Do not bring the park up to the walls of a house: give the house a terrace, steps and a flower garden in formal lines between it and the park, because the house is a work of art and must be joined to the landscape by art.
The gardenesque: every plant seen whole
Plant each tree and shrub apart, with room to grow to its full natural form, so that it can be seen and admired as a specimen; prefer foreign kinds to native ones, so that the place is recognised at once as a garden, a work of art.
Loudon set the gardenesque against the picturesque. In a picturesque planting, trees and shrubs grow into one another and are seen as masses, as in a painting; in the gardenesque, each is given space, the ground under it is kept clean, and it develops the shape that belongs to its kind, so that its botanical character can be studied. The style suited the flood of new plants arriving from abroad, which owners wanted to see one by one.
Loudon backed it with what he called the principle of recognition: any work of art should be recognisable as such and not mistaken for nature. A Brownian park of native trees could be taken for natural country; a lawn set with deodars, monkey puzzles and magnolias could not. The arboretum he designed at Derby in 1840 applies the rule on a public scale.
Related rules
Raise tender plants in glasshouses through the winter and plant them out in early summer, massed in beds cut in the lawn or on a terrace, in blocks, ribbons or patterns of a few strong colours; lift them in autumn and replant for the next season.
Build on a single grid of 24 feet, set by the 8-foot spacing of the roof ridges and the size of the largest pane of glass, so that every column, girder, sash bar and pane is one of a few standard parts that can be made by machine, delivered and bolted together in any number.
pane 49 × 10 in · ridge 8 ft · bay 24 ft · spans 24, 48, 72 ft · 1,848 × 408 ft
Lay out the public park with a drive round its edge, lakes dug in the hollows and the spoil raised into mounds, winding paths through groves and lawns inside; sell plots for villas round the boundary to pay for it, their gardens facing the park.
Carry the city’s cross traffic through the park on roads sunk below its surface, out of sight; inside it, give carriages, riders and walkers each their own system of drives, rides and paths, crossing one another by bridges and arches so that none need meet.
Place perfectly hardy plants, foreign as well as native, in woods, meadows, banks and the edges of water where they will thrive and spread without further care, instead of renewing tender bedding every year.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “The gardenesque: every plant seen whole”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/loudon-gardenesque. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.