Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Victorian Villa Gardens

Describe the form, content and style of the Victorian villa garden. Include in your answer the inspirations for this garden type.

The Victorian villa garden incorporated many different styles of English gardens for the purpose of conspicuous consumption—no villa was complete without a garden that represented the spending power of the parvenu and nouveau riche. Both social mores and technological developments had strong influences on the stylistic mishmash that was the Victorian villa garden.
Technological developments abounded in the Victorian era, but it was the glasshouse (colloquially called a greenhouse) that added to the design of the Victorian villa garden. While the idea of insulation to grown plants had been around since Roman times, the first glasshouse was developed in Holland in the 1800’s, followed by Joseph Paxton who built The Crystal Palace in London, putting glasshouses on the map for garden-owning Victorians. Glasshouses, being expensive structures to build and maintain, naturally housed expensive, exotic plants that also required much maintenance for their survival. Individual plants were used as status symbols in the Victorian garden, and the glasshouse was integral to maintaining those status symbols.
Southport glasshouse
source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/b/bd/Southport_Botanic_Gardens_Glasshouse.jpg

One of the first orchids to start the orchid craze in England, Cattleya labiata.
source:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattleya_labiata#/media/File:Labiata.jpg

If you were worried about a lack of status symbols in the Victorian villa garden, don’t be. Greenhouses were only one component as the villa garden has more to offer by way of conspicuous consumption. The past gardening trend had been that of Capability’s Brown’s landscape gardens. This was rejected by the Victorians in search of formality and acknowledgement of the ability of man. The garden became one of constructed, artificial nature for the sake of beauty and displaying art and architecture. Formal portions of the Victorian villa garden were included directly off of the house, which often included a terrace, works of art (such as statues), and formal elements such as parterres. Formal gardens opened up to pleasure gardens, which looked like natural landscapes blemished by—and clashing—bedding flowers in various shapes and designs. Fountains, patios and intently designed rockeries were also included in the pleasure garden.

The final element of the Victorian villa garden was the productive, or kitchen garden. Seeing how maintenance of the villa garden could be quite costly, it made sense to have a productive garden—but it was to be far off from the house. Sure, it’s necessary and helps offset costs, but no one needed to see evidence of this sort of consumption.

Map of Chatsworth House in Derbyshire
source: http://www.places-to-go.org.uk/Images/Chatsworth_map.gif

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