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, flowers and fruits. . . 
Thomson : Seasons. 
T HE 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 1 ’Irlande,” published at Leyden in 1707, in 
Britannia Illustrata, 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 
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