The Garden History Blog

Last week I felt as if I had stepped back into the 18th century when I visited a garden where the basic original layout from the 1740s has been slowly restored over the past fifty years. Perhaps nothing unusual about that, but over the last 20 or 30 of those years the owners have also significantly enhanced the gardens with  additional features which might have existed then.

Now, in addition to the parterres, ponds, pots and a pyramid, visitors are treated to a grotto and watery jokes and surprises which try to  recapture the sense of wonder and good humour of a particular kind of grand garden of  nearly 300 years ago.

Read on to find out more…

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Detail of the Rotunda and Ranelagh House from a view of Chelsea Hospital by Joseph Nicholls,  late 1740s. Image courtesy of BADA

I’m writing this during Chelsea Week which is quite appropriate because the  famous marquee  is usually put up on the site of the long demolished Rotunda in what was once Ranelagh Gardens.

There  have been commercial pleasure gardens  in London since the 17th century, many having started life as  private gardens around great houses.   One of the best known was Ranelagh which opened next door to Chelsea Hospital in Chelsea in 1742, as a direct but usually more respectable  [but be prepared to be shocked by a risqué  future Duchess] rival to the older and even better-known Vauxhall Gardens across the Thames in Lambeth.

Once the height of fashion, patronised by royalty and painted by Canaletto, Ranelagh closed its doors after about 60 years, while the amazing buildings were demolished and the site built over or  incorporated into the hospital grounds.

Fete at Ranelagh, in honour of George III, by Rowlandson 1802 Harvard Art Museums

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The Courtesan by Van Gogh, 1887, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Japanese culture, plants and gardens took the western world by surprise – and by storm – in the second half of the 19th century.

But how did that happen to a country which had been in virtually total isolation for 220 years?

Where did Van Gogh get his inspiration for this painting?

What’s it got to do with cheap packing material?

With an English architect?

With “Black Ships”?

or with big public events in Paris, Vienna, Philadelphia and Chicago?

Read on to find out…

A view of Tokaido  from an unnamed illustrated book, by Hokusai, British Museum

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Chaenomeles japonica by Kawahara Keiga, mid-1820s for Philip von Siebold’s Flora Japonica

In 1893 Josiah Conder wrote the first book by a European about Japanese gardens, which   has been the single greatest influence on Japanese garden design in the West.  Yet  given that Japanese plants and gardens in the Japanese style are now well known in Britain it’s strange to think that up until 40 years before  Conder’s book Japan and its gardens were  largely unknown  to the western world.

It was only in 1854  that Japan was forced to open up to western trade and influence by the threat of war from the Americans. Within a decade Japan and all things Japanese had become one of the dominant themes in all of western culture influencing everything from art and fashion to interior design and gardens.  

This is the first post in a series about the links between Japan and  British and other European gardens. I’m  beginning with the earliest 300 years of western links to “Giapan” when it was first described as “the noble islande otherwise knowne as Japon or Japan”and “the extreme part of the knowen worlde”.

Kano Naizen’s “Arrival of the Southern Barbarians Screen” circa 1600, from the Kobe City Museum 

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Iris Seedlings, by Cedric Morris, 1943  © The estate of Sir Cedric Morris. Image from Tate website

It’s mid-May and my iris have been in bloom and looking magnificent. Not just a few or even a few dozen but several hundred of them, so as you can probably tell from the sheer number I grow, they’re one of my favourite plants. And it’s not just me.

While the American Iris Society’s claim that the Iris is “the Greatest Show in the Floral Kingdom” might be a bit of an exaggeration, it’s not far off because Iris have long captured the human imagination, and today there are many specialist iris nurseries, societies and websites including several specialising in historic varieties.

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