Gardening

This book considers what prints tell us about the development of the landscape garden in 18th- and early 19th- century Britain. They formed a significant part of the expanding machinery of mass communication and could thus influence taste and spread ideas. This could lead to propaganda, or at least creation of an image the owner of a property found desirable, and reality was consequently often compromised. The illusion of actuality could be achieved by adjustments and techniques employed by artists generally. Even if not entirely representational, a print may reveal much about fashions and attitudes towards the landscape garden. At their best they powerfully convey the atmosphere of a garden as well as the perception and possible idealisation of it.

The book breaks new ground, including discussion of techniques of producing a print, marketing, categories of print, and studies of the greatest engravers and a few select gardens that prints illuminate particularly well. Changes can be observed both in the developments in print-making and in the journey of the landscape garden. With 220 prints of the period to illustrate the text, all aspects of the subject are brought to the reader's attention.

Edition, with commentary, of the first comprehensive attempt to describe the landscape garden.

Thomas Whately's Observations on Modern Gardening (1770) is the first and most comprehensive study of what has come to be known as the English landscape garden, often claimed to be this country's greatest original contribution to the fine arts. It became the standard text on the subject; its authority was accepted at home and abroad, and the book was read widely across Europe, mainly in a French translation. It influenced taste and design; taught visitors how to respond to gardens; analysed natural and built elements of the garden; suggested principles of design; and provided descriptions of major gardens of the day, such as those at Blenheim and Piercefield (Monmouthshire), together with the author's responses, aesthetic, mental and emotional. It indicates a taste for the natural and the "picturesque", foreshadowing romanticism.
This first modern edition of the text is accompanied by an introduction and full commentary, covering both general considerations and specific points and topics. Contemporary illustrations have been chosen to illuminate further the gardens and places discussed.

Michael Symes is an author, lecturer and garden historian. He founded the MA in Garden History at Birkbeck, University of London, and specialises in eighteenth-century gardens in Britain and on the continent.