Alexander Neckam, an Augustinian monk living in the twelfth century, is the earliest English writer on fountains, statuary, and gardens. In his De Naturis Rerum, he describes the herbs, trees, and flowers growing in a noble garden, flanked by flowing water from statuary fountains.
The Gardens at Hampton Court
There was no abrupt transition from the style of the Middle Ages to that of the Renaissance in English gardens. Many Gothic features were long retained, of which remnants are still in evidence: the carved stonework, the conduits, the walks, and arbors.
The Garden Wall
The Garden Wall is an extension of your own garden. Plant & decorate to taste!
Native Flora & Art an Oakland Garden Makes
Distilled to its essence, the Oakland garden is an effort to use plants native to the location in which the garden sits, employing natural-looking features or constructs so as to enhance the overall effect of being in nature, and tastefully employing Garden Art in an effort to create the appearance of nature, as opposed to a husbanded setting such as the Japanese employ. A direct result of an Oakland garden is the almost immediate return to ones garden of native birds, butterflies, bees and other life forms.
Orchards in English Pleasure Gardens
The orchard in the Middle Ages was practically indistinguishable from the garden or pleasure garden. The orchard in those days contained, besides a variety of fruit trees, herbs for medicinal and culinary purposes and a few flowers, also fountains, seats, and the other architectural features of the pleasure garden.
Plants in English Tudor Gardens
The intermingling of ornamental with useful plants continued to be common in Tudor gardens. As an innovation, Andrew Borde recommended that there be two divisions separated by a broad-hedged alley.
Pleasure Gardens in the Age of Queen Elizabeth
The fruitful age of Queen Elizabeth brought both the planning and the planting of the loveliest English gardens very nearly to perfection. When the other arts of the Renaissance had reached their maturity and were on the verge of decline, garden making began to develop rapidly.
Rock Gardens
The basics of natural rock gardens.
Gardens and Fountains in the Dark Ages
In the tenth century, the darkest of the Dark Ages, a period of great industrial depression reached its lowest ebb in Europe. Monasticism, for the previous two centuries on the decline, almost ceased to exist, and horticulture, as early in the Christian era, practically became a lost art. Lush gardens, elegant statuary, and decorative water fountains were no longer to be found in good repair.
Gardens at the Time of the Norman Conquest
The Anglo-Saxon ways of living were greatly altered by the advent of the Normans in the latter half of the eleventh century. In architecture, as well as horticulture, the Normans excelled the Anglo-Saxons at the time of the Conquest. But, until the Normans had subdued the entire country, home life was an impossibility, and there was no occasion for domestic architecture or decoration.
Gardens in Post Norman England
The end of internal warfare in Norman England permitted the precincts of the castle to become less restricted without loss of security. At the close of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth century the connection between France and England was very intimate.
Garden Gnomes Inspire Cult Following Worldwide
Garden gnomes have inspired an enthusiastic and devoted cult following, both in the real world and in cyberspace. Perhaps nowhere is the garden gnome’s cult status more apparent than in North Devon, England at The Gnome Reserve and Wildflower Garden.
This unique attraction is fun for everyone, with a reserve where garden gnomes can run free, a wildflower meadow, a stream and pond and woodlands. The natural beauty of the English countryside can only be enhanced in one way, …