CDR-1336: SR Set: History of Garden Style and Design

The long history of western garden style and design is illustrated with images from Ancient Egypt to the twentieth century. Here are painted gardens from Egyptian tombs and reconstructed peristyle gardens from Roman Pompeii. Medieval herb and vegetable gardens of monastic cloisters came to symbolize the spiritual life as an enclosed garden, or Hortus Conclusus, an allegory for Eden or paradise. Classical ideals of order and beauty emerged in Italy as terraced Renaissance gardens of shaded paths, cascading fountains, and clipped parterres. In France, grand formal gardens of symmetrical parterres, basins and vistas, as seen at Versailles, were to be followed in England by a relaxed landscape of hills dotted with trees, lakes, and allegorical temples. In the twentieth century these preceding styles were to be combined with cottage gardens, garden rooms and exuberant planting in gardens like the one at Sissinghurst Castle Garden. (Nov 2014)

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