THE PRECEDENT OF GARDEN DESIGN. 



Monastic Although formality was the rule within the medieval pleasure grounds, natural foliage 



Gardening. effects were interspersed with the hedges, " beshaded " alley walks, topiary borders, 

 fountains, flower beds planted in intricate patterns, arbours and flower-covered trellis 

 which formed the greater part of the gardens. The charm of the English garden has 

 ever been its adaptability to the rural and pastoral scenery among which it is placed, 

 and in this respect the monastic builders and designers excelled. They first chose a 

 site of natural beauty, as may be seen in the ruins of Bolton, Fountains, Tintern or 

 Furness, and then built their abbeys with an instinctive feeling for harmony, making 

 them blend into their surroundings of river, woodland or fertile pasture in a manner 

 which has never been surpassed. They possessed the well-nigh unique power of adapting 

 the geometric formalities of Gothic architecture to natural scenery, and so, in the for- 

 mation of their gardens, the natural and the artificial were placed side by side, neither 

 clashing with the other, but each gaining added beauty from the contrast. 



The souls of such men could never be cramped within the pleasing neatnesses of 

 the garden, they moved in larger prospects, their admiration and wonder were called 

 forth by the beauties of Nature, the magnanimity of the Creator moved them to higher 

 thoughts and aspirations. They possessed a broad grasp of Nature's excellences, the 

 spirit of which infused alike their missals, their architecture and their gardens with 

 that sense of a mystical environment which the least responsive to sympathetic sur- 

 roundings must feel to some extent at least in an old-world pleasaunce. 



Renaissance As before stated, a new period of garden design commenced during the Tudor period. Up 



Gardens. to the commencement of the reign of Henry VIII., gardening, in common with all 

 peaceful arts, had suffered a serious check in the disturbed state of the country during 

 the Wars of the Roses, but the advent of more peaceful times, together with the 

 advance in learning and travel, inevitably resulted in the importation of foreign 

 styles of design, notably the Italian, French and Dutch, thus infusing fresh life into 

 the art. 



There is, however, such a pronounced individual character about our national land- 

 scape that it resists the heroic stateliness of the Italian manner with its too lavish 

 details and the undue artificiality of the French renaissance, of which Versailles is 

 perhaps the most typical example, as well as the curious conceits of the Dutch styles. 

 All these suit their own countries well enough but are not at home in England ; they, 

 however, held the field in succession from the decadence of the monastic influence until 

 the time when the style which is known as typical English gained the ascendency. 



The Italian style was probably first attempted in this country by Henry VIII. at 

 Nonsuch, and Wolsey at Hampton Court, though the gardens at the latter place, as they 

 now appear, were not completed until the reign of William III. The existing maze 

 is however Wolsey 's work. 



All the garden books of the sixteenth century abound in descriptions of Italian 

 features in white marble and Lydian stone copied from the designs of Italian Landscape 

 Architects of the period ; yet there is evidence in the writings of Doctor Andrew Borde 

 and Thomas Hill that there were souls who yearned for emancipation from the foreign 

 yoke and its artificialities, and to breathe their native air in an environment and amidst 

 features which accord with its quiet type of beauty. 



These two writers paved the way for Gervase Markham and William Lawson in the next 

 century, both of whom wrote from practical experience. Their works abound in evidences 

 of their innate love of Nature and of their delight in sights and sounds gratifying to 

 the senses, as the following quotation from the writings of the latter will show : 



" What more delightsome than an infinite varietie of sweet-smelling flowers ? decking 



. with sundry colours the greene mantle of the Earth, the universall Mother of us all, 



so by them bespotted, so dyed, that all the world cannot sample them, and wherein 



