Chapter Four |
THE NEW STYLES |
|
But what sort of style was it that so perfectly suited all these new markets?It was the 'gardenesque' in its parterre mode, and which many gardeners still carry out with great fervour every summer. It began to become 'the rage' in the early nineteenth century; by 1836, the thirty-three year old Paxton could write: "Grouping, or arranging showy plants, en masse, has of late years become so general in all good gardens, that we are somewhat surprised some efficient person has not attempted to give practical instructions, so as to ensure a succession of beautiful flowering plants for this purpose. Although the system has become almost universal, it is, we conceive, but imperfectly understood..." The hints he goes on to give "apply to flower gardens with small detached asymmetrical beds, whether formed upon grass (which is the newest style), or gravel:and as one or two shabby or declining beds spoil the whole effect, the earliest opportunity should be embraced to refit them..." "...in fact, until the last few years, flower gardens were for the most part a mere secondary object, as far a regards management; ... the principal things in the flower garden were such as annual lupins, thrift, double feverfew, bachelors buttons, honesty etc, with some bulbs, and these planted almost indiscriminately, without reference to height, colour, or duration; there were none of the petunias, dahlias, verbenas, calceolarias, eschscholtzias, and dozens of equally elegant plants that adorn so beautifully our borders and beds at the present time..." "...There are some who advocate beds with mixed plants... still they never have that striking effect that the same beds would have if filled with suitable plants, arranged in groups, and in large flower gardens we think them decidedly bad" This article from 'Paxton's Magazine of Botany' (the first of any garden magazines that traded upon the reputation of a famous gardener), is Janus-faced, looking backwards to the very beginnings of the bedding system in the earliest nineteenth century (when simple mixtures of hardy flowers were fashionable), and forwards to the fullest heights of the Victorian infatuation. And of course Paxton was then intending to become that 'Efficient person', though twenty years later, he'd become so grand and so famous that he had rather little to do with the furtherance of garden design. Paxton's ideas about layout were not original. The detached asymmetrical beds to which he refers in these early articles are just the sort already illustrated by Loudon's, and to be found at Dropmore. This, the type location of such things, with its tadpole shapes cut out of the lawns, had beds filled with a simple mixture of two or three species of flowers. Though Loudon's illustrators copied the plans, and should therefore have known, it isn't absolutely clear whether it was actually the first garden where such beds had been made (in general, new developments, whether of science or interior decoration, often happen in several places at once, which inevitably gives rise to later rancours). Naturally, for such an important development, there were quite soon several claimants, especially once it was clear, that is, that the style was in fact going to become supreme. Everyone likes a touch of glory. The new media provided the forum for other contenders. There were, by mid-century, two; Dropmore, and Campden Hill. The gardener at Campden Hill was a John Caie, and he was beginning to write and talk about the new grouping system (that is, grouping a quantity of plants of the same species by themselves in a single bed), from the late 1830's onwards. He enjoyed writing and talking to such an extent that he gave up gardening altogether some years later to devote his considerable energies (if rather lesser imagination), to writing and editing (his interesting life history can be found on page XX). Even by 1840, Caie has a paper on the grouping system for flower beds at Campden Hill (fifteen years after they were first illustrated), claiming that that garden was the original location of the style. He was still, at that time, gardener to the Dowager Duchess of Bedford, and the paper includes (usefully for anyone now wanting to copy an 1840's bedding scheme) a rare and rather good colour plate. However, he had already been laying claim to the style for several years: much later, a correspondent to another garden magazine de"Izhe 'Gardeners Chronicle' of the same year about how to start looking for plants to fit the theories. It also sparked off a controversy that was to last into the 1880's, by which time subtlety had at last prevailed. For instance, a writer to the 'Cottage Gardener' of 1850 opined "There is no doubt that arranging flowers according to their contrast is more pleasing to the eye than placing them according to their harmonies. Consequently, a blue flower should be placed next to an orange flower, a yellow near a violet... ' Another went on 'One of the most beautiful bouquets I ever saw was comprised of a mass of scarlet geraniums interspersed with fairy white roses, and surrounded by half blown double white camellias. A very pretty bouquet for mourning may be formed of white flowers surrounded by double violets. No bouquet is good without a rich green and a dead white" In this period, then, there was a general passion for deep and intense colours, strongly contrasted. To help the aspiring bedder, a colour wheel plan was published: violet/lavender/blue/sea green/green/olive green/ yellow/apricot/orange/scarlet/red/lilac/violet. Readers could choose neighbours for harmony, opposites for contrast (most respondents liked contrast). By 1853, McIntosh's 'The Book of the Garden' propounded that 'there has been an improvement of late years in the arrangement of both form and colour in our first-rate flower-gardens; the first step to which was, grouping the plants in masses..."He does at least point out that the numerous examples he gives of colourful planting schemes have no theoretical basis, as no theory yet advanced has proved authoritative. Beauty remains in{the eye of the beholder. McIntosh, as we might expect was a considerable admirer of the three primary colours. These he elaborates into primary harmonies, which are combinations of orange and blue, purple and yellow, green and red. There are also tertiary colours - olive (green mixed with purple), citron (green and orange), russet (orange and purple), as well as secondary harmonies; olive mixed with orange, citron to purple, russet to green. Finally he can no longer resist giving a few rules: "As a practical rule in planting parterres, the most intense colours should be placed in the centre, gradually softening down towards the margin of the bed or the sides of the garden. "He goes on with page on page of possible colour combinations. "Contrast of colour - The rule in this case is to put one of the primitive colours - red, blue, or yellow - next another of these colours, or some other colour formed by compounding the other two. In bedding plants, wherever a handsome plant of the colour required cannot be obtained for any of the particular beds, white, or some neutral tint, should be employed as a substituted" Nowhere in any of this, or for that matter, in any of the other gardeners' writings on colour is there any suggestion that flowers may contain several colours, let alone veinings, tones or washes of one colour over another. That would have made it all too difficult to theorise. None of the mid-century garden writers has much to contribute to the debate and the grip of beds in the familiar scarlet, yellow and blue simply tightened. The most interesting comments on colour at this period come, not surprisingly, from interior decorators, artists and architects. However, it's important to remember that the triumvirate's grip, however much it was shrugged off by those with a sophisticated eye, remained imposed upon the less educated for the entire century, and even now 'Parks Departments' displays show it with sometimes only the slightest modifications... The architect and garden designer Nesfield, who'd already been playing around with the seventeenth century idea of filling parterres with coloured earths and sands (producing some exquisitely subtle colour schemes) waited until 1862 to publish, in the Gardeners Chronicle, some really fine colour combinations that he thought would be good in the flower garden. The paper is quite long, but some of the nicest include a subtle scheme in buff, olive, grey, and one or two soft greens. It's rather Robert Adam in style. The same magazine also ran an article by Mr Crace, whose firm had become one of the most famous interior decorators in Regency Britain. Speaking at the society of Artists on the colours used at the International Exhibition, he said"Avoid blazing contrasts of colours, such as bright red next bright green; or bright blue next bright yellow; such contrasts are not harmonious... Nothing is so charming and so refreshing to the eye as an harmonious arrangement of colours.. ' He went on to suggest some wonderful sounding colour combinations, some of which{ would look quite marvellous in a garden of the period, as well as stretching the gardeners' imagination for suitable plants. ============================================================================================================= |
|
|
Copyright David Stuart 2004 |
|