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Posted on 1:14 PM by Wanto and filed under
By Christina Courtney
The Moorish garden in Spain generally consisted of several courtyards, known as patios, with water as the connecting link. Many patios contained a long canal with a zemral fountain and there were tiled walls and floors.
During the sixteenth century the initiative passed to Rome, where the architect Bramante designed a papal garden within the Vatican. This was the forerunner of the High Renaissance style, with a magnificent arrangement of steps and terraces, which became a prototype for everything which followed. From then on gardens became even more ostentatious in design, with terraces at different levels retained by walls and interconnected by grand staircases. Water again became a major feature, as it was in Islamic gardens. It was pressurized and used spectacularly, progressing down an incline or displayed in an elaborate fountain. While these Renaissance gardens were still places for cool retreat, with shade and water of great importance, they were also showplaces where the site and its vegetation were deliberately manipulated. The Italians were really the first to make decorative use of plants, with hedges, for example, used to link the house and garden structurally. The Renaissance movement originating in Italy spread northwards, together with increased knowledge about plants and their cultivation. In France the small formal gardens within the walls of mowed chateaux moved outside, becoming much grander in scope.
The Greeks discovered the delights of Persian culture, including their paradise gardens, when they were waging war in Asia during the third century BC. During the first century BC we also hear of influential Greeks having vegetables planted in their gardens, to furnish their tables. Homer wrote of Alcinous' large walled garden which grew vegetables, including beans, with an orchard of apple, pear and fig trees.
In the seventeenth century Andre le Mire changed French garden planning significantly. With the opening of the chateau garden at Vaux-le-Vicomte in 1661 he established a style which was to influence the whole of Europe for a century. His gardens were still basically formal and geometric in character but they became much more elaborate and interesting with long magnificent vistas, pools or rectangular canals and grand parterres.
The English term 'knot garden' refers to the style of flower beds which now evolved. They were small, usually raised, and laid Out in geometric patterns, edged with dwarf clipped shrubs such as box or thrift or with a herb like rosemary.
Though most of Le Mitre's gardens were unashamedly for show they were still not places for colour or floral display; canalized and playing water, clipped and trained vegetation, statuary and the elaborate parterres provided the visual interest, along with the people walking about in them. This stylized layout, originally designed for large chateaux, was adapted to the quite humble manor house. Like the grand Italian gardens, as they became out of scale with the use of the individual, a smaller secret garden had to be created within them for family use.
During the sixteenth century the initiative passed to Rome, where the architect Bramante designed a papal garden within the Vatican. This was the forerunner of the High Renaissance style, with a magnificent arrangement of steps and terraces, which became a prototype for everything which followed. From then on gardens became even more ostentatious in design, with terraces at different levels retained by walls and interconnected by grand staircases. Water again became a major feature, as it was in Islamic gardens. It was pressurized and used spectacularly, progressing down an incline or displayed in an elaborate fountain. While these Renaissance gardens were still places for cool retreat, with shade and water of great importance, they were also showplaces where the site and its vegetation were deliberately manipulated. The Italians were really the first to make decorative use of plants, with hedges, for example, used to link the house and garden structurally. The Renaissance movement originating in Italy spread northwards, together with increased knowledge about plants and their cultivation. In France the small formal gardens within the walls of mowed chateaux moved outside, becoming much grander in scope.
The Greeks discovered the delights of Persian culture, including their paradise gardens, when they were waging war in Asia during the third century BC. During the first century BC we also hear of influential Greeks having vegetables planted in their gardens, to furnish their tables. Homer wrote of Alcinous' large walled garden which grew vegetables, including beans, with an orchard of apple, pear and fig trees.
In the seventeenth century Andre le Mire changed French garden planning significantly. With the opening of the chateau garden at Vaux-le-Vicomte in 1661 he established a style which was to influence the whole of Europe for a century. His gardens were still basically formal and geometric in character but they became much more elaborate and interesting with long magnificent vistas, pools or rectangular canals and grand parterres.
The English term 'knot garden' refers to the style of flower beds which now evolved. They were small, usually raised, and laid Out in geometric patterns, edged with dwarf clipped shrubs such as box or thrift or with a herb like rosemary.
Though most of Le Mitre's gardens were unashamedly for show they were still not places for colour or floral display; canalized and playing water, clipped and trained vegetation, statuary and the elaborate parterres provided the visual interest, along with the people walking about in them. This stylized layout, originally designed for large chateaux, was adapted to the quite humble manor house. Like the grand Italian gardens, as they became out of scale with the use of the individual, a smaller secret garden had to be created within them for family use.
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