PRINCIPLES OF GARDEN DESIGN
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR]
Ste,—I am so hearty an admirer of Mr. Harold Nicolson's weekly page that perhaps I may be permitted to observe that his theory of garden design, contained in your issue of July 21st, is somewhat neglectful of an exotic influence. Surely the jardin anglais, which later was copied everywhere on the Continent, did not leap into existence solely out of the fertile inventiveness of Bridgernan and Kent. When fashion no longer compelled servility to the precepts of Le Notre, the native revolt against planting trees like grenadiers on parade also found an unexpected inspiration in the Orient, where the Chinese had always aimed to reproduce in their gardens the picturesqueness of nature. In certain eighteenth-century libraries can still be found a copiously illustrated French folio known as the Yardins Anglo-Chinois, with pictures of gardens in this composite style. Eastern influence acquired British denizenship not by remaining an exotic (though there still are evidences of this at Kew and Dropmore), but in its absorption by British garden design in the return to nature.—I am, Sir,
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