click photos to enlarge
There's small wonder that when children go into a public playground one of the first things they head for is the see-saw ( that is if "health and safety" hasn't banned it.) It seems that the human psyche just loves to go first this way, then that. Yesterday lending was good: today it's bad. Bust inevitably follows boom, and the only thing we learn from history is that we don't learn from history.
This see-sawing (or perhaps it's a swinging motion, and I chose the wrong piece of equipment for my metaphor) affects gardening just as much as international finance, the length of skirts, or the nutritional value, or otherwise, of the humble egg. England's great contribution to gardening - the landscape garden -was triumphant in the eighteenth century. Capability Brown, Humphrey Repton, and their followers recast the gardens and parks of the well-to-do to look like the vision of "wild nature tamed" as seen in the paintings of Claude. Romantic ruins, serpentine paths, "eye-catcher" follies, asymmetric clumps of trees and shrubs all contributed to the look. However, by the 1830s people had become tired of this, and the pendulum (to introduce a third metaphor!) swung back to the very formality that the landscapists had sought to banish. The gardens of Italy during the Renaissance, with their rectangular, geometric forms, prominent fountains, statues, axial layouts, tall conifers contrasting with tidy, cut shrubs, were the inspiration for this new direction. That this recreation wouldn't have been recognised by either an ancient Roman or a later Italian was of no consequence: even parterres made a comeback, and newly imported exotica like the monkey puzzle tree were included in this heady mix.
Today's photographs show something of this style of garden at Brodsworth Hall, Yorkshire, in the month of February. The two views each show a part of the same area, the first illustrating the favoured axial symmetry, here lined up on the centre of the west facade, and the second the degree of "close control" that such gardens exhibit: not so much nature tamed, as nature caught, caged, muzzled and trimmed like a pampered poodle!
photograph & text (c) T. Boughen
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 14mm (34mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/250 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
Second image
Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 48mm (96mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/125 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On
