Blog Post 8

With the Victorian villa garden came about the new idea of art and nature coexisting in contrast to art competing against nature. Most parks were adorned by terraces and formal feature; in the Victorian gardens the gardens were adorned with geometry and curves.

            The Victorian garden was centered around showing education, wealth, possessions fashion and taste. Shrubs were formed as a formal element as well as emperor foundation and conservatory/glasshouse shown as a star feature. The conservatory allowed for exotic plants to grown and gave rise to the demand of exotic plants/flowers from all over the world.

            In addition to the formal features of the gardens were the features of informal. The informal gardens consisted of trees scatter about a curved rivers as well as the quintessential rockwork. Rockwork is the arrangement of rocks into an artistic element. The elements were supposed to mimic something that could’ve come about from nature but instead were man made. This concept of nature touched by man, but it not being obvious, was the beauty of the informal gardens. 

            The Victorian gardens were privately owned gardens that had employed a gardener to shape and design the garden in the above stated style. The commonalities between the villa gardens are what stringed them together, as well as the Victorian style. These commonalities consisted of a formal garden close to the house, formal features such as flower bedding, sculptures and parterres. The farther away from the house one wandered the garden turned more informal as described above.

            Inspirations for these gardens came from all over the gardening world. The gardens grew from the formal inherited gardens, such as Capability Browns. A good example of this is the Chatsworth gardens. In the Chatsworth gardens formal and informal gardens came together as one.

For more information visit: http://www.chatsworth.org/attractions-and-events/garden

Picture 1 and 4: http://www.bigginhall.co.uk/chatsworth-c42.html

Picture 2: http://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/XB171403/Making-repairs-to-the-Great-Conservatory-at-Chatsworth?img=7&search=19th+Century+building

Picture 3: https://vision.eng.shu.ac.uk/mmvl/viewfinder/image_chatsworth_garden.html

Picture 5: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/564849978234566824/