The formal style is one of the oldest ways to consciously configure a garden, mainly in Western civilization. History of the gardens. Examples of its use appear from ancient times to the most recent. Therefore, it can be considered that, in some ways, it is not fashionable, it is timeless.
The following sketch aims to briefly show how the formal style of garden design has developed over the centuries and the strong roots it has in our Western culture.
It is not a scientific study nor does it contain all possible examples. In the following article you can read about the most important formal characteristics of gardens, regardless of their period of origin.
An analysis of the history of garden art shows that their geometric formation dates back to prehistory.
Despite the lack of preserved gardens, its shape can be inferred from written texts, iconographic sources (for example, Egyptian tomb paintings or Pompeian mural frescoes) and the results of archaeological excavations.
Because of the sophistication of the study of ancient culture, by far the most information is provided by the eras of power in Egypt, Persia, Greece, and later Rome, which, of course, does not mean that such forms did not exist in art before or parallel to them.
In each of the ancient cultural circles there was an image of paradise, a place of eternal happiness, in which time was identified with a garden.
Man is safe and nourished there, as the land yields unlimited harvests. This is demonstrated, for example, by the paintings from the tomb of Nebamon (1400 BC, British Museum in London), the Persian manuscripts or the Pompeian frescoes mentioned above.
The entomology of the English word “paradise” can be traced back to the Persian term “pairidaeza,” which means “enclosed, surrounded by a wall.” which applied to gardens. The fact that a garden is surrounded by a wall (whether in a literal or literary sense) is of great importance not only because of the cultural role of the garden in human history, but also because of its form.
A wall is mainly associated with protection, while separation itself means giving a place a special meaning, a distinction. The wall is also an architectural element, which means that the space it encloses must also be subject to the laws of architecture, based on mathematics and geometry.
The garden as a paradisiacal, safe and happy place, separated by a wall from the bad, unknown, chaotic, untamed, necessarily becomes an understandable, predictable and systematized place. This way of thinking is what is at the basis of giving formal characteristics to ancient gardens. And in each of the cultural circles (although religiously different): Egypt, Persia, Greece or Rome, it has a very similar meaning, as well as the visual side.
Because the garden was closely related to the architecture, mainly of a private house or the ruler's palace. It repeated the architectural principles of symmetry, axiality and proper proportions based on number, which was considered the beginning of all things and geometry one of the highest sciences.
It often had a utilitarian function as an orchard and herb garden. Fenced and divided into square fields, it was called “hortus”. Its main elements were vegetation in geometric frames and water elements, which were both practical (for example, for irrigation) and symbolic.
The ancient idea of beauty understood as order and proportion of the parts, which is especially manifested in a simple, clear and quantifiable layout, had a strong continuation in medieval thought.
At that time, gardens were still organized as conditioned architectural spaces, mainly in monastic complexes. Secular castle gardens or pratum commune – urban public gardens – were also created in the Middle Ages, of course, but the strong dominance of Christian culture expressed through the monastic idea and form was what most influenced the layout of the gardens.
Along with the cultivated gardens of the monastery, the gardens with medicinal plants (herbularius) or the abbey gardens, the most important place that expressed the symbolism of the Christian faith was the cloister.
A cloister is a small garden located inside a monastic complex, square or similar in shape, surrounded on all sides by cloisters or glass corridors. It was a place of rest with additional functions: utilitarian (cultivation of herbs), aesthetic (flowers in bloom) and symbolic (symbolism of the square figure and the number four as a symbol of Christ, four rivers of paradise, four cardinal virtues, four evangelists , among other).
The cloister itself was to be an earthly reminder of the biblical paradise, and all its elements had a specific meaning. Its shape refers to the geometric and private gardens of old houses; It was divided into quarters with clearly accentuated edges, it had an axial and symmetrical layout and water shapes that highlighted the intersection of the axes.
During the Middle Ages, magnificent Islamic gardens were also created that, in their form, were modeled on the vision of the garden as an earthly paradise derived from Muslim canonical texts. On this basis, the garden – a place of rest – was also a reflection of a higher order of things. The four-part arrangement of the rooms reflected the four sides of the world.
The neighborhoods were divided by canals that symbolized the four rivers of paradise that flow with water, milk, wine and honey. These waters were connected at a central point, which was also a crossroads of axes, and this place was emphasized by a pond or fountain.
The Renaissance continues the ideas of the garden developed in both Antiquity and the Middle Ages, with a fundamental difference: while remaining close to the idea of the Garden of Eden, its symbolism refers mainly to earthly life, and its purpose is Strictly private.
The fascination with ancient thought, the development of mathematical sciences (geometry, perspective) and the belief in human capabilities underlie the manifestation of the domestication of nature and are an expression of the power of the owners.
The theoretical basis is Leon Battista Alberti's treatise “De Re Aedificatoria”. Alberti refers in it to the ancient texts of Pliny and Vitruvius, establishing the principles for the creation of a garden: symmetrical, integrated with a building (it is assumed to form a compositional whole with it), reflecting the ideals of harmony, proportion and order, with paths marked with regularly planted evergreens. The works of other theorists of the time -S. Serlio, GB Vignoli or G. Vasari – continue Alberti's thinking.
The Renaissance Garden
Despite the difficult Italian terrain – it tends towards geometrization, the garden plans have a regular layout and are systematically divided into regular neighborhoods outlined by a grid of paths (the ad quadratum principle already known from the medieval achievements of geometry, and in the Middle Ages colored by religious symbolism).
