Art Of The Formal Garden

Arend Jan Van Der Horst

Editions

Review

In this deceptively slim volume, awash with the excellent photographs by husband and wife photographers Brigitte Thomas and Philippe Perderaux, Dutch garden designer Arend Jan van der Horst argues that we don’t have to have the resources of Versailles, Het Loo or the Villa D’Este to appreciate the pleasures of symmetry and a more formal approach in our gardening.

Of course, ever since Peto plundered the ideas of the Italian Renaissance gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries, gardeners such as Jekyll, Johnston and Sackville-West have mingled landscape components with more orderly features to create a style and exert an influence which inspires us to the present day.

Van der Horst goes even further with his system of what he calls “imaginative symmetry” and suggests that even the smallest of plots can benefit from a more defined set of principles.  In fact, within a few hundred yards of the Sandoe shop here in Chelsea, there is a gem of a parterre which could turn Le Notre green with envy, and I know of a potager in Sussex, its central feature a topiary swan atop an ocean of sea-kale, which rivals Villandry in complexity if not scale.

The author investigates those features which help create a more orderly atmosphere and shows us how avenues, paths, terraces, steps, hedges, topiary, arches, pergolas, columns, well-heads, pavilions, fountains, rills and other sundry architectural items might sway us to his all-too-tempting doctrines. - review by Stewart Grimshaw