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New Video Pits French against English Garden

New video pits French against English garden.

The English garden took a dramatic new direction in the early 1700s. It was then that certain horticulturists, writers, poets, clergymen, and aristocrats decided that the garden ought to look more natural, and not so ruled by symmetry.

A new short video produced by the History of Ideas presents the differences between the formal French garden and the more natural English garden.  It provides a bit of history and garden design theory. At the same time it is fun to watch.

Here is a link on YouTube to the video called History: French & English Gardens. [below]

The eighteenth century English garden style called ‘modern’ emerged and endured well into the nineteenth century when it was mixed with more formal elements in the design of the landscape.

That modern design was recognized in America as well, both in the eighteenth and well into the nineteenth century.

James Vick wrote in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly in January, 1881, “What is called the modern or natural style of landscape gardening had its origin in England at the commencement of the eighteenth century. Previously to this time the style of ornamental gardening in Great Britain was similar to that of the nations of Europe, which, in contradistinction to the natural, is termed the artificial [or geometrical] style.”

By early 1900 there was a return to the formal garden both in England and in America at that same time that the profession of the ‘landscape architect’ was born. That professional recognition distinguised the architect from the mere ‘plantsman’ who for decades had advised on landscape gardening.

The early eighteenth century was a time when the English proposed a kind of garden, unlike the more popular formal design of the French, and called it ‘natural’.

It changed landscape design forever.

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