Read the most beautiful garden in Britain, Stowe Head Manor in one breath.

We can often see such a picture on computer desktops and landscape albums: the foreground is a five-hole bridge with a simple shape, a river system runs through the bridge, behind the bridge is a vast lake, and there is a temple on the mountain in the distance, with red leaves and green grass reflecting each other.

The garden in this photo is known as the most beautiful garden in Britain-Stohead Manor.

But even if you are a landscape professional, you may not know this garden. Because it is difficult to find the analysis of Stoehead system except this meaningful graph on China network. Most landscape scholars just regard this garden as one of many natural landscape gardens.

First of all, this garden is very, very large, with a total area of 1072 hectares.

What does this area mean?

The area of new york Central Park is 340 hectares, and the area of the Summer Palace is 297 hectares. One chimney is much bigger than the two combined.

And such natural landscape gardens are rare in Britain. Compared with the representative of natural landscape gardens, Stowe Garden is only 160 hectares.

The area of Kew Garden in the Royal Botanical Garden is only 120 hectares.

So where should such a large area be concentrated?

Stowe Head Manor is roughly divided into three parts, villas, flower beds and gardens. Let's talk about villas first ~

Start with the villa.

No matter how big the garden is, it must start with architecture, and Stowe Head is no exception.

17 17, the banker Henry Hall I bought the land, demolished the abandoned old house, and asked Scottish architect ColenCampbell to design a Paladian villa, the predecessor of Stohead Manor.

The development of natural landscape gardens in Britain is complicated with enclosure movement, glorious revolution and industrial revolution. I will give you a detailed analysis when I talk about "Almighty Brown" next time.

Here you only need to understand briefly that through the enclosure movement, British capitalists began to annex a large number of farmland and wasteland of tenant farmers, and Hall I was one of them.

The style of this building is called Palladio, which actually comes from an architectural style of the Renaissance. It roughly inherited the symmetrical aesthetics of ancient Greece and Rome. Please note that symmetry strictly runs through indoor and outdoor.

The typical Palladia villa is symmetrical from the facade to the plane structure inside the building. We will analyze this style in detail when we talk about Renaissance gardens.

Therefore, Sir richard hall, the great grandson of Hall I, strictly followed the symmetry when expanding the villa. He is an archaeologist with artistic attainments. He needed more space to hold his books and paintings, so he added completely symmetrical wings to the house.

Collection room is on the wings of the building.

This architectural style brings visual balance and stability.

Supporting enclosed garden

There is a walledgarden next to the villa, called the Walled Garden, which is an exquisite English garden and also has the function of cultivating plants.

Inside the wall, there are exquisite flower borders and greenhouses on every floor. Because there are too few pictures in this space on the Internet, I use screenshots of Google Maps instead.

Classic and meaningful gardens

Let's look at the focus of the manor, the garden part. I didn't design this part of Hall. Hardly had the house been finished when he died. It was his son Hall II who really built the garden. This is the playboy who looks like a rich second generation.

/kloc-In the early 8th century, several big landlords in Britain formed a small circle called "gentleman gardener". They built a landscape garden full of individuality on their own land, expressed their hopes and beliefs about the world, and pinned their thoughts on traveling around the world.

Hall II is such a gentleman gardener. He has a grand vision: to rebuild the classical landscape. Hall II and his architect Henry Flickcroft built the Storhead Garden together.

Since the Renaissance in15th century, there have been a number of recognized classicists in Europe. They are full of beautiful imagination of ancient Greece and Rome before the Middle Ages, hoping that their food, clothing, housing and transportation can be like the ancients. So since the Renaissance, scholars, archaeologists and artists have organized delegations to go to archaeological sites in ancient Greece and Rome and draw a picture by the way.

Therefore, in the Stoehead era, "retro" is indeed a trend, and Hall 2 is obviously not exempt from customs, so how can he build such a vast garden space?

Adventures of Roman ancestors

There is no doubt that Greek and Roman mythology is the best carrier. The mythical epic Aeneas by Virgil, an ancient Roman poet, became the theme of connecting nodes in the garden.

