Garden and Culture

 

Overview

The gardens in the world are different from country to country and from region to region and from time to time, and differ according to the profusion and affluence of flowers and leaves that bloom and fall according to the season, but they are all one in all, given that they are gifts with a thousand faces given by nature entering the garden of the house.

These gardens, which are grouped according to different regions and cultures around the world, maintained a consistent appearance that was formatted in a certain pattern, as they had almost consistent basic principles based on the problems of vegetation and irrigation in accordance with the climate climate and cultural characteristics unique to the culture.

 

British Garden

Renaissance garden of geometric order

England is today famous for its English Garden, but it was one of Europe’s poorest garden cultures until the arrival of the English Landscape Garden in the 18th century. In the Middle Ages, when frequent wars and black plagues were prevalent, functional gardens were created in some limited places, such as monasteries, and gardens for beauty were difficult to imagine. The turmoil of the Middle Ages began to stabilize as it moved to the Tudor Dynasty (late 15th-early 17th century) and later laid the foundation for the British Empire. The 100-year war ended with the victory of France, and people returned to their homeland. The nobles who returned to the mainland of England once again experienced a 30-year rose war. What was gained through two wars over a long period of time was rather the weakening of their forces. Henry VII took advantage of this social atmosphere to strengthen his power, establishing the Tudor dynasty, and by the time of Henry VIII, the Tudor dynasty was in its prime. Henry VIII built a garden as a symbol of his power. In 1525, after the death of Thomas Wolsey (1475-1530), Henry VIII confiscated his mansion and remodeled it into the Hampton Court palace, competing against France’s Palace of Fontainebleau. The gardens generally followed the French style, and later the Knot Garden was created and the statues were placed all over the garden, adding to the Italian style.

The history of the modern gardens in England was authentic from the Hampton Court, a symbol of the mighty kingship, but on the other hand, there was a garden created by ordinary people who had to nourish food to survive. Since the Middle Ages, the early cottage gardens, which have been developed as a means of living for the family, have been filled with vegetables. For as much production as possible, plants were also planted in the small soil around the house, and this tradition gradually changed into a garden made of flowers from the beginning of social stability when England entered modern society. The cottage gardens have been forgotten for many years and then settled in a unique English garden style with the influence of the 20th-century art and craft movement, the Anne Hathaway garden, in particular, is a place where you can meet the cottage garden of the Tudor era in the 16th century.

The typical garden created by a British garden where you can see something beautiful when you care for something fiercely is called the Cottage Garden. In the early days, they cultivated vegetables in their backyard to survive, most faithfully following the motif of “growning garden” found in the Bible. (Nietzsche said that the process expresses each other’s unconsciousness,) This can be explained by the process of gardening and grooming, which allows me to feel the beauty of unconsciousness that I did not realize. In this sense, the Cottage Garden in England is a garden that gives you the best sense of the beauty of the process.

 

 

Landscape Garden

By the era of Elizabeth I, Britain had formed a strong monarchy since Henry VIII, and a high level of culture, such as the literature of William Shakespeare, had blossomed. Britain, which has not been able to make clear its successor after the death of Queen Elizabeth I, is once again in turmoil, and a major change in the garden occurred as well. The French garden style, which was abundant until the Tudor dynasty, has become a target of criticism, and calls for breaking the mold of the garden locked in the formal style are beginning to emerge through literature.

The appearance of landscape gardens began in the late 17th century, the biggest change in English gardens. The background of the landscape garden can be discussed with the basis of understanding Alexander Pope, ‘Alexander Pope is considered to be one of the best of the neoclassical poets in England, and the one who had the greatest influence on the birth of the picturesque gardens. In 1713, he claimed that the gardens that resemble nature are more beautiful than formal gardens, as saying ‘People of the Roman era enjoyed the light, cheerfulness, and yet simplicity of nature in their gardens. This pleasure makes our minds more noble and serene,’ the poet of Neo-classicalism, ‘Neoclassical Augustan was a cultural style that began in England in an effort to recreate the era of Augustine, the Roman emperor who was peaceful after the civil war. As a stable society in the Tudor era entered the 17th century, many social problems arose, and neoclassical Augustan emerged to solve these problems, and the second golden age was celebrated. During this period, neoclassical Augustan was able to quickly spread its artistic tastes and styles throughout Europe, with artists, merchants, designers and architects forming a close network’.

