Baroque Garden or English Landscape Park? The Difference

The difference between a Baroque garden and an English landscape park lies in their view of nature. The Baroque garden, modelled on Versailles, orders nature by geometry: straight axes from the palace, symmetrical parterres of clipped box, basins, fountains and trees trimmed into shape. The English landscape park of the 18th century instead imitates an idealised landscape, with winding paths, lakes with natural shores, free groups of trees on open lawns and temples as eye-catchers.

Facts

The Baroque garden: nature ordered

When André Le Nôtre began work at Versailles in 1661, commissioned by Louis XIV, he created the model for princely gardens throughout Europe. A long central axis runs from the palace towards the horizon, and nearest the house lie the parterres: low, symmetrical patterns of clipped box, gravel and flowers, made to be seen from above, from the palace windows. Further out come basins, canals, avenues and bosquets, enclosed groves of clipped trees.

The garden displayed the king’s power over nature and over the country. The same idea, on a smaller scale, is found at Het Loo in the Netherlands, Herrenhausen in Hanover and Peterhof in Russia. It built on the Italian gardens of the Renaissance, such as Villa d’Este, with terraces and water features along an axis. The palace belongs to the Baroque, and the architecture section shows the palace of Versailles and how Baroque architecture is bound up with the garden.

The landscape park: nature idealised

In England in the 18th century, people broke with straight lines. At Stowe William Kent laid out the Elysian Fields with temples among the trees, and Lancelot “Capability” Brown was head gardener there before becoming the country’s most sought-after landscape designer. Rousham, which Kent remodelled in 1737–1741, is one of the best-preserved early landscape gardens, and at Stourhead Henry Hoare II had a lake made in the valley from 1741, with temples and a grotto as stations on a circuit walk.

The models were idealised landscapes in painting, and the parks were planned as pictures to walk through. A ha-ha, a sunken fence in a ditch, kept the animals out without blocking the view, so that the park seemed to flow out into the countryside. The style spread across Europe and became known as the English park.

Both styles in Sweden

In Sweden the Baroque garden at Drottningholm was laid out from 1681 for the Dowager Queen Hedvig Eleonora, to designs by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger and with Versailles as its model. It has straight axes, clipped hedges, embroidered flower beds and bronze sculptures in the fountains. The palace, with its garden and park, has been a World Heritage Site since 1991.

A hundred years later Fredrik Magnus Piper, who had studied landscape parks in England, brought the style to Sweden. For Gustav III he laid out the Haga Park by Brunnsviken from the 1780s, with open lawns, groups of trees and pavilions, and he also made an English park at Drottningholm. There you can today walk directly from one style to the other. The Gustavian period is shown in design history and in Gustav III’s Pavilion.

How to read a park

Begin with the paths. Straight axes and avenues that meet in stars and right angles are Baroque; winding paths that lead from one view to the next are landscape park. Then look at the water: geometric basins, canals and fountains belong to the Baroque, lakes and ponds with naturally shaped shores to the landscape park.

The trees also reveal the style. Trimmed trees, clipped hedges and straight avenues are Baroque; freely growing groups of trees on open lawns are landscape park. The buildings work differently: in the Baroque garden the palace is the centre and everything radiates from it, whereas in the landscape park temples, pavilions, ruins and bridges are scattered as eye-catchers. And the Baroque garden is best seen from above, the landscape park on a walk.

Plants and upkeep

The styles demand different upkeep. The Baroque garden is kept in shape with shears and knife: the box in the parterres, the hedges and the trimmed trees must be cut every year, and the avenues of lime or hornbeam are pruned so that they form straight walls. Without care a Baroque garden becomes overgrown within a few years, which is why many have disappeared or been remade.

The landscape park relies on large trees that are allowed to grow freely: oak, beech, lime and chestnut in groups, and open lawns that were grazed or mown. It was planned for a landscape that would mature over decades, and many parks only now look as intended. The same change of style as in the garden can be seen in interiors, from the curves of Rococo to the straight lines of the Gustavian style, and in the pleasure gardens of Rococo in between.

Intermediate forms and restorations

Many parks have both. In the 18th century several Baroque gardens were partly remade as English parks, and between the two came the smaller, winding pleasure gardens of the Rococo. Botanical gardens, such as the Linnaeus Garden in Uppsala, followed their own order, with the plants in rows according to a system.

Several Baroque gardens have been restored to their old plans, such as Het Loo in the 1970s and 80s and the Baroque garden at Drottningholm. What you see today may therefore be a reconstruction. The page on gardens follows garden art from the monastery garden to today’s naturalistic planting, and the same change of style appears in furniture in the guide Rococo or Gustavian.

How to recognise it

Exercise

A park has winding paths, a lake with irregular shores and a small temple on a hill. Which style is it in?