In the formal room, stand the furniture against the walls and leave the middle of the room clear: a pier table (with its glass above) between each pair of windows, the sofa facing the fire, a chair either side of the chimneypiece, the chairs ranged round the walls in a line with the dado, to be brought out when wanted and put back after; and keep each wall symmetrical about its middle, its chimneypiece or its windows.
Rural and extensive gardening
Do not shut the garden in with walls: lay out the whole estate as one design, carry the walks and avenues out into the woods and fields, and mix the useful with the pleasant, so that the farm and the park are part of the garden.
Switzer called the walled parterre a waste of money and of land, and wanted the boundary of the garden taken down or hidden so that the eye ran on into the country. His plans keep straight walks and regular groves near the house, and let them run out into wood and pasture, with the paddocks, the kitchen garden and the farm drawn into the design.
The idea led on to the ferme ornée of the 1730s and to the park, and his book was read by those who made them; Walpole gives the credit to Bridgeman and Kent, but Switzer had argued the case in print in 1718.
Related rules
In the room of the Regency and after, bring the furniture out into the room in groups for the occupations of the company: a sofa by the fire with a sofa table before it, a round table in the middle with chairs round it, the pianoforte, a work table, a couch; leave the walls for the pier tables, the cabinets and the bookcases.
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
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.
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.
Cite this page Chris Paton, “Rural and extensive gardening”, The Textbook of Architecture, https://textbookofarchitecture.com/rule/switzer-rural-garden. Text, drawings and models licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0.