Elements of the Landscape Movement

During the landscape movement, the highly manicured, formal gardens of the Renaissance softened into more naturalistic gardens. This was an evolutionary process, that occurred over the course of one hundred years, yet several basic design elements emerged.

Temple of Ancient Virtue at Stowe Landscape Gardens in Buckingham, England (photo by mym)

Penelope Hobhouse (The Story of Gardening) and Christopher Thacker (The History of Gardens) identify these basic design elements:

• House-to-borrowed view – the garden flowed seamlessly and uninterrupted from the house to the distant landscape. Landscapers went to great lengths to create these living pictures, sometimes moving whole villages, creating lakes, or excavating hillsides.
• The Ha-ha – a sunken wall and ditch created a kind of inverted fence, for keeping grazing animals and wild creatures out of the garden, but in the landscape picture. This enabled the area around the house, the park, and the distant country side to become one sweeping vista.
• Serpentine lines – the rigid lines of the Renaissance and formal gardens softened. Serpentine lakes and curving streams replaced geometric fountains and ponds. Contoured land masses and natural looking valleys that emulated nature became the ideal.
• Trees and plants – forests and copse of trees silhouetted against the sky replaced the topiary of the formal garden. Shrubs, meadows and lawns replaced flower gardens and flower beds. The shrubs and trees coming from the Americas were sought after and integrated into the landscape.
• The Eye Catcher – architectural or natural objects that created a focal point were integrated into the landscape. Temples, obelisks, bridges, pagodas, grottos, and ruins were used, often marking stages in a circuit walk. As the viewer followed a winding path or road, these eye catchers were revealed. Sometimes the objects told a story, like the political commentary of Stowe gardens in Buckingham; or represented a classical ideal, like the Stourhead gardens in Wiltshire, England.

The Grotto at Painshill Park in Surrey, England (photo by Amandajm)

 

These elements worked together to form a landscape that appeared as though it was simply part of nature. The landscapes were replicas of the ideal, and often indistinguishable from nature itself.