Much of the impetus
of the landscape movement was supplied by the poet Alexander Pope
whose Epistle to Burlington of 1731 advised, 'In all, let
Nature never be forgot ... Consult the Genius of the Place/ He was
also to a great extent responsible for the 'grottomania' which
gripped makers of fashionable gardens despite the scorn of Dr
Johnson who wrote 'A grotto is not often the wish or pleasure of an
Englishman, who has more frequent need to solicit than to exclude
the sun.' Grottoes and hermitages were part of the romantic
Picturesque ideal, relating landscape gardening to literature and
painting in a very direct way. At Corby Castle in Cumbria during
the 1720s Lord Thomas Howard developed a part of Inglewood Forest
which he thought resembled Milton's Eden in Paradise Lost.
His achievement is described in 1734 by Sir John Clerk. There was,
and still is 'A very agreeable winding walk down to the River where
there are some artificial grotos ... and statues of the rural
deities ... [and] a cascade 140 feet high.'
The hermit's cave at
Bowood in Wiltshire is fossil-lined and, with the adjacent cascade
which pours with great vigour over rugged moss-and fern-clad rocks,
was designed in 1785 for the first Marquess of Lansdowne by Charles
Hamilton, taking the scene from a painting by Poussin. The early
nineteenth-century turretted flint folly at Houghton Lodge,
Hampshire, the mock castle at Hagley Hall, Worcestershire and the
general vogue for Gothic buildings such as Brown's bath house at
Corsham Court are similarly inspired by the Picturesque
ideal.
"To improve the scenery of a country, and to
display its native beauties with advantage, is an art which
originated in England, and has therefore been called English
Gardening', yet as this expression is not sufficiently
appropriate, especially since Gardening, in its more confined sense
of Horticulture, has been likewise brought to the greatest
perfection in this country, I have adopted the term Landscape
Gardening, as most proper, because the art can only be advanced
and perfected by the united powers of the landscape painter
and the practical gardener. The former must conceive a plan,
which the latter may be able to execute; for though the painter may
represent a beautiful landscape on his canvas, and even surpass
Nature by the combination of her choicest materials, yet the
luxuriant imagination of the. painter must be subjected to
the gardener's practical knowledge in planting, digging, and
moving earth; that the simplest and readiest means of accomplishing
each design may be suggested; since it is not by vast labour, or
great expense, that Nature is generally to be improved."
Humphrey Repton; Sketches and Hints on
Landscape Gardening, 1795
The landscapers had
banished not only parterres, topiary and terraces from many
houses, but also the productive parts of the garden. Fruit and
vegetables were relegated to positions out of sight from the house,
and sometimes a considerable distance from it. Many of the walled
gardens which today provide rich soil and a sheltered environment
for roses and other shrubs and climbing plants are a legacy
from this period. Even at the time they were built, walled gardens
would have been used to grow flowers for decoration in the house,
but priority was given to providing vegetables and fruit for what
were, in those days, large households of family, servants and
guests. Advantage could be taken of sun-warmed south- and
west-facing walls for grapes, figs and peaches. For growing tender
plants and for over-wintering evergreens that were susceptible to
frost, greenhouses had been in use since the end of the sixteenth
century, and by the end of the eighteenth many were heated by hot
air, steam or hot water.
Unlike other exotic
fruit, oranges and lemons were not consigned to the kitchen
gardens, but occupied handsome buildings in prominent
positions.
