By Gregory M. Pierceall, Professor of Landscape Architecture
Purdue University/HLA, pierceal@purdue.edu

(All photos courtesy of Greg Pierceall)

Italian, French, and English gardens are popular design styles that influence our gardens today. Each of these garden styles has a tradition, spatial organization, cultural environment/fashion and amenities/components they contribute. In looking to gardens and garden history, they can be seen as a design inspiration for designs of today.

Gardens through history have been recorded through their physical sites, literature, art, paintings, drawings and photographs. Through historic records of gardens, their context, owners and designers continue to inspire garden designers today.

This outline includes Italian, French and English garden influences. With historic research, images and information can help define how these garden styles might influence the design of your landscape plans.

Each of the three garden styles described here review four elements/considerations; 1) the background and traditions with regard to social/cultural context of that period in history; 2) spatial organizations that consider the landscape context, i.e., rolling landscape, flat landscape as well as garden layout (axial, naturalistic, etc.); 3) the cultural environment and fashions specific to the period, and 4) amenities and components that were specifically included as garden features.

Italian Renaissance

Background/Tradition

By the 15th century medieval thinking began to focus on the life in the "here and now." The walled and protected gardens were opening to the outside world mirroring the outward focus on ideals and possibilities of man, a paradigm shift that resulted in other huge impacts on art and the landscape of the period.

Spatial Organization

Italian Renaissance designers were masters at organizing spaces, the manipulation of topography and maximizing views to visually expand the garden to the horizons. With Italy being a hilly, rocky and rolling landscape the garden style is more vertical, staged and theatrical. With the natural and available construction materials of rock, much of the Italian garden style involves hardscapes and sculptural elements.

Gardens inspired by the early Italian Renaissance might manifest themselves as peaceful retreats that emphasize agriculture as well as ornamental aesthetics in the plantings. Other hallmarks are use of natural rock and organized spaces that include more open landscapes in the background, versus a walled garden, and planted areas that are more vertical, mirroring the hillier Italian terrain.

Cultural Environment/Fashion

Early Renaissance Italian Gardens were domestic villas with areas for agricultural productivity and peaceful retreats. The landscape forms were not the norm but the exception as to the average population.

High Renaissance Italian Gardens were the domestic villas but extravagant and designed exclusively for pleasure.

Mannerist style Italian Gardens were the grand and heroic, showy landscapes that were created as statements of power and prestige.

Amenities/Components

Italian Renaissance gardens often include parterres, barcos, orchards, loggias, vineyards, terraces, pergolas, grottoes, fountains, sculpture, patterned hardscapes, and glimpses of the "borrowed" view.

French Formal Gardens

Background/Tradition

17th century French garden design found the mannerist style as its expression. The French style dominates nature rather than creating a unity with it, not surprising as France during that time was enjoying a period of wealth, power and authority that glorified the rich and powerful aristocracy.

The French garden style is symmetrical, proportioned and meticulously laid out. Long axes were extended into the infinite horizon as an expression of infinite power of the monarchy. French style is awe-inspiring, powerful and impressive, controlled and articulated. The application of the style was embraced mostly by the royals.

Spatial Organization

Gardens were grand, well organized, balanced and geometric. Order merges with nature considering zonage, threshold and transition. Linear elegance is favored over the theatricality of the Italian models. This flat broad garden style fits the French flat landscape well. The Italian garden style was more vertical, a reflection of the natural hilly landscape in Italy.

Symmetrical, proportionate and meticulous in their layout, French formal gardens take control over the landscape and are awe-inspiring by design.

Cultural Environment/Fashion

It was an age of absolute monarchy; the King’s absolute power is portrayed in the garden. Andre Le Notre, one of the finest French garden designers started as a Royal Gardner. Le Notre expanded on the Italian Renaissance of perspective, symmetry, and proportion through classic gardening techniques. One addition was the allee or rows of trees on either side of a pathway. The formality of this extended the strength of the linear perspective. Parterres were another addition designed to a flat area adjoining the palace to be viewed as a piece of art.

Water elements were incorporated as still pools of water, placed next to architecture as an opportunity for reflections. The French, too, were masters of subtle grade changes in the landscape with carefully placed walls, steps, and grottoes to make the ground plane more interesting.

French gardens use plants as green architecture. Plants were clipped into architectural forms to strengthen the design. Pleached trees formed green walls. Woods were planted in grids to create a bosque. The use of exotic plants were included as accents and protected in the seasons in an Organary, for display and production.

Amenities/Components

Avenues, long roads and allees as an expression of prominence, are hallmarks, along with canals/water mirrors, parterres en broidere, grottoes, and sculptural programs with allegorical allusion (sculptures with symbolic meanings based on ancient beliefs and literature).

English Garden Styles

The 18th Century English, Victorian and Edwardian garden styles each have their own distinctions.

18th Century English Gardens - Background/Tradition

With the interest of the wealthy in 17th century, landscape paintings the romantic notion of the Arcadian ideal was sought in garden design. Increased travel to see some "classical" landscapes increased the desire to build a "physical diary" of some of these scenes. Literature of the era tried to steer the public away from the overburden of the French and Dutch design that earlier had been accepted in England.