With the Grand Tour, ‘The interest in ancient Roman culture increased explosively due to the excavation of Pompeii ruins in Italy, and British aristocrats were exposed to books on Roman thought and knowledge through Grand Tours. And as a large number of works of art entered the UK, the neoclassical Augustine style grew rapidly. British historian Lawrence Eachard (1670–1730) wrote, “August made the happiest world and was the happiest king in the world,” and inspired people to admire the Roman era. King George I of England wished to be himself a new Augustine Emperor by wisely solving many of the social problems that were raided at the time. Many writers, painters, architects, and gardeners have tried to bring material and mental happiness and glory of the Roman era in a chaotic British society. In the 18th century, Palladio-style architecture and neoclassical Augustine-style gardens were works that reproduced the glory of the Roman period.’

 

In 1727 Sir. John Clerk (1676-1755) sang the ideal beauty of enjoying the landscape in the countryside through the poem The Country Sheet, and Alexander Pope (1688-1744) claimed that French formal garden shows low beauty and true beauty is the beauty that resembles nature.

The desire for political freedom and the tiredness felt in the stereotyped French garden led to the desire for a new garden, and this desire made an important turning point for the English garden.

Grand tour, which was popular with the young, wealthy aristocrats at the time, made many Britons interested in Italian gardens, wanted to create landscapes in front of their homes, and created the most natural but artificial British landscape gardens.

In the early 18th century, there was a growing interest in the Italian landscape expressed in landscape paintings by artists such as Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin and attempts to create a new culture by interpreting these landscapes in a classical way. The tiredness of strictly controlled formal gardens and yearning for nature-like spaces began to make landscape paintings that were no more than flat into three-dimensional ones when they needed the creation of new forms of gardens. This result created the Landscape Garden in England.

 

William Shenstone (1714-1763) who regarded the landscape garden as an art that expanded the scope of landscape painting trapped in a frame, and classified the beauty of landscape painting into three categories. These three elements later developed into an important concept of landscape gardening. The three beauties are first, Sublime, which means absolute beauty including natural beauty, secondly “Beautiful,” which means beauty that ordinary people can easily feel, and lastly, “Melancholy,” a sad beauty often expressed in a desolate form, a poet who sang the scenery of the countryside, said the garden resembled a dramatic poem, and created a view point where visitors could see the scenery while expressing the beautiful scenery in his garden work. Experience the scenery through the view has become the main way to appreciate landscape gardens, and various landscape sequences have been created using curved walkways.

The Ha-ha technique also attracted scenic views outside of the territory into the garden. The landscape garden, which was born and started to be created by writers, was established as a genre by William Kent (1684-1784) in the 1730s, and Kent, an ordinary artist, began to make landscape gardens using his painting techniques. This means that the landscape painters began to jump directly into the garden building, and although landscape artists had designed the garden through paintings so far, they later played a role in making garden designers appear in society.

Roman sculptures and garden buildings were the first to be used in Chatsworth House garden, but they became the most popular garden in England, such as Rousham House Garden, Stowe Landscape Garden, and Stourhead Garden. The vast landscape garden was also open to the public, and Richmond Park, designed and created by Charles Bridgeman (1680-1783) was a classic example of the transformation into a public park.

Kent’s disciple Lancelot Brown (Lancelot Brown, 1716-1783) plays a role in spreading landscape gardens across Britain and growing the garden industry. Because they were able to create new gardens at a relatively small cost compared to remodeling buildings, many nobles carried out projects to change their gardens, and many landscape gardens spread throughout England as a means of showing their wealth and power. He became more famous under the nickname “Capability Brown” for emphasizing the capability that the landscape has to persuade customers.

A Stowe garden is a rare garden where three changes coexist trimmed by the designer Charles Bridgeman, William Kent, and Capability Brown.

Born in the English Baroque style Garden, it influenced many aristocrats and politicians, playing a pioneering role in the English landscape garden, which in fact was recorded as the first English garden to produce garden guidebooks.

