of Tower Court who urged the selection of the Kurume azaleas for the Punch Bowl and it was his famous collection of rhododendrons which was added to the Gardens in the 1940s after his death. The work was undertaken at a time of great austerity. Contemporary publicity noted that the gardens "open to the public would provide pleasant hours of relaxation for many a tired worker from factory or office". They were and should remain "private gardens accessible to

5092-458: Was a term of art in early gardening, implying special planting of flowers, and we know that in 1749 he planted flowers given by his friend Lady Luxborough by this stream. Horace Walpole , a great promoter of the English landscape garden style, praised Painshill in Surrey, whose varied features included a shrubbery with American plants, and a sloping "Alpine Valley" of conifers , as one of

5168-419: Was a wilderness . The relatively well-documented decision before 1718 not to turn Ray or Wray Wood at Castle Howard into a formal wilderness, as had been proposed by George London , is taken by garden historians as a significant point, "decisive for the development of the 'natural' style of English landscape". This was a natural wood, to the side of the main axis of the garden of the newly-built house, which

5244-497: Was a British architect who had worked for the Japanese government and other clients in Japan from 1877 until his death. The book was published when the general trend of Japonisme , or Japanese influence in the arts of the West, was already well-established, and sparked the first Japanese gardens in the West. A second edition was required in 1912. The traditional Japanese styles for larger gardens had long had many similarities with

5320-540: Was closely associated with the fireworks of the time, which tried to achieve similar effects with fire instead of water. Both the fountains and fireworks were often accompanied by music, and were designed to show how nature (water and fire) could be shaped by the will of man. Another important development was in horticulture , in the ability to raise plants from warmer climates in the northern European climate by protecting them inside buildings and bringing them outdoors in pots. The first orangeries were built in France in

5396-401: Was instead "turned into a labyrinth of tangled paths, enlivened by various fountains", but at least initially, little special planting. Stephen Switzer , an advocate of ornamental woodland, may have been involved with the new design. In the early 18th century the English horticultural trade began to enthusiastically import new plants from British America , generally the eastern seaboard of

5472-399: Was placed in bottom of the trench, so that it was invisible to the viewer. As gardens became more and more ambitious and elaborate through the 17th century, the garden no longer served as a decoration for the chateau. At Chantilly and at Saint-Germain , the chateau became a decorative element of the much larger garden. The appearance of the French garden in the 17th and 18th centuries was

5548-419: Was reprinted many times, and was found in the libraries of aristocrats across Europe. Jacques Boyceau de La Barauderie wrote in 1638 in his Traité du jardinage, selon les raisons de la nature et de l'art that "the principal reason for the existence of a garden is the esthetic pleasure which it gives to the spectator." The form of the French garden was largely fixed by the middle of the 17th century. It had

5624-515: Was some deliberate planting of flowers and shrubs, especially native climbers. The range of native flowering trees and shrubs that had great ornamental value, and would also grow north of the Alps, was relatively small, and some of these were apparently planted around woods, along with the growing number of available imported species. In the French formal garden style that influenced all Europe during

5700-487: Was the Chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte , created for Nicolas Fouquet , the Superintendent of Finances to Louis XIV , beginning in 1656. Fouquet commissioned Louis Le Vau to design the chateau, Charles Le Brun to design statues for the garden, and André Le Nôtre to create the gardens. It was for the first time that the garden and the chateau were perfectly integrated. A grand perspective of 1500 meters extended from

5776-411: Was the sun; the emblem of Louis XIV , illustrated by the statue of Apollo in the central fountain of the garden. "The views and perspectives, to and from the palace, continued to infinity. The king ruled over nature, recreating in the garden not only his domination of his territories, but over the court and his subjects." André Le Nôtre died in 1700, but his pupils and his ideas continued to dominate

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