Louis X1V built Versailles for the Court, the Trianon de Porcelaine for Madame de Montespan, the Grand Trianon (formerly the Trianon de Porcelaine) for his family and Marly for his friends. The Trianon, Marly and later Marie-Antoinette’s Le Petit Trianon and indeed the Hameau were ‘hermitages’, places of retreat. Louis led his life in the full gaze of the court and the public. The people could enter Versailles and view the King, indeed the only stipulation was that they have a hat and sword; these could be hired at the gates! The Trianon and Marly were strictly by Kings invitation only.

 

 

The not always accurate chronicler Saint-Simon wrote ‘The King, tired of magnificence and publicity persuaded himself that he wanted something small and sequestered’. Historians will argue the motives behind the construction of Marly, but what they cannot argue over is that it was ranked as one of the most magnificent gardens in France.

Once Louis had decided on this new building project he could not have had any doubts as to how the finished result would look. He had been commissioning buildings and gardens for eighteen years and had no misgivings as to how his architects, gardeners and artists would perform their new tasks. One point of note is that at the time of construction his most talented artist Le Notre was away in Rome and Hardouin-Mansard worked with all speed to construct the garden in his absence!

Louis was recommended various sites for the chateau and garden. He listened to suggestions that it should be built on the slopes around Saint-Germain or at Luciennes, but he dismissed these choices as being potentially too costly and ruinous. Louis knew that he was most likely to get carried away and find the new project swallowed up inestimable sums of money.  According to Saint–Simon, Louis replied to the choice of Luciennes by saying, ‘such a lovely site would ruin me and that since I plan a mere trifle I want a site that will allow me to build that and no more’.

Eventually the chosen position was behind Luciennes in a boggy site in a steep sided rocky valley enclosed by hills limiting any vista and having difficulty in approach due to marsh. The fact that it was enclosed with no risk of the garden ‘spreading’ out of control was the main point that attracted Louis to the site. Of course the Kings plans grew and Marly eventually ended up grander than it was first considered. The hills were cut into, to make way for twelve small pavilions surrounding the main small Chateau. Louis inhabited this chateau called ‘The Sun’ and his guests stayed in the pavilions. All the pavilions were connected to ‘The Sun’ via arbours of scented shrubs.

 

 

Marly was full of statures and ornament. Many were lost during and after the revolution, this piece moved many times but has finally come to rest at the Louvre.

The garden unlike Versailles was never short of water, the giant ‘machine of Marly’ saw to that. Marly gloried in waterfalls, fountains, pools, cascades, goldfish ponds and jets on an unprecedented scale. Because there was all the water needed at Marly what is the tapis vert at Versailles and the parterres at Vaux became a chain of elaborate water features on the axis at Marly. Scented walks ran parallel to each other at differing levels and travelled through bosquets and past cascades. Flowers were in abundance the King delighted in Jasmine, orange blossom and his most favourite plant, the tuberoses. Over a four year period his new passion for Tulips was indulged, with over eighteen million tulip bubs planted!  The tulip bulbs came from Holland where his arch enemy William III at times cut of the supply.

 

The Great Cascade known as the ‘Riviere’. Louis XV replaced this with a grass ride but the pond that the water flowed into is still intact although all the gilt work and marble have long since been lost.

A fact that can never be underestimated is the store by which an invitation to Marly was held. The pinnacle of a noble person’s life would be an invitation. The King would visit Marly from a Wednesday to Saturday and prior to this courtiers would petition Louis for an invitation by simply saying ‘’Sire, Marly!’’ The strict court protocol was relaxed, men while walking in the garden were allowed to wear their hats and all could sit down in the salon. On one occasion the Abbe de Polignac was with Louis in the garden when it started to rain. Louis commented that the Abbe was not dressed for the weather. The Abbe simply said, ‘’Sire, the rain never wets at Marly’’.

Part of the Louveciennes aqueduct that transported water pumped by the ‘Machine of Marly’ to Marly and Versailles.

The thousands of trees that were planted at Marly (mature trees transplanted form Compiegne) and gardens declined after the death of Louis in September 1715. Marly was not seen as fashionable by the next two Kings. The final destruction occurred during the revolution and today virtually all is lost! Marly though remains a garden worth a visit. The pervading air is one of paradise lost and more than Versailles or anywhere Louis created, you feel close to the Sun King.

