Panel from the Chinese House at Stowe, photo by Peter Vallance, 2008
Dr Johnson wrote in 1738 : “There are few nations in the world more talked of, or less known than the Chinese.” He was reflecting on the latest book about China to be published, one which Patrick Conner in Oriental Architecture in the West suggests that inspired the first “Chinese” building in Britain.
This was a massive 4 volume work by the Jesuit priest Father Jean-Baptiste Du Halde who had not visited China himself but collated the unpublished reports of 17 of his fellow priests. It first appeared in France in 1735, but was translated into English as The General History of China the following year, and went into its 3rd edition by 1741.
Unlike Nieuhof’s account of the Dutch Embassy which I mentioned a couple of weeks ago there are very few illustrations. However the artist, Antoin Humblot, crucially shifted the emphasis of his Chinese sources, from reality to something rather more playful and elegant, and in the process he made China appear almost to be rococo. Such books helped feed the growing fascination for all things “Chinese” including gardens and architecture, which Tim Richardson has called “one of the wonderful eccentricities of the age.”
An obscure 17thc botanist cleric is very prominent in many gardens at the moment because of a plant, that as so often in the weird and wonderful ways of botanical names, he never saw, didn’t even know existed and had absolutely no connection with in any shape or form. Yet his is one of the few botanists names that really are well-known. That’s because because the plant is also renowned as a colonising weed, which grows rapidly in the poorest ground, filling waste ground, lining railway embankments and even cracks in walls, roofs and gutters where its hard to imagine how anything survives let alone thrives. It has no predators to munch its leaves, but unlike the other invasive plants such as Japanese knotweed or Himalayan balsam, that this description applies to, it instead attracts butterflies and insects and fills the air with a wonderful honey-like fragrance.
What’s the best known – and certainly most instantly recognizable – garden building in Britain?
My garden boasts a Vulgar Border…not full of plants that swear but of brightly coloured one – clashing pinks, oranges, purples and yellow which almost make your eyes water. And chief amongst them are dahlias. Dozens and dozens of them. So as it’s in full technicolour flood at the moment I thought I’d write about the history of dahlias. A straightforward task you might think, and so did I when I started. I thought the most difficult thing to do would be to keep personal feelings [prejudices?] about them under control. But I was wrong.
The Garden History Blog 
You must be logged in to post a comment.