Gardening
Lay-out artists
Denis Wood
Furor Hortensis is the title of essays published in memory of Frank Clark who died in 1971 while head of the courses in Landscape Architecture at the University of Edinburgh. He was President of the Garden History Society and past President of the Institute of Landscape Architects.
Collectively the seven essays are enough to inspire any who have so far resisted the temptation, to explore the eighteenth century furor, frenzy or passionate love of the Landskip which partly under the influence of ,Pope, became a touchstone of taste to men of wealth and feeling. Several of the essays are of special interest in that they bring out some of the other practitioners — London, Wise, Vanburgh, Switzer, Bridgeman, Price, Knight and Loudon among them — too often overshadowed by the three giants, William Kent, Lancelot Brown and Humphry Repton.
William Alvis Brogden writes of Stephen Switzer (1682-1745) and 'La Grand Manier' (sic), of which he approved being essentially large, open, with strong axes as compared with the 'Dutch Taste' which was considered to be mean-spirited with its emphasis on compartmental detail and topiary, ridiculed by Pope in his Epistle to Burlington of 1731.
Charles Bridgeman began as royal gardener in partnership with Henry Wise in 1726 and took over when Wise retired two years later. Peter Willis in his essay emphasises that Bridgeman's work for the Crown centred round Queen Caroline, the wife of King George II and refers to his work in the Green Park, St. James's Park, Kensington. and Richmond.
George Clarke discusses the part played by William Kent (1684-1748) at Stowe and, in particular, in the Elysian fields there, suggesting his contribution may have been largely restricted to the important buildings and that much of the landscape was the work of Bridgeman.
Dorothy Stroud records a forgotten landscape by Humphry Repton at Wembley Park, the subject of one of the Red Books and made for Richard Page about 1793 on land of which a part was sold to the Metropolitan Railway Company in 1881 and which was later to become the site of the British Empire Exhibition of 1924, and later still, of the present Stadium and Empire Pool.
William Spink writes of Sir John Clark (1676-1755) of 'Penicuik as
landowner and designer. Penicuik is "splendidly situated to the south and east of the bold mass of the Pentland Hills and intersected by the deep valley of the north Esk. Mr Spink writes "although blessed
with considerable imagination and artistic flair an inborn prudence and restraint kept him from the wilder excesses of the furor hortensis. 'Tis a beuty to see things naturel and at little or no expense'."
The last essay by Laurence Ricker is concerned with John Claudius Louden (1783 to 1843); apart from his investigations into Louden and the plane-tree, Mr Flicker makes the illuminating remark that "if Clark had a hero he was of a very different period, calling and temperament (from Louden) — William Shenstone.
On Frank Clark himself there are short introductory essays. In his notes on Clark as a practitioner, Geoffrey Jellicoe refers to his work at the churchyard of St Giles between New Oxford Street and the Charing Cross Road, the landscape for the new University of York "among the most imaginative in the country" and to his appointment as landscape consultant for the Festival of Britain in 1951. It was in connection with this that Sir Robert H. Matthew first met Clark whom he described as ".. , a new kind of character. ... quiet, even self-effacing . . . sympathetic yet quizically critical."
The book contains thirty-two pages of plates and is most hand somely produced and could well become a collector's item. It costs £10 and may be obtained from the Elysium Press, 24 Castle Street, Edinburgh. Proceeds from the sales are to be used for-the establishment of an H.F. Clark memorial prize in landscape architecture at the University of Edinburgh.
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