English garden

Rotunda at Stowe Garden (1730-38)

The English garden, also called English landscape park (French: Jardin anglais, Italian:Giardino all'inglese, German: Englischer Landschaftsgarten), Portuguese: Jardim inglês, is a style of Landscape garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal, symmetrical Garden à la française of the 17th century as the principal gardening style of Europe. The English garden presented an idealized view of nature, often inspired by paintings of landscapes by Claude Lorraine and Nicolas Poussin. It usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns set against groves of trees, and recreations of classical temples, Gothic ruins, bridges, and other picturesque architecture, designed to recreate an idyllic pastoral landscape. By the end of the 18th century the English garden was being imitated by the French landscape garden, and as far away as St. Petersburg, Russia, in Pavlovsk, the gardens of the future Emperor Paul. It also had a major influence on the form of the public parks and gardens which appeared around the world in the 19th century.

Chiswick House

Ionic Temple at Chiswick House

Kent created one of the first true English landscape gardens at Chiswick House for Richard Boyle, 3rd Earl of Burlington. The first gardens that he laid out between 1724 and 1733 had many formal elements of a Garden à la française, including alleys forming a trident and canals, but they had something new - pictureque recreation of an Ionic temple set in a theater of trees. Between 1733 and 1736, he redesigned the garden again, adding lawns sloping down to the edge of river, and a small cascade. For the first time the form of a garden was inspired not by architecture, but by an idealized version of nature.

Rousham

Garden of Rousham House, by William Kent (1737)

Rousham House in Oxfordshire is considered by some as the most accomplished and significant of William Kent's work. The patron was General Dormer, who commissioned Bridgeman to begin the garden in 1727, then brought in Kent to recreate it in 1737. Bridgeman had built a series of gardens, including a grotto of Venus, on the slope along the river Cherwell, connected by a straight alleys. Kent turned the alleys into winding paths, built a gently turning stream, used the natural landscape features and slopes, and created a series of views and tableaus decorated with allegorical statues of Apollo, a wounded gladiator, a lion attacking a horse, and other subjects. He placed "eye-catchers," pieces of classical architecture, to decorate the landscape, and he made use of the "ha-ha," a trench used to hide fences so the garden seemed to go into the far distance. Finally, he added cascades modeled on those of the garden of Aldobrandini and Pratolino in Italy, to add movement and drama.