Happy Birthday, Inigo Jones

Jones, The Walled Gardens at Milton Manor House, Abingdon, Oxfordshire, 1663

All these composed ornaments do not well in solid architecture and the façades of houses, but in gardens, loggias, stucco or ornaments of chimney pieces.  For as outwardly every wise man carrieth a gravity in public places, yet inwardly hath his imagination set free, so in architecture the outward ornaments ought to be solid, proportionable, according to the rules, masculine and unaffected.

Inigo Jones, born on this day in 1573, from Vaughan Hart's Inigo Jones: The Architect of Kings

Simon Thurleyt's talk, Inigo Jones: The Architecture of Necessity

Well.

Toured our nation's capitol with the eighth-graders this week; "'Twas well."

 

Nicer.

Views of Quinlan Terry's home, Higham Hall ...

I don't think we can ignore the Modern Movement. But I wouldn't have minded at all if it hadn't happened. I think the world would be a much nicer place.

Quinlan Terry

Ancient.

Built in 1577, Parham House & Gardens is set within 875 acres of ancient deer park at the foot of the South Downs ...

Publication.

The serial publication of The Secret Garden began on this day in 1910.

After she was gone Mary turned down the walk which led to the door in the shrubbery. She could not help thinking about the garden which no one had been into for ten years. She wondered what it would look like and whether there were any flowers still alive in it. When she had passed through the shrubbery gate she found herself in great gardens, with wide lawns and winding walks with clipped borders. There were trees, and flower-beds, and evergreens clipped into strange shapes, and a large pool with an old gray fountain in its midst. But the flower-beds were bare and wintry and the fountain was not playing. This was not the garden which was shut up. How could a garden be shut up? You could always walk into a garden.

She was just thinking this when she saw that, at the end of the path she was following, there seemed to be a long wall, with ivy growing over it. She was not familiar enough with England to know that she was coming upon the kitchen-gardens where the vegetables and fruit were growing. She went toward the wall and found that there was a green door in the ivy, and that it stood open. This was not the closed garden, evidently, and she could go into it.

She went through the door and found that it was a garden with walls all round it and that it was only one of several walled gardens which seemed to open into one another. She saw another open green door, revealing bushes and pathways between beds containing winter vegetables. Fruit-trees were trained flat against the wall, and over some of the beds there were glass frames. The place was bare and ugly enough, Mary thought, as she stood and stared about her. It might be nicer in summer when things were green, but there was nothing pretty about it now.

Presently an old man with a spade over his shoulder walked through the door leading from the second garden. He looked startled when he saw Mary, and then touched his cap. He had a surly old face, and did not seem at all pleased to see her—but then she was displeased with his garden and wore her "quite contrary" expression, and certainly did not seem at all pleased to see him.

"What is this place?" she asked.

"One o' th' kitchen-gardens," he answered.

"What is that?" said Mary, pointing through the other green door.

"Another of 'em," shortly. "There's another on t'other side o' th' wall an' there's th' orchard t'other side o' that."

"Can I go in them?" asked Mary.

"If tha' likes. But there's nowt to see."

Mary made no response. She went down the path and through the second green door. There she found more walls and winter vegetables and glass frames, but in the second wall there was another green door and it was not open. Perhaps it led into the garden which no one had seen for ten years. As she was not at all a timid child and always did what she wanted to do, Mary went to the green door and turned the handle. She hoped the door would not open because she wanted to be sure she had found the mysterious garden—but it did open quite easily and she walked through it and found herself in an orchard. There were walls all round it also and trees trained against them, and there were bare fruit-trees growing in the winter-browned grass—but there was no green door to be seen anywhere. Mary looked for it, and yet when she had entered the upper end of the garden she had noticed that the wall did not seem to end with the orchard but to extend beyond it as if it enclosed a place at the other side. She could see the tops of trees above the wall, and when she stood still she saw a bird with a bright red breast sitting on the topmost branch of one of them, and suddenly he burst into his winter song—almost as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to her.

The image is from Coppola's excellent adaptation of the story.  The gardens are incredible.

Delightful.

West, Charles Willson Peale, The Painter, 1769

To Charles Willson Peale

Pop. Forest. Aug. 20 (1811)

It is long, my dear Sir, since we have exchanged a letter. our former correspondence had always some little matter of business interspersed; but this being at an end, I shall still be anxious to hear from you sometimes, and to know that you are well & happy. I know indeed that your system is that of contentment under any situation. I have heard that you have retired from the city to a farm, & that you give your whole time to that. does not the Museum suffer? and is the farm as interesting? here, as you know, we are all farmers, but not in a pleasing stile. we have so little labor in proportion to our land, that altho’ perhaps we make more profit from the same labor we cannot give to our grounds that stile of beauty which satisfies the eye of the amateur. our rotations are Corn, wheat & clover, or corn wheat, clover & clover, or wheat, corn, wheat, clover & clover; preceding the clover by a plaistering. but some, instead of clover, substitute mere rest, and all are slovenly enough. we are adding the care of Merino sheep. I have often thought that if heaven had given me choice of my position & calling, it should have been on a rich spot of earth, well watered, and near a good market for the productions of the garden. no occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, & no culture comparable to that of the garden. such a variety of subjects, some one always coming to perfection, the failure of one thing repaired by the success of another, & instead of one harvest a continued one thro’ the year. under a total want of demand except for our family table I am still devoted to the garden. but tho’ an old man, I am but a young gardener. your application to whatever you are engaged in I know to be incessant. but Sundays and rainy days are always days of writing for the farmer. think of me sometimes when you have your pen in hand, & give me information of your health and occupations; and be always assured of my great esteem & respect

Th: Jefferson

Thrive.

The many great gardens of the world, of literature and poetry, of painting and music, of religion and architecture, all make the point as clear as possible: The soul cannot thrive in the absence of a garden. If you don't want paradise, you are not human; and if you are not human, you don't have a soul.

Sir Thomas More

Tell.

Happy Birthday, Paxton

Paxton, Crystal Palace, 1851

Sir Joseph Paxton was born on this day in 1801.

No occupation is more worthy of an intelligent and enlightened mind, than the study of Nature and natural objects; and whether we labour to investigate the structure and function of the human system, whether we direct our attention to the classification and habits of the animal kingdom, or prosecute our researches in the more pleasing and varied field of vegetable life, we shall constantly find some new object to attract our attention, some fresh beauties to excite our imagination, and some previously undiscovered source of gratification and delight. If we range through the whole territory of nature, and endeavour to extract from each department the rich stores of knowledge and pleasure they respectively contain, we shall not find a more refined or purer source of amusement, or a more interesting and unfailing subject for recreation, than that which the observation and examination of the structure, affinities, and habits of plants and vegetables, afford.

Sir Joseph Paxton

Magic.

Sometimes since I've been in the garden I've looked up through the trees at the sky and I have had a strange feeling of being happy as if something was pushing and drawing in my chest and making me breathe fast. Magic is always pushing and drawing and making things out of nothing. Everything is made out of magic, leaves and trees, flowers and birds, badgers and foxes and squirrels and people. So it must be all around us. In this garden - in all the places.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, from The Secret Garden

Farnese.

Monty Don's Tour of Italian Gardens, the Villa Farnese ...