The site of the main chateau

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Garden of La Chaire.

This blog looks at the garden of La Chaire on the Island of Jersey. The garden is now in urgent need of restoration before it is lost forever. Only a few original plants survive, plants that were sent from such places as Australia and Kew.

Samuel Curtis, cousin of William Curtis, the founder of the Botanical Magazine had been seeking a suitable location in which to establish a garden, a garden in which he could grow tropical and rare plants. Curtis wanted to grow non hardy plants that could not possibly be established in any other part of the British Isles, including Cornwall. He also wanted to grow the new plants coming in from Australia, New Zealand, China and Sikkim. Curtis had searched from the West Coast of Scotland down through England, but if he had found the climate fairly suitable the underlying rock or the soil had not been ideal for such plants to thrive and indeed survive. Samuel Curtis had some success in growing less than hardy plants at his home in Essex, called Glazenwood. Here he had already experimented in growing Australian plants.

In 1841 Curtis eventually discovered the perfect location in which to grow his tropical plants. This was in an east west valley in a tiny fishing village on the north east coast of Jersey called Rozel. Not only was the climate suitable, kept frost free by the surrounding sea and far warmer than anywhere in England but unlike the rest of Jersey the bedrock is not granite but Rozel Conglomerate. This is a purple pudding stone that unlike granite can easily be broken up and penetrated by plant roots. The valley he discovered was also supplied by a stream that was constant both in winter and summer.

Curtis although not fully resident at La Chaire until 1847 immediately set to work to build a house and construct the garden. The land was sold to him by Thomas Machon and was then called Le Mont Crevieu ou Le Chaires. Curtis abridged the name to La Chaire.

Samuel Curtis was a close friend and work colleague of William Hooker who become Director of Kew. They disagreed professionally at times but always remained friends. Hooker was instrumental in sending plants to La Chaire and many of these can be seen requested in letters to Hooker, written by Curtis. In a letter sent to Hooker from La Chaire on the 1st October 1853 Curtis wrote, ‘’I think this is a good time to plant our half hardy tender plants in our sheltered nooks and crannies…….send me a parcel containing such things as you might consider curious as out of door plants. The Australian plants I think would mostly do here; would not Banksia and Degandras’’? In another letter he says that, ‘’I have more than thirty tall stems of Yucca gloriosa in blossom at once’’! By 1858 when Adam White from the Linnaean Society visited La Chaire, Curtis was able to tell him that the garden had over 2,000 different species of plants. Kew also benefited from La Chaire. One Kew ‘plants in’ entry shows Curtis sending Gladiolus, a cutting of Jerusalem sage, hibiscus and seedling Acacia raised from seed collected on the banks of the Namoi river, New South Wales.

 

Curtis died in 1860 and left a garden that by 1884 when the ‘Jersey Gardener’ magazine visited was reaching maturity. They wrote about the many species of Rhododendrons and Acacias that could be seen and …. . ‘’The Loquat, The China Tea, Thea veridis, the Olea Fragrans…Olea sativa…a New Holland PepperTree, Tasmania aromatica, Spiræa grandiflora…Bamboos…Gum trees from Australia, a host of sotres of Mesembryanthemums and bulbous plants from South Africa. Azalias, from India and America. And all sorts of odds and ends, from all parts of the world, are to be found growing on that little patch of semi-barren rock’’.

 

La Chaire has had many owners over the years, too many to mention here. But undoubtedly the most flamboyant and charismatic of these was Charles Fletcher. A man likened to Toad of Toad hall for his love of the good life, cars and boats! Fletcher owned La Chaire from 1898 to 1906 and the infrastructure of the garden as seen today can be attributed to him. Fletcher added a comprehensive irrigation system that Curtis had not thought necessary during his tenure and enlarged the original house.

 

Curtis had a turbulent relationship with his gardeners and neighbours and also closed the garden to visitors. During the ownership of La Chaire by Samuel Curtis and his widowed daughter Harriet, the garden was a must see on the tourist trail and four horse coaches would stop for visitors to take in the garden. In March 1899 Fletcher informed the coach company and the local Hotel that the garden was closed to visitors. 

