Dutch garden
Dutch garden refers firstly to
Because the Netherlands is one of the most densely populated countries, gardens are generally small and because houses are placed right next to each other, there is not very much light available. From the 19th century onwards, Dutch gardens adapted to wider trends, mostly from England and France. Dutch gardens are relatively small, and tend to be "self-contained and introspective", with less linkage to the wider landscape around.
The history of "Dutch-style" gardens abroad perhaps begins in the 17th century. On the one hand these have a concentration on the display of specimen plants, initially often imported from the Netherlands. In larger gardens, canals and topiary are often found. However, both of these features may well have been imported to the Netherlands from France, and their appearance in England may have been from either or both countries. Evergreen hedges, rather than those of deciduous species such as hornbeam, have also been seen as a characteristic Dutch style since the 17th century.[4] David Jacques, in a paper from 2002 called "Who Knows What a Dutch Garden Is?", concludes that the description was never accurate and "It is time that historians of English garden style eschewed labels such as "Dutch".[5]
Rectangular flower gardens, often slightly sunk in tiers, and now heavily planted, were seen as "Dutch". Any garden with large numbers of
Dutch style
The gardens of
Even the grandest Dutch 17th century gardens are small in comparison to their French and English equivalents, but often combine the same set of elements "into happily crowded enclosures, with trellises and hedges and curling parterres mirroring the grills of the popular ironwork gates".[7] Land values were high, and the Dutch felt they suffered from strong winds, as well as too much water, dictating a style with ponds, canals and hedges.[8]
Small modern Dutch gardens tend to use many bulbs, and often dwarf conifers in the German style.
Dutch influence on England
In England, Dutch influence became strong for a period after the Dutch King William III of England reached the throne in 1689 through his wife; both were interested in gardening.[9] Westbury Court Garden, now carefully restored to its design around 1700 is perhaps the best example in England of a more native Dutch style for a large house.
The restoration at Westbury Court prompted some discussion among English garden historians as to what, if anything, constituted a historical "Dutch garden", and how Dutch the typical features ascribed to them actually were. Christopher Hussey associated the Dutch style not so much with topiary, regarded as diagnostic by many earlier writers, as with canals, giving Westbury Court as the prime example, observes David Jacques,[10] Similarly Miles Hadfield considered that "an essential of Dutch versions of the grand manner was that the ground be tolerably level, with an abundance of water".[11] Later, Hadfield found "not the slightest hint" of a Dutch connection at Westbury Court.[12] To some extent calling formal gardens in England "Dutch" avoided the accusation that they were actually in a style that was essentially French, at a time of wars between England and France.
Even in England, Dutch artists completely dominated the newly popular genre of paintings and prints of country houses and their gardens from about 1660 to the 1730s.[13]
The Dutch garden was the description given to a particular type of rectangular flower garden space, often enclosed within hedges or walls, even if part of a larger garden or parkland. The Dutch version of the French formal garden, this space would be laid out in a highly cultivated and geometrical, often symmetrical, fashion, shaped by plantings of highly coloured flowers, originally very well-spaced by modern standards, and edged with box or other dense and clipped shrubs, or low walls (sometimes in geometrical patterns), and sometimes, also, with areas of artificial water, with fountains and water butts, which were also laid out in symmetrical arrangements.
A particular Dutch feature is the koepel or pavilion, generally built of brick and raised up to give a view of the garden. Westbury Court and Hampton Court have two-storey examples, the latter the Banqueting House designed by William Talman for William III, overlooking on one side a row of three rectangular garden rooms for flowers, and on the other the river Thames.[14]
Later, in England the term was used for flower gardens that are heavily planted within a geometric frame. The flower beds and areas of water would be intersected by geometrical path patterns, to make it possible to walk around the garden without damaging any of its features. An example, not now planted in an authentic style, is to be found adjacent to
As the English landscape garden style took hold in the mid-18th century, the label began to be applied in a "derogatory" sense to formal gardens in general, in the "distortions of polemicists". Francis Coventry, a clergyman and writer, in his 1753 magazine piece on "Strictures on the Absurd Novelties introduced in Gardening" said William Kent had rescued English gardens from "Dutch absurdity". In 1755 Richard Owen Cambridge wrote that the "Dutch" style had "for more than half a century deformed the face of nature in this country".[16] In 1806, Humphry Repton, the leading garden designer of the day, said the "Dutch style" lasted from the accession of William III in 1689 for half a century, to be replaced by the "English style" of Capability Brown "to restore the ground to its original shape".[17]
Garden of Holland
The small, fenced, Garden of Holland, defended by the
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Dutch Maiden in the garden of Holland, 1563, byPhilips Galle
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Allegorical print of 1615; the Spanish come to visit, as the Orange tree slumps over.
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The French invade, 1672–75
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Medal of 1913, the centennial of the French under Napoleon being expelled.
Flora
Common flowers in the Dutch garden are:
Noteworthy gardens in the Netherlands
Some noteworthy public Dutch gardens are:
- The Keukenhof
- Prinsentuin (Groningen) mainly formal garden for an 18th-century palace
- Gardens of Arcen Castle
- Gardens of Oud-Valkenburg Castle
- Westbury Court Garden
Notes
- ^ Jacques (2002), 114-115
- ^ Quest-Ritson, 81-82
- ^ Quest-Ritson, 81
- ^ Jacques (2002), 124
- ^ Jacques (2002), 129
- ^ Quest-Ritson, 81-82
- ^ Uglow, 122
- ^ Jacques (2002), 115
- ^ Quest-Ritson, 80-81
- ^ Jacques (2002), 123
- ^ Hadfield, Gardening in Britain 1960:154.
- ^ Hadfield, "William, Mary, and Westbury", Garden History 2 (1974:27–33).
- ^ Jacques (2002), 115
- ISBN 9781783275441, google books
- ^ Quest-Ritson, 81
- ^ Jacques (2017), 2
- ^ Jacques(2017), 2-3
References
- Jacques, David (2002), "Who Knows What a Dutch Garden Is?" Garden History 30.2, Dutch Influences (Winter 2002:114–130)
- ISBN 978-0-300-22201-2
- ISBN 978-0-14-029502-3
- ISBN 0701169281