Let the character of the site direct the design: whether the ground should be raised or lowered, a view opened or closed, water led or stilled. Prefer variety, surprise and concealed bounds to symmetry.
Pope’s lines advise that nature should not be overdressed or left bare, and that the designer who “pleasingly confounds, / Surprizes, varies, and conceals the Bounds” gains every point. The genius loci was the Roman spirit that guarded a place; Pope makes it the character of the ground, which the designer must consult as one consults an oracle. The rule is set against the satire of Timon’s villa later in the poem, where the garden is laid out by symmetry alone and grove nods at grove.
The phrase became the first principle of the English landscape garden and is still quoted by landscape architects. It is a rule of method: it says what the designer must attend to, not what he must make.
In place of a wall, bound the garden with a ditch whose side towards the garden is a vertical retaining wall and whose other side slopes up to the field, so that cattle are kept out and the view from the house runs on uninterrupted into the park.
ditch c. 1.5–2 m deep: wall on the garden side, turf slope on the park side
Compose the garden as a painter composes a landscape: in groups of trees for light and shade, with water winding through the hollows and a temple or bridge placed where it will be seen across it, so that each turn of the walk opens a new picture.
Bring grass up to the walls of the house and keep the cattle off it with a ha-ha; plant trees in clumps on the rising ground and as single specimens on the lawn; and enclose the park with a belt of woodland, with a drive inside it from which the park is seen.
Make the lake by damming a stream in its valley, give it a winding, irregular outline with promontories, and hide both its ends behind trees, a bend or a bridge, so that it seems a river flowing through the park.
Show the natural beauties of a place and hide its defects; give it an appearance of extent and freedom by disguising the boundary; conceal every interference of art, so that the whole seems natural; and remove or hide whatever serves only convenience and cannot be made ornamental.
Let the approach be the natural road to the house, without needless turns; let it show the house first at an angle, so that two sides are seen, and not head-on down an avenue; and make it plain that the road leads to this house and nowhere else.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Consult the genius of the place”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/pope-genius-of-the-place. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.