In the formal garden of the Renaissance it is the building that determines the division and subordinates the proportions of the garden to itself. The quaternary garden, derived from the utilitarian garden, dominates. The area is divided into quadrangular fields, framed by trees or hedges, and herbs or flowers are grown in the center.
As time goes by, these areas become increasingly decorative, using varied patterns of cut plants, water features, sculptures, etc. (The patterns of the flower beds were described in 1537 by Sebastiano Serlio in his architectural treatise).
The aesthetics of garden beds required the ability to use the appropriate plants and cut them into geometric shapes (ars topiaria, described in detail in the treatise by F. Colonna), while the geometric conformation of the plant shapes itself was a kind of “mathematical taming of nature.” Renaissance man was not opposed to nature, but was aware that thanks to reason he could control it.
Baroque gardens are the most spectacular examples of the formal style.
They symbolize power, manifesting wealth and splendor through compositional rigor, geometric taming of the natural plant form and impressive scale. While Italy dominates garden material during the Renaissance, France takes the lead in the Baroque.
The French baroque formal garden is an extension of the palace (the type of palace between cour et jardin), forms a whole with it and in terms of design is treated according to the same categories. Hence the separation in the garden space of individual green interiors with different functional purposes. The garden becomes the equivalent of the palace massif, with rooms, corridors and offices separated by geometric vegetation.
The main axis of symmetry, which connects the palace building and the garden, is the most characteristic element of the baroque garden composition. The entire architectural and urban spectacle develops around this axis, whose objective is to highlight the prestige, wealth and power of the owner.
This show begins with the avenue and the entrance patio, the main role – the dominant one – is played by the palace, whose representative hall open to the estate has its counterpart in the garden hall, while this is extended with a water channel. , a swimming pool or a wide avenue that ends in a pavilion.
The main axis of symmetry of the layout is continued with a distant view of the surrounding landscape. Around them were placed smaller garden interiors, also treated in a symmetrical and geometric way: these were labyrinths, cabinets separated by forests, moats, ponds, smaller flower beds, garden theaters and garden rooms of various shapes and sizes. purposes.
Despite the very regular framework, the baroque garden shows a dynamic composition, the axes often intersect diagonally, the horizontal and vertical planes are contrasted, the planners play with relief, lights and shadows, wide views and scale.
The baroque garden is a theater in which each smallest leaf participates in a performance for the benefit of the garden's owner. Nature is subject to man and its geometric character is an expression of thought based on Newtonian mechanics and Cartesian rationalism.
In the 18th century there was a great revolution in garden planning. The baroque gardens, theatrical and rigorously geometric, were replaced by landscape gardens, where nature preserved its free form and served as a place of rest and reflection. In the 18th century, the regular geometric garden was considered an expression of bad taste, a domain of excessive French absolutism, an exaggerated, too lavish and artificial era.
Many of the existing residential gardens were reconstructed according to new landscape concepts, in which the area in the immediate vicinity of the building was left geometric and formal, while beyond it a new free composition was applied. This is how the first “transitional” landscape gardens (Twickenham or Chiswick in England) and their first creators and theorists such as A. Pope, Charles Bridgeman or Batty Langeley worked.
Others such as William Kent and Lancelot Brown (Stowe Gardens, Blenheim) went much further. This does not mean, of course, that the tradition of regular gardens completely disappeared in the 18th century. Although she was widely despised for most of the century, towards the end voices began to emerge in her defense.
This was associated with the aggressive redevelopment of ancient garden environments and the simultaneous growth of the ancient monuments defense movement developed by W. Gilpin and W. Scott. Planners such as Price and Repton, active at the end of the 18th and 19th centuries, even recognized the juxtaposition of symmetrical and geometric forms with naturalistic and landscape forms as an interesting procedure that enhanced the picturesque effect. Treatises on garden art that appeared at the beginning of the 19th century (for example, the treatise of G. Thouin, 1820) recognized the geometric style as one of the types of garden planning. Interest in history led to a desire to create gardens inspired by ancient forms (JCLoudon, Repton).
The Victorian period (1830-1900) marked a notable turn towards formal trends. The symmetrically arranged flower beds with geometrically planted and cut shrubs were part of a larger landscape environment. They were directly inspired by Baroque flower beds and Spanish-Moorish ornamental solutions and were called Italian gardens. Planners such as Charles Barry (Dunrobin Castle, Shrubland, Trentham, Harewood House), William Andrews Nesfield (Stoke Edith) and Paxton (Sydenham, among others) worked in this way.
At the end of the 19th century, formal solutions were part of both the mansion gardens and the increasingly popular urban gardens, but also the intimate and small domestic gardens, constituting their own independent arrangements (examples in the publication of three volumes from the late 19th century entitled: Gardens Old and New).
However, formal arrangements never again gained as much popularity as in the Baroque period.
Modernism creatively transformed the tradition of formal gardens, laying the foundations for a modern style of garden design, which I will try to explain in the following articles.
Today, the formal style is often chosen as a compositional solution in small gardens in urban development, or creatively minimized in smaller or larger arrangements in domestic gardens. It is also used in the most intimate spaces of urban parks.
Interesting solutions in the field of contemporary formal garden design are proposed by artists such as Luciano Giubbilei, Paul Bangay or Peter Fudge.
