Creating their own domains. Polish female aristocrats and gardening during the eighteenth century

Abstract

Abstract The text examines the meaning of gardens for Polish enlightened female aristocrats at the turn of the eighteenth century, in relation to their personality and against a sociohistorical background. Noblewomen such as Izabela Czartoryska and Helena Radziwill considered gardens as their own domains; due to their activities the landscape garden became part of the emerging aristocratic culture. In search of the individual character of these gardens the text analyses the combination of various decisive factors: specific property rights granted to noblewomen, the national ideal of a country life and the exchange of ideas with like-minded European intellectuals, in which aristocratic women participated. Their gardens had open or hidden agendas, which initially alluded to literary, philosophic or freemasonic topics; by the end of the century they focused on patriotic clues expressing devotion to national traditions. This became all the more important after the partition of the Polish-Lithuania Commonwealt...