Gentlemen Gardeners: The Men Who Created the English Landscape Garden

by Tim Mowl

The English love affair with the landscape garden reached its height in the eighteenth century, when the creation of some of our greatest gardens set a stylistic lead which Continental Europe was eager to follow. In this informed and entertaining book, Timothy Mowl reveals how this development in garden style came about through an interaction between the garden owners, who had a vision of what these gardens might become, and the professionals who had the expertise to realise this vision. Technologies and discoveries were exchanged, and theories were absorbed, popularised and then discarded, in a fascinating sequence of action and reaction. It was a mould-breaking, revolutionary period in garden history. Mowl takes the reader on a fascinating journey to the magnificent gardens at Chiswick, Stowe, Castle Howard, Painshill, Stourhead and an astonishing host of lesser Edens, and casts a fresh and illuminating perspective on the great age of the English Arcadia (1620-1820).

248 pages, Paperback

First published July 22, 2004

Reviews

[Alistair]

i really enjoyed this history of landscape gardening in england from 17th to early 19th century .
it is dense scholarly and luckily the writer has a waspish sense of humour and has a lot of fun at some of the gardener's expense . he is wide ranging in his cultural references and the relationships between gardeners and rich clients is finely described
Loads of illustrations too .
the change he traces is from the dutch influenced parterres of the 17th century to the 18th century arcadian parks when the aristocracy bent nature to imitate the classical pictures painted by claude lorraine . the gardens of stowe and stourhead are the peak of this achievement .
Capability Brown was not so much a gardener as an earth mover and he was on a constant merry go round across the country building lakes and parkscapes . i nearly bought a recent Capability Brown biography but he sounded a bit dull and there were virtually zero illustrations .
I am glad i went for this " magnificently entertaining " said the Sunday Telegraph . I agree .

[Linda]

Secrets at an all boys school. Good mystery and good reading.