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THE RENAISSANCE INFLUENCE

In the middle of the fourteenth century, the Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio provided a link between the medieval garden and the splendours to come in his collection of tales, the Decameron. In one story, ‘The Valley of the Ladies’, he describes a walled circular garden with a flower-studded lawn (the classical medieval hortus conclusus) with ‘a fountain of pure white marble’. The statue at the centre of the fountain issues forth a jet of water which is circulated in cleverly wrought little channels, a forerunner of the art of hydraulics, a popular feature of the Renaissance.

The influence of the Renaissance, and its revived interest in classical antiquity, which began in Italy in the later part of the thirteenth century, influenced the whole of Europe. It brought with it not only profound changes in thought regarding buildings but also garden and park designs. The basis of this was the classical Italian villa garden in which were found labyrinths, box topiary cut in elaborate designs, water and fountains showing Arabic influence, and pots filled with fragrant flowers. The Italian artist Giorgio Vasari described the Villa Medici, near Florence, as ‘the most magnificent and ornamental garden in Europe’. The gardens of Villa d’Este at Tivoli, begun in 1550 and completed 30 years later, are undoubtedly the most spectacular of the Renaissance period with their elaborate fountains and intricate terracing. But Renaissance gardens were not simply grand statements of ostentation: in the beautiful Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola, a giardino segreto or secret garden (a descendant from the hortus conclusus) provided a haven of tranquillity and intimacy away from the vast sweeping vistas of the rest of the garden. In fact the Renaissance gardens incorporated most of the features of medieval gardens: roses, scented arbours, turfed banks, fountains, walkways, hedged walls and mounts. Aromatic box also was used extensively in topiary and for edging and hedging. The Renaissance garden was thus fundamentally the medieval garden within a classical and expanded form.

Common primrose (Primula vulgaris), used as a bright yellow design feature in Renaissance gardens.

Svetlana Zhukova

Sweet violets (Viola odorata), used to fill closed knots of topiary.

Volosina

In England the Renaissance influence led to the establishment of the ‘formal’ garden, which used geometrical shapes to show the domination of man over nature. Early Tudor gardens were characterised by the square knot garden, which was divided into four. Knot gardens had existed in the late medieval period, but it was now with the Tudors and the influence of France, and later in the Elizabethan age, that knot gardens acquired supremacy. These gardens were placed below the principal room of the house or palace so they could be viewed from above to the best effect. They were a vital element of all royal gardens. In 1613, according to Gervase Markham in The English Husbandmen, there were two types of knots: the open knot, which was planted out with aromatic herbs such as thyme, hyssop, rosemary or lavender, then simply filled with coloured earth; and the closed knot, which used the spaces between the knots to display single-coloured flowers, such as violets, sweet williams, primroses or gillyflowers. The knots show a very close relationship with embroidery and marquetry, with the earliest designs to be found in Thomas Hyll’s The Profitable Art of Gardening (1568). Looking down from above, these knots would have created a swirling, patterned aromatic display. A recent re-creation of a sixteenth-century knot garden at Barnsley House, Gloucestershire, is made up of green and gold box, intertwined with germander.

The Love Garden at the Château of Villandry, France, with topiary of box and yew interspersed with symbolically blood-red flowers.

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By the sixteenth century, gardens in England, France and the Netherlands shared many characteristics. Charles III and Henry II of France were deeply impressed by the Italian villas and their gardens, as was Henry VIII of England. They all saw the garden as a direct expression of the strength of the monarchy and regal power, and some of the most outstanding and magnificent gardens of the period were the great heraldic gardens. In England these were Hampton Court, Whitehall and Nonsuch, constructed for Henry VIII. All three gardens display ornate painted and gilded wooden heraldry, symbols of the House of Tudor, together with aspects of the medieval garden such as fountains, roses, arbours, mounts and walkways. Both Hampton Court and Whitehall showed a marked French influence. Whitehall had walkways lined with low-growing scented herbs (referred to as ‘spices’ in descriptions of the time) and both had extensive orchards. Nonsuch no longer exists and was not completed by the time of Henry VIII’s death, but was intended to be the most princely of all his palaces. The garden was a series of courtyards opening one onto the other, and according to Thomas Plattner in 1599 it was suitably named ‘for there is not its equal in England’. In Elizabethan times, under Lord Lumley it became one of the most outstanding gardens of the times. Nonsuch had 12 arbours, a maze with unusually high hedges, an orchard and a knot garden. Such royal gardens were gardens of pleasure with sweetly scented roses and fragrant fruit trees, besides the knots and formal walks. In 1509 Stephen Hawes, in The History of Graunde Amour and la Bel Pucel, describes the early Tudor royal gardens:

Than in we wente to the garden gloryous, Lyke to a place of pleasure most solacyous.

