During their heyday in the mid-eighteenth century the pleasure gardens were one of the hubs of polite society. Laid out with formal gardens and buildings for dining and amusement, the pleasure gardens were the scene of upper class exercise and entertainment. Most famous were Vauxhall Gardens, Cremorne Gardens and Ranelagh Gardens. In Bath, Sydney Gardens is the only English pleasure garden that has not since been closed and built over. This book tells the story of the pleasure gardens, explaining their beginnings in the seventeenth century, their rising social importance, the variety of entertainment contained within, and their eventual decline into seedy hangouts for gamblers, thieves and prostitutes.

Presents a history of the Vauxhall Gardens, which rose from humble beginnings to become a fixture in the cutural and fashionable life of English society until its closure during the reign of Queen Victoria.

A highly original examination of a series of unique gardens made by English eccentrics from the seventeenth to the early twentieth centuries In his new book, Todd Longstaffe-Gowan looks at a series of unique gardens made by English eccentrics in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their unusual creators--from the superstitious antiquary William Stukeley (d.1765), to the pleasure-ground proprietor Jonathan Tyers (d.1767), and the bird-loving Lady Reade (d.1811)--built miniature mountains, shaped topiary, collected animals, excavated caves, and assembled architectural fragments to realize their gardens in a way that was, and sometimes still is, thought to be excessive. Bringing together garden and landscape history with cultural history and biography, English Garden Eccentrics examines what it is about the gardener and his or her creation that can be seen as eccentric and analyzes an area of garden history that has scarcely been previously explored: gardens seen as expressions of the singular character of their makers, and therefore functioning, in effect, as a form of autobiography. This lively and accessible book calls on gardeners today to learn from example and dare to be eccentric.

Chanticleer, a forty-eight-acre garden on Philadelphia's historic Main Line, is many things simultaneously: a lush display of verdant intensity and variety, an irreverent and informal setting for inventive plant combinations, a homage to the native trees and horticultural heritage of the mid-Atlantic, a testament to one man's devotion to his family's estate and legacy, and a good spot for a stroll and picnic amid the blooms. In Chanticleer: A Pleasure Garden, Adrian Higgins and photographer Rob Cardillo chronicle the garden's many charms over the course of two growing cycles. Built on the grounds of the Rosengarten estate in Wayne, Pennsylvania, Chanticleer retains a domestic scale, resulting in an intimate, welcoming atmosphere. The structure of the estate has been thoughtfully incorporated into the garden's overall design, such that small gardens created in the footprint of the old tennis court and on the foundation of one of the family homes share space with more traditional landscapes woven around streams and an orchard. Through conversations and rambles with Chanticleer's team of gardeners and artisans, Higgins follows the garden's development and reinvention as it changes from season to season, rejoicing in the hundred thousand daffodils blooming on the Orchard Lawn in spring and marveling at the Serpentine's late summer crop of cotton, planted as a reminder of Pennsylvania's agrarian past. Cardillo's photographs reveal further nuances in Chanticleer's landscape: a rare and venerable black walnut tree near the entrance, pairs of gaily painted chairs along the paths, a backlit arbor draped in mounds of fragrant wisteria. Chanticleer fuses a strenuous devotion to the beauty and health of its plantings with a constant dedication to the mutability and natural energy of a living space. And within the garden, Higgins notes, there is a thread of perfection entwined with whimsy and continuous renewal.

The theory and practice of gardening: wherein is fully handled all that relates to fine gardens, commonly called pleasure-gardens, confiting of Parterres, Groves, Bowling-Green.

