Garden as Culture

A garden both reflects and creates the kind of culture we share. In the process cultures can be very tolerant of new expressions and new symbolism.

We simply say to ourselves, “Well, that’s the way things are right now.”

Today, for example, it is important for everyone to cultivate native plants. But hasn’t that always been the case with plant choices for the garden? What is popular becomes the path we often take. We simply agree that if many people are doing it, it must be the right thing at the current time.

If we seek a time when a new English garden emerged as an expression of the culture, one could propose the early 1700s into the middle of that century in England.

It was then that peope began to enjoy a kind of garden that was based on the paintings of the landscape, especially sky, clouds and mountains and plants as depicted. Thus from the beginning of the century there also emerged a number of desirable plants to include in the garden.

Many new plants were arriving in England from America. The English treasured American plants: trees, perennials, and shrubs, and, of course, the sweeping lawn. The English even grew a garden called “the American garden.”

Tim Richardson’s book The Arcadian Friends: Inventing the English Landscape Garden traces the development of the eighteenth century garden in England.

[Above] Richardson’s book is a wonderful introduction to the history of the English garden.

According to Richardson, around 1731 the Englishman Francis Dashwood (1708-1781) had the idea of including in the garden a parody of the Franciscan order when he reurned from one of his Grand Tours. He proposed that you have a real, live Franciscan friar walking the grounds of your garden, chatting with visitors.

So religion, specifically the Franciscan Order, became linked with current garden design practice. You had to have a Franciscan friar in your garden. This friar made the garden his home and interacted with visitors. It was the culture’s newest addition to the English garden.

{above} St. Francis of Assisi receives the Stigmata. [Oil on panel by the Master of Hoogstraten, c. 1510]

Todd Longstafffe-Gowan wrote in his book English Garden Eccentrics, “Dashwood is now known as an amateur architect and an innovative garden builder. The garden then included a grotto, bridge, a Temple of Venus, unrestrainedly erotic gardens…At certain occasions Francis officiated as High Priest in the dress of a Franciscan Monk. He ridiculed Catholic ceremonies and mysteries.”

And it was all accepted in the name of ‘garden’. The eighteenth century culture defined the garden in its own way. Today it stands as an important page in the long history of the development of the English garden.