The English began to think of nature as something beautiful in itself. Nature was seen as something to idealize not harness or control as had the French. The natural environment was embraced and accentuated encouraging picturesque views. The English landscape and climate was well suited to this expression. William Kent and Lancelot "Capability" Brown advanced this landscape garden thought.

Scenes from the 17th century landscape paintings were replicated as Arcadian scenes. Altering topography, planting tree groves and creating natural looking lakes were part of the process. Planting schemes were dominated by indigenous species of evergreens and hardwoods. Plants were left in their natural forms. Both mass plantings and specimens were used to rediscover nature in the landscape.

Spatial Organization

The opening up of the small garden gave rise to include more and more of the landscape, an abandonment of formality in favor of nature, softer contours and features. Balanced organic forms replace symmetry and the axis.

English garden styles reign with an informal look, the emphasis being on a design that looks like it might have occurred in nature. Plantings included perennials, biennials, and annuals in informal drifts.

Cultural Environment/Fashion

This style enabled a rediscovery of nature, appreciation of natural beauty and these landscape ideals were embraced by the wealthy land class with large land holdings. Landscape parks were beautiful and productive, producing an income (such as from grazing and timber).

Amenities/Components

Grassy meadows, winding lakes, copses of trees, shelter belts, native tree species, roads that are "never straight," and a no hedges/no fences rule are all early English garden design components.

English Victorian Gardens - Background/Tradition

The "nouveau riche" wealthy class having gained their wealth through industry, desired to elevate their social status by flaunting their wealth. This garden period (1820-1880) included a combination of Italian, French, English and Chinese garden styles. The period included a quest for the perfect house and garden. This mandate leads to a collection of disconnected landscape elements without a sense of coherence.

Plant collections were extremely important to this period and gardens built for their display. Conservatories were included for more tender plants. Greenhouses and conservatories increased in use with the commercial production of glass, part of the industrialization that created the wealth. The advent of central heating helped faciliate the utility of conservatories.

Herbaceous plants increased in popularity with increased greenhouses. Annuals were used in beds called carpet bedding, in which all plants used had a similar height yet variety of colors. With the advantage of commercial printing garden periodicals and catalogs the printed page brought new ideas and cultivars to light for use in the gardens of the general public.

Spatial Organization

These gardens include collections of garden spaces, often a variety of garden rooms, several design styles, copies and approaches from a variety of sources. In search for the "appropriate" aesthetic for newly acquired status, the resulting landscape was one of disconnected garden elements.

Cultural Environment/Fashion

New wealth, a distain for "traditional" tastes, showy, glitzy, incoherent design were signs of the times.

Amenities/Components

Carpet bedding, exotic plants, and combinations of Italian, French and English styles created eclectic design mixes.

The Edwardian Garden - Background/Tradition

By the late 1800s laws changes and increased taxes made large land holdings expensive. From 1918-1921 about 25 percent of the land in England changed hands due to the land and tax laws. New landowners had different ideas about gardening. Agriculture was no longer an activity associated with the properties and or their landscapes.

These new gardens were less acreage, natural, and relaxed, drawing aesthetic justification from the freedom of plant life. This movement or natural tradition expressed a greater respect for nature in the garden.

English landscape designer Gertrude Jekyll championed this naturalistic planting style in cottage gardens of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She established the fashion of the herbaceous border. Plantings included perennials, biennials, and annuals in informal drifts. Often the informality of the plant placement was contained in ordered geometric spaces extending from the associated architecture. The result was a luxuriant accident of nature harmonizing with the strict geometry and order of a classic arrangement.

Spatial Organization

An informal style reigned, with emphasis on the creation of something that looks natural, taking lessons from nature, yet in a controlled and ordered frame.

Cultural Environment/Fashion

Reflecting the social desire for peaceful tranquil landscapes, a country estate, natural became fashionable, resulting in relaxed, plants unhindered, untamed compositions, and the artificiality of the formal style was all but condemned.

Amenities/Components

Signs of the times were reflected in broad use of self-seeding plants to foster self-cultivation, herbaceous borders of hardy perennials, biennials, and annuals planted in informal drifts, often within formal constraints of ordered geometries.

And in the end...

With the evolution of gardens, change is the key word. Change in thought resulted in changes in the physical environments of the gardens and garden design, as gardens are physical places that are organized and influenced by culture and society.

Changes through history have provided the opportunity for the more gardens to be built and altered. Our current context and history has helped embrace the desire to create gardens and design for our own period of time.

While information, knowledge, the availability of resources and opportunities for travel continue to influence our ideas, the past remains a primary influence and inspiration for today’s garden designs.

Special thanks are due here to Professor Paul Siciliano for his shared sources and resources that made this article possible. He is a professor of Landscape Architecture at Purdue and teaching the Landscape Architectural History course as well as Landscape Design and Horticulture classes. His own "Landscape History" text listed below is the base of information presented in this article.

