Author: H. Inigo Triggs

Publisher:

Published: 2015-07-07

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 9781330864753

Excerpt from Garden Craft in Europe The love of gardens is an old characteristic of our race. "The Englishman has ever felt the lure of green things growing," wrote the author of Piers Plowman more than six centuries ago, and though fashions have come and gone in gardens as in everything else, this interest, far from having died out, is nowadays stronger than ever. Since Mr. J. D. Sedding wrote his poetic essay on Garden Craft, and for the first time treated the subject from the standpoint of the best architectural taste, there has been an extraordinary revival in garden craft (or as the French express it, jardinage, that is, the art of designing gardens as distinct from horticulture) and the old nineteenth century naturalistic ideas of garden design are fast losing their hold upon the public. When my work on Formal Gardens in England and Scotland appeared ten years ago, it met with so gratifying a reception that I felt induced to extend my studies to the Continent, and especially to Italy. Many opportunities of travel in France, Germany, Holland and Spain have since enabled me to collect the material for the present work. In all these countries examples of old garden craft are but rarely to be met with, and considering the changes wrought by succeeding fashions, this is hardly to be wondered at. Few people realize how fragmentary are the remains that exist, and it is difficult to grasp the original lay-out and the various changes that have taken place on a visit even to such gardens as Versailles and Fontainebleau. I have preferred, therefore, to take my illustrations as far as possible from contemporary engravings, in the collection of which I have been assisted by the Librarians of the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, by M. de Nolhac, the curator of Versailles, by Mr. Leonard Springer, of Haarlem, and by my publisher, who has in his possession numerous rare books on the subject. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.