Landscape gardens in essence

Apollo, Feb, 2005 by Todd Longstaffe-Gowan

Some might argue that Piper's drawings are not entirely reliable--that there are distortions or inaccuracies in some of his surveys or sketches of features at such places as Stowe or Painshill. This might possibly be attributed to the fact that the drawings that have come down to us were not, in fact, produced in the field, as is so commonly believed, but were worked up afterwards, and adjusted to suit his recollections. However, whether or not Piper's drawings were produced en plein air, he was clearly obsessed with achieving a degree of topographical accuracy--if only to capture the essence of a garden. He remarked that to be able to obtain a 'clear conception' of an English park, it was not sufficient to 'draw all the paths, Canals and planted areas on paper. It is also necessary through washes in appropriate Tints to show the inclinations of all the hills, and greater or lesser swelling of Terrain, so that all the roads and paths thereafter are seen to rise and fall, according to the nature of the soil in this respect, in other words, so that the whole is like a well-drawn Topographical Situation chart which is customary in a Fortification context'.

If Piper's drawings produced for his Description, or those he prepared for this various built or proposed works resemble French or Italian beaux-arts exercises, perhaps it is because the English landscape that he so admired--possibly to the point of obsession--was more akin to what we now regard as the jardin anglais, or the jardin anglo-chinois, than we realise. Perhaps we should question the assumption that the English landscape garden was above all asymmetrical and informal. Those who recoil at this thought, or are disinclined to consider this thesis might, perhaps, then credit Piper with prefiguring the tradition of so-called ornamental gardening practised with great success by such landscape improvers as Humphry Repton (1752-1818) and John Buonarotti Papworth (1775-1847).

Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is a landscape architect and historian. His book The Gardens and Parks at Hampton Court Palace will he published by Frances Lincoln with Historic Royal Palaces in April.