Stourhead

According to Penelope Hobhouse, writing in The Story of Gardening, the landscape garden’s grassy meadows, serpentine lakes, gently contoured hills, and artfully arranged clumps of trees seem the very model of Englishness, and almost “indistinguishable from the ‘real’ countryside.” Indeed, the great English landscape gardens and parks that remain today—such as Stowe, Stourhead, and many others—do resemble natural countryside.

Stourhead in Wiltshire, England is a prime example of an eighteenth century garden inspired by landscape paintings. Henry Hoare I (1705 - 85) designed the landscape and worked on it from 1745 to 73. He was inspired by landscape paintings, and by Vergil’s epic poem Aeneid (Book III), which tells of the journey of Aeneas, Rome’s founder. Hoare created a lake, and developed a peripheral walk in which “incidents” are revealed from the poem. As one walks around the lake, views of nature and eye catchers appear across the lake, invoking scenes from the poem.

Stourhead Bridge with the Pantheon in the distance (Photo by Lechona)

The eye catchers are both classical and gothic—a temple, a grotto, a pantheon, a bridge, an abbey, and so forth. The surrounding landscape includes a dense wood of dark conifers from northwest America, and a collection of rhododendrons and laurels. Christopher Thacker observes in The History of Gardens, that the design remains little changed, except for the addition of ornamental and exotic trees and shrubs in the nineteenth century. A visitor to Stourhead today sees a mature landscape that resembles natural country side.