neW roles for naTure^127parks and gardens
In the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as estates grew
larger, and as smaller ‘villa’ properties proliferated and suburbs expanded,
gardens and ornamental grounds came to occupy a larger and larger area
of the country. In the early decades of the eighteenth century, the gardens of
the social elite were still laid out in a geometric style but, under the influence
of designers like Charles Bridgeman, the more fashionable examples became
simpler, with less emphasis on parterres and more on smooth lawns, clipped
hedges, gravel paths, and areas of ornamental woodland. Enclosing walls
began to be removed – especially where a house possessed a deer park – and
replaced by a sunken fence or ‘ha ha’, so that uninterrupted views could
be enjoyed out from the garden across wider, and often wilder, prospects.^73
By the 1730s, William Kent was designing pleasure grounds which were
entirely irregular in appearance, with trees scattered as individual specimens,
or gathered into clumps.^74 These tendencies were taken further after c.1750.
Under the influence of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, Richard Woods and
Nathaniel Richmond, it became fashionable to clear away all geometric
gardens and walled courts from the vicinity of mansions, relocate kitchen
gardens to some less visible position, and to remove formal features in
the wider landscape, especially avenues. Ornamental pleasure grounds,
characterized by winding paths and specimen (and often exotic) trees and
shrubs, continued to exist but they were now placed to one side of the
house. The park – an expanse of grazed turf irregularly scattered with trees –
was now the principal setting for the fashionable mansion. Some of these
‘landscape parks’ were created by modifying earlier deer parks but most were
new creations, made at the expense of the working countryside. Sometimes
they included a lake of irregular or serpentine form; most featured clumps of
trees; and they were often surrounded in whole of part by a woodland belt
which served to block out close views of the working countryside.^75
In part the enthusiasm for these casually irregular landscapes reflected
the new enthusiasm for ‘nature’ which emerged among the social elite as
England became more urbanized, industrialized and intensively cultivated.^76
But the fact that successive designers in the landscape tradition found fault
with the allegedly artificial, unnatural character of their predecessor’s work
should remind us that nature is a problematic and shifting concept. These
elegant landscapes did not closely resemble any of the surviving semi-
natural landscapes in England except, perhaps, a kind of tidied-up version
of the traditional deer park. In part they fulfilled a number of social needs.
Surrounded by woodland belts, and with entrances guarded by lodges, the
park was a landscape of exclusion, symbolising the increasing segregation
of landowners from local communities.^77 Settlements were occasionally
removed when parks were created, and roads and footpaths were often
closed or diverted.^78 Parks also served to articulate social relations within