 

 

The English Landscape Movement

This post charts the rise of the English landscape Movement. The next will consider the influence of the Grand Tour to this style.

The Catalyst for Change

When you consider gardens in the 17^th Century you would undoubtedly visualise the formal gardens of London and Wise or the sweeping serpentine gardens and parks of Capability Brown, but there was a new type of garden in the English cities, cities such as London, Birmingham and Manchester that were to help set the scene for the English landscape movement, the Pleasure Gardens. These were large gardens such as the New Spring Gardens later to become Vauxhall gardens. They were a clean city space for the people of London. There were many of these gardens, sixty four in London alone in the 18^th century, serving visitors from all walks of life.

A number of social and political factors influenced the rise of the pleasure garden. The first contributing factor were cities becoming increasingly built up, dirty, and smelly with parts rat and disease infested; raw sewage (night soil) would run down the streets in open drains. There would have been the incessant noise of the city with flocks of animals and coaches churning up the already rutted and muddy streets, with no hope of a clean footpath to walk on. The stench alone would have made walking an unpleasant pastime and that is without the omnipresent fear of the footpad, pickpocket, and highwayman. The threat and fear of the Black Death also chilled the hearts of city dwellers, (and country people alike) the disease making many appearances until 1665.

What was required by city dwellers was a place such as the pleasure garden, where the air was clean and fresh, where there was less chance of catching disease, combined with a pleasant walk among scented plants and tree lined avenues, the song of the nightingale an evening treat. Walking after all was the preferred method of excise for the rich and middle class. This exercise could be undertaken on purpose made footpaths in the pleasure gardens so the fashionable women and gentlemen would not have their footwear and clothes caked in filth. The act of the promenade was not only just for the taking of exercise but was important to show off the latest fashion, and importantly you could be seen.  Temples in neoclassical, gothic, and rococo design stood side by side with Triumphal arches.

The ‘Cultural Revolution’ from the formal garden to the informal saw an unprecedented change in fashion, a massive swing from the renaissance and baroque gardens that had held firm in England for a few hundred years. Yes, London and Wise the team of garden designers, whose business created many formal gardens were still designing and supplying plants from their Brompton nursery base, but voices were being raised, and were becoming louder, against these rigid, geometric gardens. One of these voices belonged to Joseph Addison who in the Spectator wrote the now famous quote;

Our British gardeners on the contrary, instead of humouring nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes and pyramids. We see the marks of the scissors upon every plant and bush. I do not know whether I am singular in my opinion, but for my own part I would rather look upon a tree in all its luxuriance than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure.

The formal gardens in England were also associated with a lack of free spirit and thought, they were linked to the divine right of the Kings where the monarchs could not easily or safely be questioned, they could rule and impose their will, set laws and taxes, there was no real freedom of mind or expression. This state of affairs was no longer deemed natural or even normal in the 18^th century and man wished to reside in a far better, more natural place. The natural landscape was now being courted and instead of a vigorous controlling of nature, it was to be welcomed even embraced in the garden, man started to realize that he was not the master of nature and in fact there was to be an equal partnership if harmony and tranquillity were to be the norm. We can see the formal garden as art over nature but the English landscape movement became nature over art.

The epithet English Landscape movement is too simple to give true and accurate meaning; in fact we have to break down the movement into its component parts.The main epithet, English Landscape Movement,  will always be widely used as this is the name that most people and historians easily recognise, but the four sub-movements are the; Augustan, Serpentine, Picturesque and Landscape or eclectic periods.

The Augustan period was the first period of the new movement and named after Emperor Augustus, and the Augustan poets who wished to recreate the past glories of ancient Rome. We can also name this period neoclassical, neoclassical because the gardens of this time emulated or at least attempted to emulate the classical landscape of Rome and to a degree ancient Greece. As David C Stuart wrote regarding the psychological pull of the classical world.

The world of ancient Rome has almost always exerted a powerful appeal to men unfortunate enough to have been born after its fall.

 The gardens were liberally scattered with classical architecture such as temples, and grottoes, statues, groves and other illusions to antiquity. The Augustan period saw such gardens as Chiswick, Claremont, Rousham and Stowe created.