Primula polyanthus, a type of hybrid primrose cultivated by the Huguenot ‘florists’ for colour and fragrance.

Vilor

Tulip, most likely brought to England by the Huguenots in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

Nataly Studio

It was largely through the influence of Catherine de Medici, wife to King Henry II, that Italian ideas were brought to bear on French gardening practices at this time. The key to the new French style was the ornamental parterre or garden bed, which was usually fashioned using intricate box hedging. Although knot gardens had been an intrinsic part of the Italian Renaissance garden, the French refined their design using elaborate planting schemes in what came to be known as broderie, since they resembled a piece of finely made embroidery. These were best viewed from above, as were the English gardens of the Tudor and Elizabethan period, but here they were less romantic and more formalised and geometric in style than their British counterparts.

The first parterre de broderie was made by Jacques Mollet at the end of the sixteenth century at Anet, but the most prominent French garden of the period was the Paris Jardin des Tuileries commissioned by Catherine de Medici. Pierre le Nôtre designed the fabulous parterres nearest the palace, while his grandson André became one of the most influential garden designers in history. It was he who conceived the great gardens at Vaux, constructed on a major cross axis with a central fountain reminiscent of the Persian paradise ideal. Later, he provided the genius behind the gardens at the palace of Versailles, for the young Louis XlV. The Versailles gardens, whose grand formal layout corresponded to the four points of the compass, took the whole of Europe by storm: rulers in Austria, Germany, Spain and even the Russian king, Peter the Great, wanted their own version of Versailles! Le Nôtre’s influence reached as far as America, for Pierre L’Enfant’s design for Washington DC is based on one of Le Nôtre’s favourite themes – the patte d’oie or ‘goosefoot pattern’, describing a series of radiating avenues.

Louis XIV, the Sun King, was in fact infatuated with all aspects of gardening. At Versailles he commissioned a special potager incorporating fruit trees, vegetables, herbs and fragrant flowers – a project that took over five years to complete. He also personally sponsored plant expeditions to bring back specimens from the New World and Far East. Exotic plants would later inundate the whole of Europe as world horizons expanded over the following centuries.

The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw French Protestants, the Huguenots, fleeing from religious persecution and settling in East Anglia, Lancashire and southern England. They brought with them specialist gardening knowledge and many new scented flowers, and helped revive an interest in horticulture at a time when it was waning. They cultivated flowers specifically for their aesthetic appeal and were known as ‘florists’: their aim was to create perfect blooms with the best colour and most fragrance. There were eight flowers in particular attributed to them: the hyacinth, auricula, carnation, pink, ranunculus, tulip, polyanthus and anemone. To them we owe the wide diversity of pinks, carnations, polyanthus and auriculas which can still be found in our gardens today.

Voyages of discovery now brought new species to Europe, including many well-known scented species such as narcissus and tuberose, which were propagated in the new botanical gardens. The Flemish botanist Charles de l’Ecluse was the first scientific horticulturalist and served as the superintendant of the Leiden Botanic Garden. He cultivated many exotic Middle Eastern bulbs and tubers including hyacinths, irises, lilies, gladioli, sunflowers and especially tulips – changing the face of northern European gardens forever. The ingenious devices and flamboyant designs of the late Renaissance gardens, together with the classical mystique of the medieval pleasure garden, virtually disappeared, for now plants were arranged strictly according to species and genus. The Italian gardens of Padua and Pisa were founded in 1543, and in the seventeenth century two great physic gardens were developed in England: one at Oxford and the other at Chelsea. The Oxford physic garden became a botanic garden, as did Kew, which was also originally a physic garden created in the eighteenth century by the Princess of Wales. Other important botanical gardens were founded in Heidelberg, Montpellier and Paris.

The Orangery of the Palace of Versailles, France, designed by André le Nôtre.

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