Landscape design history & theory: landscape architecture and garden design origins by Tom Turner

Author:Tom Turner [Turner, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Gardenvisit.com
Published: 2014-02-13T05:00:00+00:00

10.3 Literary works which have influenced gardens and landscapes

Clients and designers are influenced by general as well as professional literature. The following books have inspired ideas about the use and character of outdoor green realms.

1. The Bible (c1500-500 BCE) had an influence on European culture which was both wide and deep. The Garden of Eden story led Christians to think of gardens as places of unattainable perfection and of horticulture as a virtuous activity. When the making of enclosed pleasure gardens revived after the Dark Ages the relationship of gardens to landscapes was often conceived as in the Song of Songs: ‘A garden enclosed is my sister, my spouse; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed’. The term hortus conclusus comes from the Song of Songs (in a Latin translation) and came into English as ‘enclosed garden’. By linking the idea to the Virgin Mary, St Jerome inspired both garden paintings and actual gardens. The Romance of the Rose picked up on the passionate aspects of the Song of Songs, leading readers to associate gardens with romantic and erotic love. [W: Garden of Eden] [W: Song of Songs] [G: Romance of the rose] [W: Roman de la rose]

2. The Ramayana (c 7th century BCE) and the Mahabharata (c2nd century BCE) are Sanskrit Epics. They had an immense influence in India and contain the oldest references to Hindu gardens. Typically the gardens were bathing ponds in flowery glades attached to palaces. This long remained the classic garden type in the Indian sub-continent. Hindu gardens were places of luxury and places were men could enjoy the sight of bathing girls. [W: Ramayana] [W: Mahabharata]

3. Columella (AD 4 – ca. AD 70) Book 10 of Columella’s De Re Rustica has more to say about the craft of gardening ‘than the rest of Classical Antiquity put together’24. His detailed instructions on how to grow cabbage, lettuce, onions, cucumbers, herbs etc were still being quoted and followed in the eighteenth century. [W: Columella]

4. Pliny the Younger (61–c112) wrote letters to his friends describing his gardens and his use of them. They are the best textual source for Roman gardens and guided the re-birth of European garden design during the renaissance. His villa gardens were places for outdoor living and the enjoyment of literary friends and polite company. [W: Pliny]

5. The Tale of Genji (early 11th century) captured and held the imagination of Japanese garden owners for many centuries. It is a novel, written in the period of Sakuteiki, and tells of an aristocratic life in an earthly garden paradise. The characters dream of luxury, romance, Buddhism and nirvana. [W: Tale of Genji]

6. Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili (1499) revived the association of gardens with classical European mythology. The woodcuts inspired generations of garden owners to include mythological images and ornamental knot patterns in their gardens. [W: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili]

7. John Milton’s Paradise Lost 1667 was much quoted by eighteenth century garden owners who saw their estates as rural retreats from the hurly burley of politics and city life. [W: Paradise Lost] [G: Walpole on Milton]

8.

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