THE FORMAL GARDEN 
77 
Nesfield 
and Kew 
“formal garden.” At the present time, however, there are evidences 
of a counter-reaction. The present attitude of the very superior 
person is to regard the advocates of this school of landscape gar- 
dening as somewhat out of date, and as having become, in fact, 
rather tiresome. 
The ordinary person, whose outlook has not become narrowed 
and distorted by the persistent advocacy of one set of views, believes 
there is room for both styles, and that each has its proper place. 
Kew, as a public institution, should be — and, indeed, is — eclectic 
in its attitude towards the different schools. It has never been 
devoted exclusively to the exposition of any one set of ideas. 
Its directors have been catholic in their tastes, seeking to retain 
the best and reject the worst, irrespective of the vagaries of 
fashion. 
W. A. Nesfield, who was employed in 1845, and subsequently, to 
lay out portions of Kew, was unmistakably of the “ formal ” school. 
To him we owe the Broad Walk, the Pagoda and Sion 
vistas, and the “ geometric ” treatment of the ground 
in the neighbourhood of the Palm House. In its broad 
lines Nesfield’s scheme still endures, being very well adapted to a 
flat piece of ground like Kew visited by great crowds of people. A 
good deal of his work was, no doubt, puerile, especially his design 
of box-edged beds and gravel walks for the great rectangle between 
the Palm House and the Pond, now, and for many years, super- 
seded. Yet it was an expression of the ideas of the time. Twelve 
years or so later, Nesfield carried out the same ideas to extreme 
lengths in the South Kensington gardens of the Royal Horticultural 
Society. 
The wide gravelled path known as the Broad Walk was dignified 
in its conception. Commencing at the Main Entrance, it extends 
to the corner of the old Orangery (now No. III. Museum), 
and then, taking a nearly right-angled turn, continues 
in a straight line to the Pond. It is bordered at intervals 
by large curving beds of rhododendrons and simple oblong flower 
beds, used for tulips, hyacinths, and other bulbs in spring, and for 
various flowering plants in summer and autumn. 
The Palm House is the centre around which the formal garden 
of Kew is set. From its central door on the south-west side radiate 
three broad vistas. The Pagoda Vista stretches to the south for 
The Broad 
Walk. 
