Posts Tagged ‘gardens’

Considering the hard work involved, I can still honestly state there is nothing quite as “relaxing” as spending the day working in my garden. Well okay, if not exactly “relaxing”, it certainly is rewarding and just gives you an overall feeling of well-being. An added benefit is if you are not physically fit before you start your first gardening project, chances are you soon will be simply thru the process of maintaining it. But is serious gardening actually a hobby? I don’t think so.

I was in my 40’s when we moved from California with my low maintenance, swimming pool and concrete backyard to a small community in rural Oregon. The old farmhouse we intended to remodel sat on over an acre of land which sported any number of weeds and a few overgrown shrubs. Most of which, had been planted in a haphazard manner.

For the first few years we just kept the weeds mowed while we focused most of our efforts on the inside of the house. In time however, there was nothing left to do but turn our attention to the grounds surrounding the house. Oh my, where to start?
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Monasteries with dramatic gardens, adorned with garden statues and water fountains, flourished throughout Europe in the first half of the first millennium, and along with cross, monks carried the plough. Hard work, which had fallen into disfavor, was raised from the dust by the monks. “It was the special glory of St. Benedict [the founder of the order to which St. Augustine belonged] to teach the men of his day that work in the garden, sanctified by prayer, is the best thing a man can do, and this lesson has never been lost sight of since his time, as reflected in the beauty of the garden grounds.”

Within the walls of Benedictine monasteries, therefore, were large gardens with dramatic statuary, water features, and hanging wall fountain gardens cultivated by all the resident monks, often along with smaller ones assigned to the abbot and the chief almoner of the community. Formerly despised by the earliest Christians as symbols of paganism, flowers were now grown to decorate the church. The roses were often grown in large stone garden planters and was held in the highest esteem. At Subiaco is still preserved the roseto, a little rose garden set with a large stone statue of St. Benedict. The rose bushes it contains are said to be the same as those whose beauty delighted his senses, and with whose thorns he was accustomed to mortify his flesh.

The coming of St. Augustine to Canterbury in 597 A.D. was the beginning of a new era in gardens for the British Isles. The civilization, arts, and letters which had fled before the sword of the English conquest in post-Roman times returned with the Christian faith. In England, the revival of horticulture and decorative gardens and the introduction of several new vegetables and fruits was brought about by the Benedictine St. Augustine and his disciples. The flourishing gardens sported water fountains whose design was clearly inspired by the fountains of Italy.
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Garden gnomes have inspired an enthusiastic and devoted cult following, both in the real world and in cyberspace. Perhaps nowhere is the garden gnome’s cult status more apparent than in North Devon, England at The Gnome Reserve and Wildflower Garden.

This unique attraction is fun for everyone, with a reserve where garden gnomes can run free, a wildflower meadow, a stream and pond and woodlands. The natural beauty of the English countryside can only be enhanced in one way, gnomes! This unique park does it best, with over 1,000 gentle gnomes in residence. Non-conformists are discouraged, so tall, pointy hats and fishing poles are handed out to visitors so they’ll feel more at home with the gnomes.

Special exhibits walk the visitor through the manufacture and painting of gnomes, and a gnome museum documents the history of this fascinating race. It is rumored that at night, the small army of gnomes on site plants and tends the wildflower reserve and fishes in the pond.

While the Gnome Reserve is perhaps the largest gnome home in the world, garden gnomes are celebrated elsewhere as well, especially on the web. A very cute site called nigelthegnome.com chronicles a Florida gnome’s travels across the United States in pictures. Websites selling garden gnomes abound, most selling traditional gnomes and others selling specialty gnomes.

One of the most interesting gnome websites is a storefront that sells garden gnomes who look suspiciously like George W. Bush! We aren’t sure if they’re illegitimate offspring or relatives, but the resemblance is uncanny. See for yourself at www.bushgnome.com.
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The Roman de la Rose gives the best possible idea of both the French and English gardens of the Middle Ages. It was chiefly written by Guillaume de Loris, in the first half of the thirteenth century, and was probably well known in England before it was translated by Chaucer into English. There are several manuscript copies of it containing descriptions in the text, accompanied by illustrations giving vivid pictures of the pleasure garden. Its form—the walls enclosing it with their surrounding moat, the subdivisions of latticework, the “flowery mede,” shaded by fruit trees, with a fountain in its center, and the stone-coped beds, containing clipped shrubs and other smaller plants—are clearly shown from various points of view.

