And it was about this time that Batty Langley, also of Twickenham, wrote his New Principles of Gardening, or the Laying-out and Planting Parterres, Groves, Wildernesses, Labyrinths, Avenues, Parks, &c., after a more Grand and Rural manner than has been done before. This “grand and rural manner” expresses pretty clearly the confusion we find all through his book. He must have known Pope’s villa, and probably the poet himself, and it is evident that he too intended to consult nature and the “genius” of a place. He says there is not “anything more shocking than a stiff regular garden, where, after we have seen one quarter thereof, the very same is repeated in all the remaining parts, so that we are tired, instead of being further entertained with something new as expected.” He thinks “our gardens much the worst of any in the world, some few excepted,” and is severe on the late Mr. London and Mr. Wise for having laid out gardens for the nobility “in a regular, stiff, and stuft-up manner,” with crowded evergreens and “trifling flower-knots.” But the compliments which he pays to nature are, after all, not much more than lip-homage. His principles seem very right, but his designs, of which we have very many, show that the “grand” had quite got the better of the “rural.” Even the design of “a rural garden after the new manner” consists of “a fine large plain parterre, environed with an easy, agreeable slope,” and “adorned with Apollo, Minerva, and Pallas (sic), the Seven Liberal Arts, Mercury, and Pytho;” then there is an octagon basin, with Neptune, and avenues and canals and more statues, and “we can never know when we have seen the whole.”
And now the period of the so-called “landscape gardeners” began, though in reality their business was rather with the grounds than with the garden proper.
Of these Kent was the first of eminence. Their idea was to destroy all the old-fashioned formalities, at the sacrifice of a certain stateliness which the style possessed, and to bring the scenery of an English park up to the house itself. But they were constantly haunted and harassed by the word “picturesque.” Was Nature more picturesque when closely followed or carefully improved? Was it the duty of the landscape gardener to arrange his clumps and belts of trees in the way in which they would look best in a picture? This was evidently Kent’s idea, and Daines Barrington, speaking of him, says it was reserved for him “to realize these beautiful descriptions [in the Faery Queen], for which he was peculiarly adapted by being a painter, as the true test of perfection in a modern garden is that a landscape painter would choose it as a composition.” Kent’s great work seems to have been the carrying out of the alterations at Stowe, on which Bridgeman had been originally employed, and much of the beauty of those famous grounds—which, however, were at least as artificial as natural—was owing to his taste. The two peculiarities now generally associated with his name are the planting of dead trees to look picturesque, and the constant use of Ha-ha’s (or sunk fences), which he is often said to have originated, though, as matter of fact, Batty Langley also (and I think previously) advocates their adoption.[3] “Capability Brown” was perhaps the next most noted landscape gardener. His idea was always to improve nature, and he was particularly strong in artificial lakes and canals, with rather formal clumps of trees. He had many disciples, and it seemed as if half the fine places in England were to be reformed on the new principles.
But two formidable critics came into the field, Knight and Price. Their plan was to leave Nature as much as possible to herself, to let the stream wind about as a stream should, instead of being dammed into a canal, and to allow trees to grow as they liked. Price’s famous Essay on the Picturesque is still full of interest, and shows good sense in the exceptions he allows to his general rule, as, for instance, where he admits “architectural ornaments” in the garden round the house. He speaks, too, with regret of having once destroyed a beautiful old garden, “sacrificed to undulations of ground only.” But he certainly seems to carry his general rule to very considerable length. He thinks that “many of the circumstances that give variety and spirit to a wild place might successfully be imitated in a dressed place;” and although he cannot advocate modelling a carriage-drive after a cart-rut, or having water-docks or thistles before one’s door, he still thinks the cart-rut and the thistles might furnish useful hints. In another chapter he discusses “the connection between picturesqueness and deformity,” and explains how large heaps of stones or mould may at first be considered as deformities and afterwards appear picturesque. It is impossible not to be reminded of Mrs. Rafferty’s description of her garden in Miss Edgeworth’s Absentee: “‘Yes,’ she said, ‘she hated everything straight; it was so formal and unpicturesque. Uniformity and conformity,’ she observed, ‘had their day, but now, thank the stars of the present day, irregularity and deformity bear the bell and have the majority.’”
Another novelist, Miss Austen, in her Mansfield Park, preserves the name of Repton, who was the last of the noted landscape gardeners of the last century: “Repton, or anybody of that sort,” says a certain Mr. Rushworth, “would certainly have the avenue at Sotherton down; the avenue that leads from the west front to the top of the hill, you know.” And this is just what Repton would have done. He was for ever cutting down avenues, and out of the five beautiful lime avenues at Cobham, which must have given such a stately appearance to the place, no less that four fell victims to his axe. The idea was of course that avenues prevented the ground from being picturesque and natural, and Mason, in his English Garden, urges “the cruel task, yet needful,” of breaking “th’ obdurate line” of trees, though
“A chosen few,—and yet, alas! but few—
Of these, the old protectors of the plain,
May yet be spared.”
The next marked development in gardening refers more particularly to the flower-garden itself. It was between the years 1835 and 1840 that the mode which we call “bedding-out” began to came into general fashion. John Caie, who was gardener to the Duke of Bedford, and afterwards at Inverary Castle, is often said to have originated the system; but Mr. Frost, writing from Dropmore to the editor of the Gardener’s Chronicle, says:
“I helped to fill the beds here in the spring of 1823, long before Mr. Caie had charge of the Campden Hill gardens. It was Lady Grenville who began the bedding system in the first place, but she quite abhorred both ribbon and carpet bedding. The dowager Duchess of Bedford used to visit the grounds here, and much admired the garden, and when she went to Campden Hill to live she sent Mr. Caie here to see the place, and very probably to take notes of what he saw.”
It would thus appear that to Lady Grenville in her Dropmore gardens the credit of being the first to bed-out may fairly belong. But some fifteen years passed before the system was generally adopted. It then grew rapidly in favour, and before long it was clear that the whole character of the English garden would be changed. One of the first plants to be bedded-out extensively was the “Tom Thumb” pelargonium, or geranium as it was then more commonly called; it was a dwarf scarlet, and was considered to be of great beauty till the better varieties were introduced. Then followed verbeneas, calceolarias, and other flowers, which could be kept as cuttings through the winter, and then be planted out when summer weather made it safe to do so. And there were many advantages in bedding-out. In large public gardens, where a glow of colour only was wanted, where no one stopped to look at any particular plant, and where a certain uniformity of growth was essential, it answered extremely well. In gardens which are, as it were, the approaches of great houses, and which seem laid out rather by the architect than the gardener, the bedding-out system was both convenient in itself and striking in its effect. Nothing for instance, in its way, can be more beautiful than to look down from the long gallery at Crewe Hall upon the formal garden with its curves of variegated gravel and its thick box edging, its broad terraced walks and flights of steps, guarded by quaintly-carved balustrades and strange heraldic monsters. But it hardly strikes one as a garden; it is rather an appendage to the house itself, adding to its stateliness, and recalling, by its prevailing colours of buff and blue, the old traditions of the family.