A Brief History of the Landscape Garden

The English garden designer was really born in the 18th century, when garden designers such as William Kent and Capability Brown started introducing landscape garden features such as hills, lakes and trees into previously, very much untouched, countryside.

By the 1790s, taste in landscape garden style had veered towards the more picturesque, and was based on beautiful landscape paintings by talented and well-loved artists. The leader of this landscape garden movement was William Gilpin (who himself was a very accomplished artist). Landscape gardeners of this picturesque style also began to incorporate architectural detail into their designed gardens and landscapes – features such as castles and cottages, follies and ruins.

Humphrey Repton was also a garden designer originating from this picturesque school and Repton was a major force in developing it a little more in the 1820s into a style of landscape garden called 'Gardenesque'.

In a Gardenesque landscape garden, all plants, trees and shrubs were positioned so that the character of each plant could be properly appreciated. Then, as botany and travel became more interlinked toward the middle of the 1800s, so too did the varieties of flora develop in garden design – landscape garden design suddenly saw the arrival of grasses from South America for example, or strangely surfaced monkey-puzzle trees.

In complete opposition to these very structured and ‘engineered’ gardens if you like, were the ‘wild’ gardens of the 1880s and 1890s. The garden designers most influential in this school were William Robinson and Gertrude Jekyll. And Vita Sackville West’s garden at Sissinghurst Castle in Kent is probably the most famous landscape garden ever created in this, very romantic, style.

In the 20th century, Garden designers, inspired by the modern architecture movement, naturally followed in the same modern architecture philosophy – that of "form following function”. And form and function are still two of the most key words in even the most contemporary and cutting edge or avant-garde garden design.

Of course one of the very best places to see form and function in garden design in close quarters and in absolute perfection is the Chelsea Flower Show.

The first Royal Horticultural Society Great Spring Show was held in 1862, at the RHS garden in Kensington. Now, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show as it is known takes place each year in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea and attracts thousands of visitors and every keen amateur garden designer from all over the world.

The avant-garde show gardens are the biggest attraction at Chelsea, principally as the landscape gardeners and garden designers behind them are faced with the challenges of creating perfect form and perfect function in tiny structured spaces or plots. And in a matter of days too - from temperature controlled lorry to a perfectly growing blooming garden that looks years old!

Highlights from the 2011 RHS Chelsea Flower Show included The Irish Sky Garden by Diarmuid Gavin that was based on the idea of a restaurant in the sky. Other show stopping gardens included the HESCO Garden, by Leeds City Council who reconstructed an impressive working water wheel in the grounds of the Royal Hospital. 

Over the years, many garden designers and landscape gardeners have really made their names at Chelsea – garden designers such as Tom Stuart Smith, Andy Sturgeon, Lennox Boyd, Sarah Eberle and Randle Siddeley.

From Capability Brown to Diarmuid Gavin, garden design and landscape gardeners have come a very long way. But as our very busy lives develop, and as space becomes a more rare commodity, what we do with it becomes more of an art and more of a science, so that those who practise those arts and sciences are even more in demand than original great works of landscape art that started it all.

The 3 disciplines of landscaping

It is widely understood that the ‘landscape’ has six main compositional elements: the landform itself, vertical structures, horizontal structures, vegetation (or flora), water and climate. To take a scientific angle on it then, landscaping is - in essence - the art and science of arranging all these six elements to make a good outdoor space. One that works functionally AND aesthetically.

Where does landscape architecture become landscaping design? And how does garden design fit in to the equation too?

As a rule, landscape architecture is mainly focused on public spaces - urban planning, city and regional parks, civic and corporate landscapes, large scale interdisciplinary projects and so on. And by virtue of the fact landscape architecture concerns public spaces, it is of course generally much larger in scale, is a longer project in duration, and is implemented by many many contracts, rather than just one!

If landscape architects design the built environment of neighborhoods, towns and cities, they must also however, protect and manage the natural environment - from forests and fields to rivers and coasts. Landscape architects therefore have a responsibility to improve the quality of life of residents of that architecture, and that means all living things that reside there, not just people! 

Landscape architects have to consider every facet of the landscape they are working on - their job covers the analysis, planning, design, management, and stewardship of both natural and built environments. With this in mind, they have to be extremely well qualified, with years of study behind them and advanced degrees and qualifications.

Landscape designers do not have to have quite as many of these professional credentials. Landscaping design combines nature and culture and - in contemporary practice – is the middle ground between landscape architecture and garden design.

Landscaping design focuses on both the overall landscape planning of a property and the specific garden design of landscape elements and plants within it. Practical, aesthetic, horticultural and environmental factors are all considered to be subjects dealt within in the remit of landscape design, and landscaping designers often collaborate with related disciplines such as architecture and geography, soils and civil engineering, surveying, landscape contracting and botany.

There are a number of superb landscaping designers and/or landscape architects practising in the UK today – designers such as Tom Stuart Smith, Andy Sturgeon, Arabella Lennox Boyd and Randle Siddeley all have multiple designers and architects on their staff and specialise in delivering projects of any size, be it a huge residential development or a small, privately-owned London roof terrace.

Garden Design, the third related discipline of landscaping if you like, is a specialised branch of landscaping design, concerned with, mainly, domestic private space and privately owned things within that space too – such as furniture, outbuildings and so on. Garden design is therefore the art and process of designing and creating plans for layout and planting of gardens and garden landscapes. Garden design professionals can have varying levels of experience and expertise. But most professional garden designers are trained in principles of design and horticulture and have an expert knowledge and experience of using (and planting) plants.

Where these three disciplines of landscaping cross over is grey territory. There can be significant overlap of talents and skills, depending on the education, licensing, and experience of the professional. Both landscaping designers and landscape architects practice landscape design, and of course they sometimes design gardens too! Many landscape designers have an interest and involvement with gardening personally or professionally. Some integrate this scope with their design practice, informally or as licensed landscape contractors.

In summary, the three disciplines of landscaping are all connected by the ground they work with. They differ in scale enormously, but their joint job description is to better the environment around us, from small flower bed to city park and business park – and in essence make the UK a more functional (and beautiful) space.