In the most important of these illustrations (which is on the opposite page, and was taken from a fourteenth-century Flemish manuscript preserved at the British Museum), the garden is shown as a whole, ornamented with many quaint details. It is enclosed by a crenellated wall, surrounded by a moat. The subdivisions are formed by a fence of wooden trellis-work, on the topmost railing of which is balanced a peacock. In the left-hand division is a copper fountain head, where the water, spouting from lions’ mouths, drips into a circular basin, and runs off through a marble channel embedded in the turf. Velvety grass, thickly sprinkled with daisies, surrounds the fountain and forms a soft seat for the little company of merrymakers who are singing and playing upon musical instruments.
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As the cultivated ground of estates grew in size, it gradually came to be divided into compartments. These subdivisions were usually formed of latticework with square or diamond-shaped apertures, more or less ornamental as during the classic era. There were beds for plants raised several inches above the level of the path, retained by a stone coping, and fenced in with wattles, latticework, or open wooden railings. Fruit trees and herbs predominated, for as yet flowers were given no especial prominence in the garden. The main paths or alleys were covered with sand, and usually broad enough for two or three people to pace abreast. Narrower paths were intended to facilitate the weeding of the beds.

Resting-places were provided for those who found walking or standing tiresome. Simple benches cushioned with turf were built into embrasures or against the wall. Earth banked up around the trunk of a tree, grassed over and held in place by wattled osiers, formed a circular seat. In the center of the garden a three-sided exedra constructed of stone or brick, covered with grass and flowers, often formed the most important feature. Arbors or bowers were wooden structures covered by shrubs and vines and usually shading a comfortable seat.

Water in various forms was always, if possible, introduced into the garden. Fishponds, bathing pools, and fountains were common. Usually the central and most ornamental architectural feature of the pleasure garden was a fountain. The earliest
of an ornamental appearance were apparently of Oriental design.
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The Tudor garden was a homely enclosure, like the living room in a simple house containing few, but good-sized, apartments. Sometimes one large enclosure answered many purposes. First of all, it contained the medicinal herbs. Then it answered the purpose of the pleasure garden, providing alleys and arbors for people to walk on and sit under, besides ground for games. Finally, it supplied a mixture of vegetables and flowers for use and ornament. The orchard, if not actually a part of the garden, was placed near it and similarly ornamented.

A number of sun-dials were also scattered about, both for use and ornament. Henry VIII apparently ordered them by the dozen. Sun-dials had existed in England before the Roman invasion, but interest in them seems to have been especially keen during the sixteenth century. The first book in English devoted to dialing was published in 1533, and was largely a translation from Witkendus. At this period the actual dial was more fanciful than at a later date and often formed an armillary sphere.

A water supply was considered a very important adjunct to the garden. A central feature was often a well or fountain fed by a spring, or a cistern. Cisterns were made of lead and decorated in such a way as to make them very ornamental.
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Above all, the pleasure garden was intended for the diversion of the chatelaine. As early as 1250 we learn from a contemporary record that Henry III, to gratify Eleanor of Provence, ordered his bailiff at Woodstock “to make round about the garden of our Queen two walls good and high with fountains so that no one can enter, with a well-ordered herbary befitting her position, near our garden pond, where the said Queen may roam about freely.” Here she might have meditated in solitude under a leafy bower, have enjoyed a tete-a-tete with a bosom friend enthroned on a turfed seat, or in pleasant company have paced up and down the sanded alleys, flanked by the pleasant sound of water from the fountains.

As an agreeable alternative from the smoky castle hall, the pleasure garden was evidently the favorite place for recreation; and why not, since the pleasant forces of nature and tranquil sounds of falling water from the fountains was certainly a pleasing environment. It was often chosen for giving audience and receiving friends. Entertainment was furnished by the troubadours, who sang their Chansons de Geste, interspersed with romances of the Crusades, of prowess, and of love; by the jugglers and tumblers, who performed wonderful tricks and gymnastic feats; and by the dancing-girls, whose graceful motions were of an Oriental character. The guests themselves also frequently caroled, or danced in a circle, sang songs, and played musical instruments on the steppes of the fountains for their own diversion.
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English gardens had degenerated into meaningless repetitions of French and Dutch fashions by the end of the seventeenth century. Conventional plans were mimicked or exaggerated until the formal manner became merely an affected mannerism. Finally, nothing remaining but the defects of the old system, a reaction resulted in its entire destruction. On the ruins was created the Landscape Garden, in the strict meaning of the word no garden at all, but a stretch of cultivated scenery.

The English — perhaps because they had most abused the conventional system — were the first to raise an outcry against formal gardening. Formality could certainly be carried to no greater excess; it was logical to seek beauty in a contrary extreme. Freedom from every restraint was the gospel of the new school. Kent, its leader according to Walpole, was the first to jump outside the fence and insist that the garden should be “set free from its prim regularity, and the gentle stream taught to serpentize.” His method, as described by Lord Kames, was, “to paint a field with beautiful objects, natural and artificial, disposed like colors upon a canvas.”
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