io GARDEN DESIGN 



gardens, by reason of the good contrivance of its 

 walks, seem to be three times as large as they are." 

 Lou don, writing in 1826, some seventy years after 

 its laying out says : " When beheld at a distance, 

 this place appears like a vast grove, interspersed 

 with columns, obelisks and towers, which appar- 

 ently emerge from a luxuriant mass of foliage, " 

 and it is " the chief ornament of the county." 

 Stow was thought to be Kent's finest work. 

 He and his follower Brown were all the rage for 

 several years, and looked at now Brown's work 

 has nothing to recommend it. But the landscape 

 garden was the fashion, and owners of old formal 

 gardens were only too anxious to have them 

 modernized, substituting clumps for hedges, sunk 

 fences for walls, and naturalistic ponds for the 

 old canals and basins. 



The general revulsion from formality was assisted 

 by the publishing of Sir William Chambers' book 

 on Chinese gardening in 1772, and pagodas and 

 Chinese bridges were added to the confusion. 

 The plan for a garden in the Anglo-Chinese style 

 (page io) shows to what atrocities bad taste had 

 come. It is by a French designer at the end of the 

 eighteenth century. As the French had carried 

 Le Notre's principles to excess so they eagerly 

 embraced the " Jardin Anglais," and the drawing 

 displays the aimless paths and incoherent plant- 

 ing of Brown's feeblest followers. An amusing 

 skit on the taste of the period in landscape 



