'In this wide ranging and comprehensive survey of the designed
landscapes of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries,
James Bartos argues convincingly that ornamental wildernesses
should be viewed as distinctive design features which, when linked
across an extensive terrain, took on the character of the whole
landscape. As a result of this striking analysis, our understanding
of the celebrated layouts at Wrest Park, Chiswick and Stowe, and
many more besides, must be revised. Contrary to the received wisdom
that wildernesses led inexorably to the more informal parkscapes
associated with William Kent and Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, it
was only when they were dismantled in the mid-eighteenth century to
provide more loosely controlled, open glades and greensward that
the English Landscape Style emerged. This ground-breaking study
ranges in its literary compass from classical authors through
contemporary writers on gardens and gardening to modern critical
authorities, while its visual focus on design manuals and
individual gardens and landscapes is presented through a wealth of
engraved prints, maps and present day photographs. Bartos considers
the making, planting and maintenance of wildernesses, their
continental precedents, thematic resonances - Classical, Biblical,
Druidic, Patriotic - and the eventual development of these often
numinous spaces into mature gardens followed by their inevitable
demise. The book has all the attributes of a true wilderness -
surprise, variety and, above all, delight - is engagingly written
and a tour de force of meticulous scholarship.' Professor Timothy
Mowl FSA The Ornamental Wilderness in the English Garden
reinterprets the English formal garden of the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries through the perspective of a typical
feature of those gardens, the ornamental grove, called a
wilderness. In its mature form, the wilderness constituted most of
the garden, shady and private, a place for retreat as well as
social activity, with a seeming naturalness achieved through
artifice, where cultural incident and nature were equally
appreciated.
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