The ‘Serpentine’ was the second period and prominently the most well know of the four. This was was categorised by a noticeably more natural theme, the naturalisation of the landscape was considered to bring the landowner closer to God, and it would bring man and nature into peaceful coexistence thus creating harmony. Any formality such as a terrace, which had survived, surrounding the main house during the Augustan period was swept away, and the turf came like a tide to the front of the property obliterating the old formality.

The ‘Picturesque’ was the third period and came about as a reaction against the Serpentine period which had come to be thought of as bland and boring, Brown, one of the main exponents had fallen out of fashion.  Gardens moved away from places to entertain and walk while enjoying a natural refined landscape, but instead took the form of a rugged and rustic landscape with rivers running through the land turned if possible into raging torrents, with features such rustic bridges and cascades. The landscape was not be entered but viewed as a painting. The only connection the Picturesque had with the desperately out of fashion baroque was that both were better viewed from height to gain the full perspective. This style of garden worked far more effectively in the north of England with the topography lending itself well, far better than in the flatter south.

The ‘landscape’ period was characterised by formality being put back around the house in the form of a terrace. The terrace did not link with the landscape and would become Italianate in its appearance. The middle distance would be serpentine leading to a sublime third vista such as hills, mountains or even the sea.

We need now to understand why the English Landscape Movement came about, what was the catalyst for change. The reasons for change are rarely singular and this new style was no exception, with a number of social, political and economic reasons at its heart. The first was connected with Louis X1V, the Sun King; he had demanded the finest baroque gardens in France, such as at Versailles, the Trianon and Marly. These gardens had reached the ultimate zenith of baroque design and had has a result, left nothing new to achieve apart from enlargement. The death of the Sun King spelt the end of the formal baroque garden in France, it died along with Louis. The English had for some while started to consider the French style as predictable and even boring, the last pious years of Louis X1V saw the fun drained from the French court and this was reflected in the way these gardens were considered, they were no longer associated with theatre, fun and entertainment.

French influence and European war was another reason the exponents of the English Landscape Movement wanted to distance themselves from the French style of design. The English King Charles II had been a secret Roman Catholic, promising Louis X1V that if he provided subsidies to make up for insufficient revenue in England, Charles II would reintroduce Catholicism to England. Charles II only partly kept this promise, on his death bed he died a Catholic but the Country stayed Protestant. The influence that the French subsides held over England were not known at first but were vastly unpopular when discovered. Charles II had also refused to name a protestant heir to the English throne so James II, his brother, a Catholic, succeeded him as King of Great Britain and Ireland. Along the way he had to defeat his protestant rival, the Duke of Monmouth. James II made himself very unpopular and being a Catholic sealed his downfall, especially when he produced a male Catholic heir and tried to side-line parliament, dismissing many of his opponents from positions of power. All this resulted in the English Whigs inviting Dutch King William III and his wife Mary II, the Protestant daughter of James II to become joint monarchs, they did this in 1689 after driving James II to exile in France where he remained the guest of Louis X1V for the rest of his life. James II with support from France invaded Ireland in 1689 in an attempt to re-claim his crown, but was defeated in 1690 at the Battle of the Boyne despite the support from French troops and French funds. The supporters of James II were also defeated in Scotland; no blood was spilled in England, hence the term ‘The Glorious Revolution’ given to this period from 1688-9.  The French support for James II and the hatred William III and Louis X1V had for each other caused Britain and France to be long term enemies and again a strong reason to begin to consider the rejection of the French style of gardens. We must not forget the part William III and Mary II played in this change of style, the very fact that William III was a foreigner and brought with him to England, at Hampton Court in particular, the Dutch version of the renaissance garden was enough to turn Englishmen away from the formal style.

