Gardens of the World
The Great Traditions

Why have the peoples of the world made pleasure gardens, and why have they made them in such different styles? All pleasure gardens derive their design inspiration from one of the world's six great gardening traditions - the Italian, the Islamic, the Chinese, the Japanese, the English flower garden, and the English park - and it is these that are the subject of this book.
There are, of course, other countries where there is an individual style of gardening, but in all cases the roots of that style can be traced back to one of the great traditions. Rory Stuart has travelled from Buenos Aires to Vancouver, from Seattle to Cape Cod; from Ireland to India; to China, Japan and Australia, trying to understand the differences in garden styles and to account for them, approaching pleasure gardens as works of art, and placing them in their historical and cultural context.

Contents
1. Preface
2. Background
3. Islamic
4. Italian
5. English Flower Mania
6. English Park
7. America
8. China
9. Japan
10. Conclusion

PREFACE


When faced with this vast subject, the development of pleasure gardens in the major garden cultures of the world, it is impossible not to feel underprepared. Learned men and women have written in depth on the histories of all these gardening traditions, yet here is an attempt to cover the roots and development of the world's fundamental garden cultures in one book. How can the author not be aware of all he hasn't seen, hasn't read, doesn't know? Lytton Strachey, however, offers some comfort when he asserts, provocatively but not entirely unseriously, that "ignorance is the first requisite of a historian - ignorance, which simplifies and clarifies, which selects and omits, with a placed perfection unattainable by the highest art" (Eminent Victorians). A little knowledge certainly allows one to see more clearly the outlines of a culture or a tradition.

This book is aimed at garden visitors and students of any age who are beginning to be interested in international garden history, in particular at the increasing number of visitors who are venturing farther afield, outside the confines of their own familiar garden culture. They may wish to know something of the social history of garden-making in an unfamiliar land, and thus to understand why those gardens are so different from the familiar gardens of their home territory. Gardens have meanings, in the way that other works of art have meanings, and by becoming, in a small way, students of gardens as items of cultural history we will understand them more fully, thus beginning to become garden critics. This increased understanding of a garden's meaning should not detract from, but rather enhance, our enjoyment of the whole garden experience.

As a universal rule gardeners are conservative beings, which is why it is not difficult to trace the history of certain national garden styles. But at the same time garden-making, like the other arts, is always subject to the fashion of the moment; in England, for example, decking and indigo-blue flower pots have gone the way of garden gnomes and "currant-bun" rockeries, which were the delights of a previous generation. These are merely the bubbles on the surface of a deep-running river of national assumptions about what makes a good garden. Gardening programmes on television, urging us to be more daring with plastic and to recycle old oil drums, are really little more than entertainment; they may successfully teach the rudiments of planting, growing and pruning, but have little influence on fundamental, culture-specific assumptions about garden design.

It may be thought the scope of this book is too narrow: no French tradition? no German tradition? no Spanish? It is true that each of these, and many more, countries have a garden tradition that is typically and splendidly theirs, but it seems to me all the world's pleasure gardens spring from one of the great traditions that are the subject of this book. Many European gardens, for example, are variations on an Italian theme, occasionally with a few English modifications getting the upper hand. The characteristically French 'broderie' parterre, for example, can be seen as an elaborate variation on the box plantings that are found in Italian gardens as far back as Pliny. And in Germany the great parks of the astonishing Prince Hermann Puckler Muskau at Branitz and Muskau are heavily influenced by the example of Humphry Repton, and indeed by the work of Repton's son, Adey.

The principle aim of this book, then, is to examine why people from such very different cultures and in such different parts of the world made pleasure gardens, rather than utilitarian vegetable gardens, and then to examine why they made the kinds of gardens that they did.

Finally, I should like to thank all those patient friends and relatives who have read portions of this book and have made it better by their suggestions and criticism.