By visiting the garden according to the brochure and introducing similar elements in their own garden, the landscape garden played a major role in spreading quickly across the UK. Stowe Garden is also known for bringing about an innovative change in English landscape gardens.

Landscape gardens have been designed to appreciate gardens in one of the best views, but Stowe Garden is designed to stroll through the gardens or take a tour of connected copper lines to enjoy natural, beautiful, and connected scenery. Since then, many gardens have developed into landscape gardens with sequences along these patterns.

 

 

Traditions of Flower garden and Cottage garden 
Brown’s disciple Humphrey Repton (1752-1818) first added expertise to the realm of garden designers through the name Landscape Gardener. In particular, he is famous for persuading customers with the Red Book, which compares pre-construction and post-construction images through paintings. He proposed a popular landscape garden compared to Brown, and as he moved on to modern society, it could expand into the concept of the park. On the other hand, vegetable gardens or flower beds are often hidden in the wall due to landscape gardens.

Since none of the landscape paintings from Italy to England includes flower beds or garden, flowers or vegetables were hidden behind the fence as a natural procedure to imitate the painting. This created another type of garden called the Walled Garden in this era.

 

In the 1830s, there was a big change in society as the middle class grew in England. Changes in the garden began to increase interest in horticulture as various plants from the colonies began to be planted in Britain, and the flowers that had hidden over the fence began to come to the fore again. In 1832, John Claudius Loudon claimed a gardenesque created by the ‘principle of recognition’ rather than a picturesque garden that was used to create a landscape garden. The Principle of Recognition is that no creation that is perceived as an artwork should go against the laws of nature, and Loudon has created quite strict rules to apply this principle to the garden. For example, when planting trees, the rules were strictly applied to plant trees independently at sufficient intervals to prevent interference from one another while growing, and the gardener had to manage at least to promote the order they created themselves; artificially created lakes and streams must be made to look natural by planting on the waterfront; and the original plants should be carefully moved elsewhere. This theory researched ways to overcome the problems that trends of the time, which developed from the 17th century, had to plant rare plants such as tropical plants to make them look like art gardens, hindering their own growth.

The English garden, which has come within reach of the public interest, has established the beauty of the roughness and process created by the hands of non-mechanical production throughout the garden culture influenced by the Art and Craft movement, initiated by William Morris (1834-1896), and With further development, it has been becoming an important cultural heritage of the English garden by garden designers such as William Robinson and Gertude Jekyll, Vita Sackville-West.

It is not easy to answer the question of what the English garden is. It is not easy to find what British design is because European history is so complicated and interacts with one another. But the struggle to survive in barren nature and the British passion for creating gardens as a comfortable haven in a chaotic world is still creating a living garden. A garden that focuses on the pleasure of self-caring, rather than on seeing to boast of power or wealth, is a real English garden.

 

Moving visuality in the garden

The picturesque garden, which was the dominant garden form throughout Europe in the late 18th century and early 19th century, and its theoretical discussion, picturesque aesthetics, reflected ‘moving visuality’. As analyzed by Hirschfeld, picturesque garden using serpentine lines as a design principle have been upgraded to be superior to other arts thanks to the “motion” required of the subject when experiencing space. Also, picturesque theorists valued subtle and complex variations in painting and gardens rather than monotonous aspects of vision and they were discovering that garden art is a multisensory art that is completed through mutual coordination with other senses, not just visual.

 

From formal garden to picturesque garden

The French formal garden, which was popular in the 17th century, has an axis and a center point, and is designed to look most ideal view from the viewpoint. At this time, the view point was located on a relatively high level of the site, and this view is similar to the ‘bird’s eye view’ sketch at that time.

By the 18th century, the fashion of Bird Eye View ended. In picturesque gardens, the point of view descended to ground level (Hunt, 2000: 42). As the level of the viewpoint decreased, there was less chance to look at the scenery at a glance (Hunt, 2000: 47). In addition, the axis of garden, which was created by the perspective method, was changed to a serpentine line considered to be a natural form. As the viewer walks through the curved road, he experiences changes in the landscape that is obscured by planting or viscous objects. The garden consisted of a series of picturesque spaces as if unfolding a narrative, and the visitor participated in the space physically and mentally through association.

