British culture and landscape garden in the 18th century

British natural landscape garden is an important part in the history of world gardening. I think the emergence and prosperity of the natural landscape garden is closely related to its unique cultural attributes as a heritage.

From the perspective of social background, firstly, the industrial revolution from the 16th century to the mid-18th century made Britain become the leading industrial power in the world. The emergence of natural landscape garden led to the trend of European garden, and broke the historical phenomenon that British garden was the vassal of Italian and French gardens. The traditional rural residential mode of British aristocracy also provided a hotbed for the prosperity of natural landscape garden. In addition, the development of animal husbandry in England makes it possible to provide continuous grassland for natural landscape garden.

Secondly, the religious reform changed the class structure of England. The rise of the bourgeoisie has become the backbone to support the creation of natural landscape parks.

From the cultural background, British natural landscape painting plays an important role in the formation and development of natural landscape garden. On the road of breaking through the composition and creating new landscape beauty, the painter’s choice of pictures and the effect of organization in the performance of the landscape. It inspires the gardener and makes the expression of garden creation more artistic.

For example, there is a straight Boulevard in Howard manor, and Vanbrugh has set up a lot of scenery on both sides of the road. From south to north, there are Kalmia gate, magnificent pyramid gate, high and thin obelisks and blue water pond. It’s like a picture after a scroll unfolds in turn. On the open hillside surrounded by another piece of woodland, Vanbrugh takes the ranch as the background, and decorates the temple, the Howard pyramid and the circular memorial tower. According to Vanbrugh, the nature of the wilderness is more interesting and dramatic than pruned trees and regular boulevards. Therefore, the buildings of Howard manor are connected by wavy paths, forming a good landscape, and organically integrating with the surrounding environment.

From the philosophical background, we have to mention bacon, the great British philosopher. According to Bacon, beauty exists objectively and is always related to a certain proportion. Only when parts exists in the whole thing, or from the whole point of view, it is what we can say beautiful. He advocated the creation of poems, paintings and songs with fictional imagination. In 1625 on the garden, bacon provided the basic outline for the specific English landscape garden. He thinks that the garden should have scenery all the year round. At the entrance is a lawn, and at the exit is a neat flower bush. The middle part is the main body of the garden. In addition, there are some paths on both sides.

As a branch of the world garden school, the British natural landscape garden has its unique aesthetic feeling, which also affects the development of the later garden. Throughout the world’s garden landscape, we can easily find that they have their own distinctive cultural brand and national characteristics. Even with the development of the times, the current landscape tends to be modernized, with neat lines, simple colors and ecological shaping. But what is really amazing is still the part of these seemingly homogeneous works that have their own cultural attributes.