Resources/References: Overall Landscape History

Landscape Interpretations: History, Techniques and Design Inspiration
P.C. Siciliano, Purdue University. Delmar Publishers July 2004
A newly published resource with text, images and a CD to covey the inspiration of Italian, French, English and Modernist garden styles

Italian Garden Resources:

Edith Wharton's Italian Gardens
An overview of Italian gardens with a personal travel log, great images and descriptions of selected Italian gardens.
Author: Vivian Russell
Published by: Bulfinch 1997

A Tour of Italian Gardens
Plans and photographs of a range of Italian gardens throught the various regions of Italy.
Author: Judith Chatfield
Publisher: Rizzoli 1988

La Foce A Garden and Landscape in Tuscany
A study of the house, landscape and history of La Foce, the estate is the stage for an excellent exploration of an Italian villa and its landscape. Great images, plans and drawings.
Authors: Origo, Livingston, Olin and Hunt
Publisher: University of Pennsylvannia Press, 2001

Gardens of Florence
A photo essay of the gardens of Florence
Authors: Albrizzi and Pool
Publisher: Rizzoli 1992

Italian Gardens
Italian villa landscapes, elegant photographs convey the inside/outside lifestyle.
Author: Charles A. Platt
Publisher: Sagapress/Timber Press 1993

Italian Gardens
An exploration of five hundred years of gardening tradition, numerous regions of Italy are included, featuring historic and contemporary gardens.
Author: Judith Wade
Publisher: Rizzoli 2002

French Garden References:

The Art of French Vegetable Gardening
the style as components of French vegetable gardening within a landscape setting including recipes for vegetables
Author: Louisa Jones
Published by Artisan, 1995

The French Country Garden
Where the past flourishes in the present, includes garden memories, plants, appealing to your senses, play, natural ways and an overall perspective
Author: Louisa Jones
Publisher Bulfinch, Little, Brown and Company 2000

Gardens in France
This larger format text is a collection of gardens in vivid color and perspective. Besides the images, a reference in the back describes the garden and includes a reduced plan to help observe the spatial organization of the gardens
Authors: Photos Deidi von Schaewen Text Marie-Francoise Valery
Publisher Taschen 1997

Mirrors of Infinity
The French formal garden and the 17th c metaphysics. A text reference of the influences of French Gardens in history.
Author: Allen S. Weiss
Publisher Princeton Architectural Press 1995

French Influences
Interior design aspects of French style design, some garden views.
Author: Betty Lou Phillips
Publisher Gibbs-Smith 2001

Parterre and Knot Gardens in French Knots
A small book with garden inspired knot patterns.
Author: Christine Harris
Publisher Milner 2001

French Scenic Wallpaper 1795-1865
An idea reference of the landscape images used as wallpaper for interiors. An inspiration of what the "landscapes" were like.
Author: Musee des Arts decoratifs
Publisher Flammarion 1991

English Gardens and Garden History:

English Topiary Gardens
A pictorial tour of topiary in English gardens.
Author: Clarke and Wright
Publisher Phoenix Illustrated 1988

English Herb Gardens
A collection of gardens and plants for herb gardens.
Author: Cooper, Taylor and Boursnell
Publisher Rizzoli 1986

Gardens Through the Ages 1420-1940
Original designs for recreating classic gardens. An excellent reference and well illustrated.
Author: Roy Strong
Publisher Conran Octopus 2000 revision

Creating Small Formal Gardens
A great reference for the vocabulary, heritage, application and practical aspects of small gardens.
Author: Roy Strong
Publisher Conran Octopus 2001

Creating Small Gardens
A basic how to book on elements, process and components of small gardens.
Author: Roy Strong
Publisher Conran Octopus 1995 edition

What Gardens Mean
An overview of garden history and garden style.
Author: Stephanie Ross
Publisher University of Chicago 1998

The History of Garden Design
The Western tradition from the Renaissance to the Present Day. A great reference with text and plans to understand context and spatial organization of historic gardens.
Author: Mosser and Teyssot
Publisher Thames & Hudson 2000

European Garden Design
from classical antiquity to present day. This reference has images and illustration that convey the planning and details of historic garden styles.
Author: Ehrenfried Kluckert
Publisher Konemann 2000

Garden Icons
Historic garden profiles.
Author: Caroline Holmes
Publisher Prestel 1998

Garden Ornament
Five hundred years of history and practice of the art and artifacts of the garden.
Author: George Plumptre
Publisher Thames and Hudson 1989

The Garden Makers
The great tradition of Garden design from 1600 to the present.
Author: George Plumptre
Publisher Random House 1993

Antiques from the Garden
Garden structures, decorative features, water features, containers, furniture, tools and lawn borders
Author: Alistair Morris
Publisher Garden Art Press 1998

Garden Ornament
The site features that make a garden work, entries, steps, urns, pavement, loggias, sundials, pergola, etc.
Author: Gertrude Jekyll
Publisher Antique Collectors' Club reprint 1994

From Folly to Follies
Discovering the word of gardens, gardens are memories. Great world wide examples.
Author: M. Saudan and S. Sudan-Skira
Publisher Evergreen 1997

The History of Gardens
A reference of various garden styles through history.
Author: C. Thacker
Publisher University of California Press 1979