It may be observed as somewhat unaccountable, the excellent taste of their landscape painters was never transferred from the canvass to their style of ornamental gardening. But so it was: the people who had all kinds of assistance from artists of the first order, and from classical and picturesque association within their own territory, long remained blind to what was so natural and so manifestly within their reach!
In useful and profitable gardening, the fine climate of Italy gave great facility for successful cultivation of a profusion of the finest fruits, and being an advanced post for the reception of all valuable plants from both Asia and Africa, it much sooner than other European countries possessed culinary vegetables in great variety, and of salad-herbs a numerous list.
From the commencement of the sixteenth century the improvements in gardening began to take the form of a system. The increasing splendour of the English court, during the reigns of the virgin queen and her father, and the princely establishments of some of her courtiers, called the art of gardening into notice and repute, and gave an impulse to the yet dormant powers of horticultural practicability. Continental artists were generally employed in laying out the greater works. The sum of their professional ability was chiefly geometrical, an exact knowledge of straight lines, squares, and curves; they could line out a polygonal basin to a hair’s breadth, and construct a many-tiered jet d’eau in the midst. Such, however, were the principal features admitted into, and which constituted the style of those days, and continued through that and the succeeding [p267] century. In the latter (the seventeenth), and during the domestic broils which then convulsed the kingdoms, gardening appears to have been, as to style, almost stationary. In the mean time, however, the Reformation had been silently working salutary effects, not only in the deliverance of men from a servile religious thraldom, but also from the dogmas of precedential custom, and by imbuing them with a spirit of independence with respect to others, gave, what was better, a self-dependence in exertion, whether of mind or action; and, after a few years of revolutionary excess, and abuse of this inestimable acquisition of mental freedom, at last, in 1688, settled down into that rational state of composure, which, with few interruptions, has happily remained to the present day.
Then it was that gardening, in all its branches, was patronised and encouraged. Tournefort in France, and Ray in England, enlightened the public by their description, enumeration, and classification of plants. Evelyn called attention to the usefulness and national value of forest trees; several authors developed the mysteries of kitchen-garden and orchard management; collections of exotic plants were made, and glass-cases built for their reception; floriculture received a share of the gardener’s attention; and in short, there seemed to be, about this time, a general movement by united exertion to gain what had been previously neglected, and complete what had been only feebly attempted.
The accession of William and Mary to the British throne very naturally introduced Dutch gardening and architecture. The old Italian and French styles received very little, if any, amendment. The avenue, the canal, the rectangular clumps and borders, the shelves and slopes, the terrace, with its stairs, were all maintained and extended, the whole surrounded by exactly-clipped hedges, and bedotted with fanciful and unnaturally cut trees. This expensive and ridiculous fashion had its admirers for a time, but at last fell into disrepute, not by a bull or anathema, but chiefly by the keen sarcasm of a Pope!
Kitchen-gardens were improved by additional brick-walls for the more delicate kinds of fruit, as vines, figs, peaches, nectarins, apricots, &c. Hot-beds were in general use, and, many hot-houses were erected for different kinds of the above [p268] as well as for the pine-apple. In those days our fruit-lists contained twenty sorts, of which there were many varieties. Of culinary vegetables there were, of roots eighteen, of shoots four, of leaves fourteen, of flowers three, of seeds three, of pods two, and of herbs for all purposes twenty-five.
From that period, the commencement of the eighteenth century, every succeeding year brought forth new objects of the gardener’s care, and improved operations for his imitation. The acquirements of natural science, radiating from such a character as Sir Hans Sloane, whose theories were imbibed and confirmed by the practical abilities of Philip Miller, were, at that time, like the orb of day bursting from behind a cloud! Scientific light and practical life were shed on all around, and the foundation was then laid, by their united means, on which has been raised almost all the varied structure of modern horticultural improvement. It would be impossible, as needless, to give the names of the authors, who, from this period, showed themselves in print on the subject of gardening, for, were the respective merits of their literary labours noticed, and the successive discoveries and advances chronicled, the amount would be voluminous indeed. But the following celebrated names cannot, in justice to their memories, be omitted. The great Linnæus was deservedly at the head of the botanical branch of gardening; Miller, with his satellites, Gordon, Lee, and Aiton were at that of practical botany, as well as of all the other parts of operative gardening; and, as a leading orchardist, Kennedy, and many others on miscellaneous subjects, produced respectable directories and kalendars.
The improvement of ornamental gardening kept pace with that of the more useful. Soon as the old style of rigid formality had been exposed, it was exploded; more refined principles of taste prevailed; its outlines became better defined; it was found that there are certain fixed principles in nature, on which the elements of true taste are naturally (not capriciously) founded; that delight and gratification to the eye, or mind, can only arise from the harmony and fitness of the combinations of art or design; that the sensations of beauty and sublimity can only be conveyed by congruous associations of parts to the whole; and that the incidents found in [p269] conjunction in nature, should be the objects of imitation of the gardener’s, as they had long been that of the painter’s art, with this exception, that in the immediate vicinity of the mansion as much of the old style should be retained as will harmonize with the necessary artificial façade of the architecture; but soon as departed from these creations of art, let then appear the varied flow of nature’s devious garb.
The art of painting had, in the best schools, proceeded on such principles, and the formation of real scenery was improved from what was so prominent in the fictitious. Some painters, even Claude Lorraine himself, have occasionally erred, from what may be called exuberance of design, in producing extreme effect, by introducing lights which never can be seen by day or night, at dawn or twilight; by trees which never existed, and by forms[49] which had only an imaginary existence. Landscape gardeners, too, in the transition from the tame to the more natural style, have run into error, by imitating admirable incidents frequently seen in nature’s works, forgetting that their value springs entirely from their having happened by chance, but, as works of art, lose all their interest, and become insignificant.
We are now arrived on the confines of our own times, of which we will take a general view, and which will sufficiently show the accumulated assemblage of horticultural objects, productions, and knowledge; and which will also give, what was proposed, a comparative survey of the extent of our improvements.