We need to consider now the role of the garden and compare the different uses that the baroque and English Landscape garden were designed for. The baroque garden was a show case, a theatre if you like, a space to watch open air entertainment, a space to be seen virtually all in one go from a platform or belvedere, not a space to take long leisurely walks amongst woods and trees. The formal baroque gardens of France and England were really a stage set, a setting in which you wanted to be seen, show off the latest fashions and be entertained. The problem in England was the weather, unless you happened to be enjoying a particularly fine summer a garden mainly exposed and in the open did not always work. In England the pressure was building to have a style of garden better suited to the needs. The English have always enjoyed a walk, taking exercise, enjoying the fresh air and indulging in pleasant conversation.  We dislike seeing a garden all in one go, the air of romance and mystery is in our gardening blood, we wish to see the garden reveal itself sensuously little by little. For these reasons the advent of the English landscape garden was better suited to our climate and the English desire for a country walk, the garden revealing gradually. Derek Clifford in his book A History of Garden Design, explains.

There were good reasons why the revolution when it came should have come in England, and among the most important of them was the Englishman’s fondness for taking a country walk. The very factor that makes English gardening so remarkable, the English climate, severely limits the use of an English garden. The gardens of France were stages upon which to parade and be seen. But for how many days of the year is it possible to live in an English garden? How suitable is the English weather for parading up and down in fine clothing? England is no place for the great ceremonial occasion en plein air unless suitable shelter is at hand. In England a garden has never been primarily a place to sit in, or a place to debate in, or a place to act in; not for the English the fetes champetres of Fontainebleau and Chantilly or Pliny’s suppers at the fountain; for the English a garden has always been a place to walk about in and to play games in. Arising also in part from the weather, though less directly so, is the Englishman’s fondness for physical exercise as a pleasure in its own right, and with it goes his capacity for enjoying his own company. Add all these up and then consider what future there was for Versailles in such a land!

Some Historians consider a major reason for the move away from the formal garden was economic and the other reasons for change were secondary to this. The economic position of England had suffered with the draining and expensive wars with the French. Charles II, the King of Spain had died in 1700 without leaving an heir and with clever political subtlety from the French, namely by their ambassador in Madrid, the Marquis d’ Harcourt (who was made a Duke for his efforts) the grandson of Louis XIV was offered the position of King of Spain. This position was accepted by Louis XIV and his grandson became King Philip V. The down side to this arrangement was that Europe, namely Austria, virtually all of Germany (still to be unified), England, Holland and Denmark feared the combined power of a united France and Spain and joined forces to attempt to remove Philip V as King of Spain. The result was the War of Spanish Succession which commenced in 1702. The war was long and hard for all sides and was still being fought in 1712. England had negotiated its way out of the war in 1711 but the damage to the countries coffers had already been done. The English Landscape movement started in this period of economic hardship. In times of hardship there are cuts made to unessential costs, gardens although not considered unessential were expensive to maintain. The formal garden of England required a large team of gardeners to clip the miles of Box hedging, rake the gravel, shape the topiary and maintain the fountains, not to mention keep on top of the weeding. The formal garden had become a financial burden to the rich and the new landscape movement gave them the chance of a cheaper more cost effective, highly fashionable style of garden design, a style that meant you could as a land owner design the garden yourself, you no longer needed to be a mathematician or landscape architect to design a garden, you just needed a good eye for placement and a good imagination. The argument can be made that to remove a formal garden, destroy it in fact, and then replace it with a totally different design concept so vastly different in style so as to totally oppose what was there before, had to be a great initial cost, and yes it was, the cost of the construction of the English Landscape garden was colossal. The costs though would be much lower after the initial set up and construction, this is because the amount of gardeners needed to maintain the new gardens was far lower, cost cutting could be made in staff wages. The gardens now only required grass maintenance and pruning, no longer the cutting of miles of box parterre edging and replacing of plants and materials to keep the gardens looking at their best. Cheaper labour costs and cheaper material requirements contributed to the move away from the formal garden.  Derek Clifford explained this when he wrote.

Yet when all is said one may well think the chief cause of the Great Revolution to have been economic……..the elimination of costly frills was an obvious way to meet the demand for greater economies. Throughout the eighteenth century, but especially at the beginning and again at the end of it, economy was proclaimed to be one of the chief factors in good garden design.     

The pressure of how you were perceived by your peers played a major role, it was no longer enough to be wealthy, the gentry desired to be seen as educated and well versed in the arts and classics, wealth alone was not enough anymore to show status. This knowledge and understanding of the classics and the perception of taste was fed by the ‘Grand Tour’.