CHAPTER XI 



DAWN OF LANDSCAPE GARDENING 



" Shade above shade, a woody theatre 

 Of stateliest view. . . ." 



Milton : Paradise Lost. 



" Shower every beauty, every fragrance shower. 

 Herbs, fiowers and fruits. ..." 



Thomson : Seasons. 



THE gardeners who followed London and Wise as designers, 

 as well as cultivators and planters, were Stephen Switzer, 

 and after him Bridgeman. These men were busy at a time 

 when formal gardening was on the wane. It was in the days of 

 Queen Anne that Addison and Pope first ridiculed the old style, 

 and sought to bring in the fashion of " copying Nature." But 

 the reaction and destruction of old gardens did not take place 

 till later, when the theories they advanced had had time to 

 spread. There is no lack of views and designs of gardens 

 during this period. They are to be found in County Histories, 

 such as Plot's Staffordshire, Atkyns' Gloucester, and Dugdale's 

 Warwickshire ; also in Beeverell, " Les Delices de la Grande 

 Bretagne et de ITrlande," published at Leyden in 1707, in 

 Britannia lUustrata, 1709, with a large series of views by 

 Kip, and in other similar works. If the authors had foreseen 

 the annihilation that was to befall so many gardens, they could 

 hardly have more carefully preserved their designs. But these 

 pictures are mostly taken from some imaginary point, and give 

 a bird's-eye view of house, garden, and surrounding landscape, 

 in a conventional plan, regardless of perspective. Faithful 

 representations though they may be in many cases, the formal 

 garden, as they show it, has lost all its poetry ; the pale tints 

 of the tender shoots of the beech hedge in spring, the soft 



