We often talk of the English landscape garden with the emphasis on garden but the wider landscape was equally important in design terms and far more significant in economic terms. Landowners planted trees to ornament their estates for aesthetic as well as patriotic reasons but also to allow their grandchildren to reap the rewards when the trees were harvested and sold as timber for the navy, for fuel, building or furniture.
This attitude had been encouraged since John Evelyn first published Sylva his great work on trees , complaining about the destruction of the nations woodland and calling for mass reforestation. Unfortunately it’s not really until the 1750s that this begins to be taken up and forestry and woodland planting become the subject of more interest, with many books showing how to marry the beauty of trees to the beauty of money.
It was the oak in particular that was the object of most attention, and might explain why Capability Brown filled the land around Fisherwick Park in Staffordshire with oaks assuring the owner Lord Donegal “that one hundred thousand trees had been put in which in due course might fetch £100,000.”
The Garden History Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.