This book is much better than the Iliad and Odyssey, which are barely considered as folk stories, and Aeneas is a pioneering work in the history of European literature, with beautiful writing, good narrative, historical and philosophical thinking.

It's a pity that Ma Xiaoge can't chat in this article of Stohyde, but I will briefly introduce its story in a paragraph.

The whole book tells the story of Aeneas, the ancestor of Rome, who left Venus, his mother, to complete the task entrusted to him by his father, and embarked on a difficult journey with his fleet. On the voyage, she was stopped by Juno, the queen of God, blown back to the sea by the storm, and finally landed in Carthage.

On the earth, he met all kinds of difficulties and challenges, but through his own efforts and the help of his mother, he finally became the ruler of Carthage and married Princess lavinia.

The Trojans followed Enid all the way, which is the familiar story in Trojan Horse.

In fact, Aeneas' adventure is centered on the Mediterranean Sea, so the water surface of Stohyde Garden is like the Mediterranean Sea.

The uneven coastline of the Mediterranean also adds a sense of hierarchy to Stoheade. Therefore, this garden is centered on water. With this piece of water, people can look to the other side and attract people to explore constantly.

In his vision, "green should be stacked in large blocks like shadows in painting: dark blocks should be contrasted with light blocks, and a little light green should be sprinkled in the dark blocks for embellishment".

Our journey with Aeneas began with the first flower temple built on the east bank of the lake.

Huazhimiao

The Flower Temple is dedicated to the goddess of flowers and spring, but it has a masculine four-poster porch in chiton.

Flower God is a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, but it is one of several fertility goddesses, symbolizing the beginning and reincarnation of life.

Visitors will find the inscription on the lintel: "Procul, OProculEste, Profani. This is a Latin word in the sixth volume of Aeneas, which means "stay away from ordinary people!" "

To understand this sentence, we still have to go back to this story:

Aeneas followed his father's instructions and went to Sybil, the prophetess. Sybil predicted that there were still many tests in his future, but encouraged him to go forward bravely. He asked to meet his dead father in hades; This is very important. Before starting his journey to the underworld, he held a grand ceremony at the request of the prophetess.

At the entrance to the underworld, the prophetess shouted, "You mortals, go away, go away and leave this sacred forest. You, Aeneas, draw your sword from its scabbard and go on your way. Now it's time for you to show your courage and strong heart.

Hall carved this sentence to invite tourists to have a correct attitude and enter his garden in the right spirit.

There used to be flower gods and caves near the water in front of the temple, but now only caves are left.

Grottoes Grottoes

Next stop, we go around the lake, turn to the west bank and come to the grottoes. Grottoes are very popular in Italian Renaissance gardens. They can enjoy the cool in summer and add a bit of wildness to the quaint gardens.

/kloc-tourists in the 0/8th century will see that the entrance of the cave also has a triangular lintel with a line engraved on it: "Intusaquaedulcis, vivoquesediliasaxo, Nympharumdomus".

This sentence is also taken from Aeneas: exhausted Trojans landed in Africa, and at the entrance of the bay, there was a cave under the high mountain peak, in which there was a seat made of sweet spring and natural stone, which was the residence of Poseidon.

Sure enough, there is a sleeping beauty in the cave, which is carved after the famous ancient marble statue "Sleeping Ariadne".

There are also two river statues with hair and beards flying.

Looking out from the rugged hole, the "bridge" on the other side of the lake is impressively in the center of sight.

If you are a literary youth in the18th century and have just read Aeneas, you will have a strong sense of substitution here-you become Aeneas, and his trip is your trip.

But unfortunately, after that, there is no inscription on the scenic spot. We can only guess from the name and general location of the building.

