Hanging from the walls of English country houses across the land are bird’s eye views of lost gardens – elegant geometric patterns of hedged enclosures, avenues and canals, embellished with whimsical topiary and elaborate parterres – a garden style that reached its zenith in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. Some of these gardens may never have been made, the engravings representing what the owner aspired to rather than what was created on the ground. Other gardens – some of the greatest in the land – existed for just a few scant years before being swept away by the English landscape movement that followed.
But while the aristocracy rushed to embrace a new informal garden style that would eventually be perfected in the serene landscapes of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, the