Tim Richardson: The English Landscape Garden - Garden Museum

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Tim Richardson: The English Landscape Garden

The Garden Museum was delighted to host the official launch of Tim Richardson’s book, ‘The English Landscape Garden: Dreaming of Arcadia.’

Smooth lawns, glassy pools, cool garden temples, mysterious woodland glades, evocative statuary… the 18th-century English landscape garden offers a transcendent vision of Arcadia, a world of rich escapism peopled by gods and goddesses, young lovers and dairymaids, poets and philosophers. 

The Garden Museum hosted author, Tim Richardson in conversation with author, journalist, and chief executive of the National Garden Scheme George Plumptre for the launch of The English Landscape Garden: Dreaming of Arcadia.

This sumptuous, beautifully photographed volume celebrates this quintessentially British creation, arguably its greatest artform, taking you on a tour of 20 of the finest surviving gardens, including: 

  • Studley Royal (Yorkshire), a dreamy valley garden which culminates with a view down and across the ruins of a Cistercian abbey
  • Stowe (Buckinghamshire), the great politically motivated garden of its day, boasting the ensemble masterpiece that is William Kent’s Elysian Fields
  • Chiswick House (London), Lord Burlington’s experiment in neoclassical architecture
  • Petworth (Sussex) – of ‘Capability’ Brown, who eschewed the symbolism of earlier generations but created instead his own powerful vision of pastoral Arcadia
  • Hawkstone Park (Shropshire), designed to elicit a thrill of fear in visitors as they traverse rocky precipices and encounter live hermits.

Image: Clive Boursnell