 

Picturesque garden: art of motion and emotion

Most picturesque theorists have sought to pursue its diversity rather than the monotony of vision (Lee and Pae, 2012). This is because the irregularities, sudden changes, and variations of contrast, which are considered to be the attributes of picturesque, are designed to create various aspects of vision through continuous stimulation.

From this we can see that the garden is an art that encompasses not only sight but other senses to create aesthetic experiences. German garden theorist Hirschfeld judges that garden is an art that produces motion and emotion, and in this respect it is superior to any other pure art form. Hirschfeld denounces France’s formal garden as an “old style” and instead advocates English picturesque style. This is because a formal garden with a strict symmetry and a stationary flat exterior was considered monotonous and contrasted with the ideals of nature (Parshall, 2001: 14). Instead, he prefers the serpentine line, the design principle of picturesque gardens. This is because the serpentine lines can create an illusion of motion, and these characteristics are considered to be similar to nature’s attributes (Parshall, 2003: 42).

According to Hirschfeld, garden art is a multisensory art that allows you to experience e-motion through motion (Hirschfeld, 2001: 137-146). The types of motions are as follows. First, there is a motion of natural elements such as leaves swaying in the wind. Second, there is a motion of visitors. Third, there is a relatively slow motion caused by changes in daytime, season, and weather. Fourth, there is an implicit and metaphorical motion created by statues and monuments. The motions listed above result in an “emotion” that touches the mind and heart of the visitor (Parshall, 2003: 40-44) 6).

Since painting relies on a two-dimensional plane, there is a limit to creating an illusion of motion, while a garden creates an aesthetic experience by organizing a sequence rather than a single scene. Also, if the appreciation of painting is limited to visual pleasure, the garden experience touches all senses (Parshall, 2003: 46). Architecture and sculpture are three-dimensional, but there is no motion of its own, and the illusion is only partially created through the motion of the appreciator, whereas in garden art, not only the motion of the appreciating subject, but also the motion of the natural elements itself occurs. In these points, Hirschfeld said, “No imitation art is more concerned with nature than garden art. That is, it cannot be more natural”(Hirschfeld, 2001: 145).

 

Humphry Repton: Landscape gardener designed various experiences

Repton admitted to being the successor to Brown, a celebrity in the English gardens, and wanted to emphasize his distinction from his disciples. He devised an original sketchbook called ‘Red Books’ to sketch landscapes before and after design and use them as a visual means of expressing and promoting his opinions to customers, and achieving huge success with this sketchbook.

 

 

The ‘Red Book’ has acquired its own artistry independently from his garden heritage and can be regarded as an art genre in this respect (Rogger, 2007). It is known that the sketch of ‘Red Book’ was drawn differently from the actual landscape, but Repton reproduced the landscape he considered ideal.

Repton knew not only the pictorial effect of a single sketch, but also the effect of the illusion of motion created by arranging several sketches, and utilized it in his sketch to make the reader experience it. In particular, the ‘cover’, which creates the effect of covering and re-exposing a part of the sketch, was not only suitable for contrasting before and after the improvement of the private property, but also creates the aesthetics of disappearance and revelation experienced while moving through the garden. It was also an excellent device.

At the base of his design principle, the intention is to diversify the viewpoint and organically connect them to give the viewer aesthetic experience of colorful scenery. Also, when the viewer was in a stationary state, the motion of the landscape elements was enjoyed. The design strategy in consideration of these motions reminds us of the “motion of landscape elements” of Hirschfeld described earlier.

Repton systematically designed the road by separating the carriage path and the walking path, which shows that Repton recognized that the speed of carriage and walking was different, and designed the landscape in consideration of the difference in aesthetic experience.

 

Implications

The garden aesthetics of this period provide implications for contemporary landscape design. First, in a situation where storytelling is becoming important as a strategy for creating memories of a recent place, the process of appreciating the place’s memories through an associative method as the viewer moves and encounters objects is the same as the spatial design principle of picturesque aesthetics. Second, picturesque garden and picturesque aesthetic reflect the visuality of motion, and it is a multisensory art that uses not only vision but also hearing and smell. In this context, the urban landscape can reflect the “aesthetics of motion,” where urban experience and visual culture are linked.