English Landscape Gardening, "Leaping The Fence?"

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Was horace walpole justified when he said that english landscape gardening in his time had “leapt the fence, and found all nature was a garden”? Britain, in the eighteenth century, was a country undergoing many great radical changes and reforms. Innovation and progress in the fields of science and mathematics at the time, were leading onto great, consequent, leaps in other socially important areas too, most notably; in mechanisation and transportation, bringing Britain to the forefront of the industrial revolution. Such progress at this time evoked a great new age in travel, not only across Britain, but also the rest of the continent, and beyond. Such developments opened up many new avenues of exploration, and historians were finally able to compile accurate chronologies of European history and antiquarians were finally able to compile accurate studies of the classical past, including the styles and innovative developments in architecture and design. Through the wealth of new travel and learning, Britain was lead through greater changes still; many of the travellers, returning to impress their findings upon society and install the latest architectural precedents of the continent. During the seventeenth century the primary garden style of England, was known as the “jardin à la française” and was a style based on the principles of strict geometry and symmetry, aimed towards imposing a greater sense of order and rigid organisation, over the natural. Inspired by many Italian gardens and architecture of the renaissance, the fashion and style soon spread through many of the courts throughout the rest of Europe, including England. The “French formal garden” reached its climax in the seventeenth century and the principles behind such designs were widely accepted and adopted. Many considered that the reason for the existence of the garden was the aesthetic

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