The Ornamental Wilderness in the English Garden
James Bartos (Unicorn, £30)
AWILDERNESS in an early Georgian garden was not a place of locusts and honey, nor indeed of moor and fell. It was a geometric layout of trees subdivided by shady walks, often flanked by hedges. It was a key feature of the formal garden of the late-17th- and early-18th-century countryhouse garden and a desirable place to walk or ride in warm weather. Some walks, laid out in patterns, led to lawned spaces, fountains or garden buildings suitable for social gatherings. As time went on, these wildernesses underwent changes of style, with winding walks becoming more popular.
James Bartos, a proper garden historian, leads us along these sanded paths. He has done his homework and discusses various types of wilderness, accompanied by the plans and bird’s eye views that make the study of past gardens such a pleasure and allow us to marvel at the skill of those surveyors and draughtsmen.
Familiar names crop up as wilderness-makers, too, from John Evelyn to Lord Burlington and Alexander Pope, who managed to cram an ingeniously fashioned example onto an unpromising site and live to sit in its shade. Poor Lord Edgcumbe was obliged to fell his wilderness overlooking Plymouth Sound in case the French navy crept up behind it. Given that this is essentially an extended academic essay, the project might easily have run into the sands of baffling obscurity, but careful planning and straightforward writing make it a pleasure. Half the fun comes from the extravagant claims made for their own designs by writers such as Stephen Switzer and the memorably named Batty Langley. The gardener Philip Miller, top man of the day, is more credible when he discusses the practical matters of wilderness maintenance.
Echoing all fashions, the wilderness gathered pace over the century either side of 1700 and then began to fade before the expansive notions of the landscape movement after about 1750. Yet there remain places where we can still experience them, now armed with fresh understanding thanks to this excellent book.