Garden Design in the Mid-Seventeenth Century

Abstract

Garden writers of the mid-seventeenth century provided copious advice on the best situations for prospect, soil and shelter from wind, but not on design. So who devised the layout of the gardens? Garden writers addressed their books to landowners who would be building or improving their country residences. Such owners would be used to overseeing the setting out and enclosure of fields and garden grounds themselves. The content and tone of the gardening books, coupled with the virtual absence of relevant advice in the architectural treatises, suggests that masterminding fine gardens around a house was one of the accomplishments expected of the owner himself.