Gothic cabin

It should be noted that Stowe Head was not built at one time, but buildings that have been increasing or decreasing for centuries, depending on the preference of every gardener, so it is normal for medieval buildings to appear in it. Not far from the cave, a rural farmhouse appeared, typical of Gothic style.

pantheon

A few years later, the Pantheon was built in the West Bank. It is the largest building in Stohyde Garden, imitating the Pantheon in Rome, but the porch has been changed into a six-column structure, with both sides extending outward, blocking the circular temple wall.

The temple is full of marble statues of ancient gods, the most famous of which is Hercules created by Flemish sculptor JohnMichaelRysbrack.

Lord Burlington built a statue of Palladio in the famous Swick House in Svik, which was also created by this sculptor. The leftmost one in the picture below is Hercules.

Please note that there is a cluster of plants on the water in front of the Pantheon, which is specially used to hide the Pantheon, so that tourists can gradually emerge from behind the tree when they look at it from a distance, thus creating a sense of surprise.

Waterfall Waterfall

After passing the Pantheon, we walked along the dam, where the water was divided into two parts, and there was a waterfall hidden in this small water body.

There are some agricultural facilities around the waterfall, which must be the scenery of a village.

stone arch

Walking through the waterfall, there is a stone arch in front of you.

The stone arch may be inspired by Pu Sang's painting "The Choice of Hercules" (this painting hangs in the gallery of Stohyde Manor); In the painting, Hercules stands in front of the arch, hesitating which way to take-the upward path of virtue or the downward path of evil.

In fact, there are two roads in front of us. The dotted line below is the way up the mountain, and the blue line is the way down the mountain.

Hall seems to be interested in letting visitors to the garden make similar choices, either climbing the steep slope or passing under the arch.

Since going up the mountain is called the road of virtue, you must go up. When we come to the hillside, we will reach the climax of the whole Stowe Head Garden-Apollo Temple.

epicuriusat bassae

We climbed to the top of the hill and saw a circular temple decorated with lace of the sun's rays standing on the top of the hill, which is also the commanding height of Stowe Head Garden.

You can see its shadow at almost all nodes of the garden, just like the shadow of the sun is everywhere.

Standing here overlooking the whole park and recalling our journey with Aeneas is not only the end of the story, but also the climax of our trip.

Caopiqiao

This is the last stop of our journey, a simple bridge.

It is with this bridge that the waterscape of Stoheade is more profound, and its function is equivalent to the static bridge in the master's garden and the small flying rainbow in the humble administrator's garden. Let the scenery on both sides of the bridge have focus.

Hall II wrote to his daughter immediately after the bridge was completed, saying: You always wanted me to build a five-hole stone bridge on the path leading to the orchard, and the water floated away from there until it disappeared into a distant village. Now the bridge is available. Simple and clear.

The deck of this bridge is also covered with lawn, which blends in with the surrounding environment.

At this point, our trip to Stonhead is over.

In fact, these scenic spots are not all. I deliberately omitted some unimportant nodes, such as medieval stone pagodas, obelisks and medieval churches.

Medieval cross tower

Sword number

Medieval style church

Most of these buildings were added in the later period of construction, and some of them did not conform to the theme of Stoheade. In fact, in the history of Stoheade, there were China umbrella pavilions, Turkish tents, hermit huts and so on, but the latter were all deleted, which made Stoheade Garden more and more like a "grand view garden" with mixed styles.

China Mushroom Hall in History

This is also the abuse of elements in the later development of natural landscape gardens. But in fact, there were only two temples (Flower Temple and Pantheon) and a stone bridge at first, which is what Stoehead looked like at first.

The relationship between buildings

Stoehead's plan seems complicated. In fact, several large buildings form the skeleton of the garden, and a triangular counterpoint relationship is formed between these buildings. The most important of these relationships is the temple of Apollo.

End of movement

Natural landscape garden can become a type of garden, largely because it has changed the landscape environment in Britain through huge garden construction. Whether pursuing nature or picturesque, we need to remove elements such as wasteland and villages from our vision. We think the natural landscape garden is beautiful because it is pure and clean, and we can't see the messy farms and equipment. If you add some mythical elements to this environment, you will really be there.