“England’s pre- or pre-Romanticism begins in the middle of the 18th century and is predominantly literary and related to the German and Swiss Sturm und Drang as well as Rousseau’s Back to Nature´. The new feeling of nature finds architectural expression in the landscape garden, which spread throughout Europe as ´English Garden´”. (W. Koch)
The English landscape garden developed as a deliberate contrast to the previously dominant French-style baroque garden, which forced nature into geometrically precise forms. The most famous example of this is the park of Versailles, which was created during the reign of Louis XIV.
The underlying idea was to avoid the mathematically strict form of flower beds and pruned hedges that had been in use so far and to design the garden according to “nature”.
Nevertheless, the English garden, like all man-made works, is by no means natural, but a sublime work of art that was oriented towards the landscape painting that was widespread at the time and sought to imitate it.
Its appearance includes paths and rivers meandering through the landscape as well as small woods.
In order to accentuate the horizon, ancient temples, artificial ruins, grottos and hermitages were scattered seemingly haphazard into the landscape without any apparent plan, which gave the English gardens a picturesque appearance in our eyes.