The Pleasures of the Imagination examines the birth and development of English "high culture" in the eighteenth century. It charts the growth of a literary and artistic world fostered by publishers, theatrical and musical impresarios, picture dealers and auctioneers, and presented to th public in coffee-houses, concert halls, libraries, theatres and pleasure gardens. In 1660, there were few professional authors, musicians and painters, no public concert series, galleries, newspaper critics or reviews. By the dawn of the nineteenth century they were all aprt of the cultural life of the nation. John Brewer's enthralling book explains how this happened and recreates the world in which the great works of English eighteenth-century art were made. Its purpose is to show how literature, painting, music and the theatre were communicated to a public increasingly avid for them. It explores the alleys and garrets of Grub Street, rummages the shelves of bookshops and libraries, peers through printsellers' shop windows and into artists' studios, and slips behind the scenes at Drury Lane and Covent Garden. It takes us out of Gay and Boswell's London to visit the debating clubs, poetry circles, ballrooms, concert halls, music festivals, theatres and assemblies that made the culture of English provincial towns, and shows us how the national landscape became one of Britain's greatest cultural treasures. It reveals to us a picture of English artistic and literary life in the eighteenth century less familiar, but more suprising, more various and more convincing than any we have seen before.

Using a rich assortment of illustrations and biographical sketches, Peter Martin relates the experiences of colonial gardeners who shaped the natural beauty of Virginia's wilderness into varied displays of elegance. He shows that ornamental gardening was a scientific, aesthetic, and cultural enterprise that thoroughly engaged some of the leading figures of the period, including the British governors at Williamsburg and the great plantation owners George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, William Byrd, and John Custis. In presenting accounts of their gardening efforts, Martin reveals the intricacies of colonial garden design, plant searches, experimentation, and the problems in adapting European landscaping ideas to local climate. These writings also bring to life the social and commercial interaction between Williamsburg and the plantations, together with early American ideas about cultured living. While placing Virginia's gardening in the larger context of the colonial South, Martin tells a very human story of how this art both influenced and reflected the quality of colonial life. As Virginia grew economically and culturally, the garden became a projection of the gardener's personal identity, as exemplified by the endeavors of Washington and Jefferson at Mount Vernon and Monticello. In order to recapture the gardens as they existed in colonial times, Martin brings together paintings, drawings, and the findings of modern archaeological excavations. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Summers at the Vauxhall pleasure garden in London brought diverse entertainments to a diverse public. Picturesque walks and arbors offered a pastoral retreat from the city, while at the same time the garden's attractions indulged distinctly urban tastes for fashion, novelty, and sociability. High- and low-born alike were free to walk the paths; the proximity to strangers and the danger of dark walks were as thrilling to visitors as the fountains and fireworks. Vauxhall was the venue that made the careers of composers, inspired novelists, and showcased the work of artists. Scoundrels, sudden downpours, and extortionate ham prices notwithstanding, Vauxhall became a must-see destination for both Londoners and tourists. Before long, there were Vauxhalls across Britain and America, from York to New York, Norwich to New Orleans. This edited volume provides the first book-length study of the attractions and interactions of the pleasure garden, from the opening of Vauxhall in the seventeenth century to the amusement parks of the early twentieth. Nine essays explore the mutual influences of human behavior and design: landscape, painting, sculpture, and even transient elements such as lighting and music tacitly informed visitors how to move within the space, what to wear, how to behave, and where they might transgress. The Pleasure Garden, from Vauxhall to Coney Island draws together the work of musicologists, art historians, and scholars of urban studies and landscape design to unfold a cultural history of pleasure gardens, from the entertainments they offered to the anxieties of social difference they provoked.

For Rebecca Bushnell, English gardening books tell a fascinating tale of the human love for plants and our will to make them do as we wish. These books powerfully evoke the desires of gardeners: they show us gardeners who, like poets, imagine not just what is but what should be. In particular, the earliest English garden books, such as Thomas Hill's The Gardeners Labyrinth or Hugh Platt's Floraes Paradise, mix magical practices with mundane recipes even when the authors insist that they rely completely on their own experience in these matters. Like early modern "books of secrets," early gardening manuals often promise the reader power to alter the essential properties of plants: to make the gillyflower double, to change the lily's hue, or to grow a cherry without a stone. Green Desire describes the innovative design of the old manuals, examining how writers and printers marketed them as fiction as well as practical advice for aspiring gardeners. Along with this attention to the delights of reading, it analyzes the strange dignity and pleasure of garden labor and the division of men's and women's roles in creating garden art. The book ends by recounting the heated debate over how much people could do to create marvels in their own gardens. For writers and readers alike, these green desires inspired dreams of power and self-improvement, fantasies of beauty achieved without work, and hopes for order in an unpredictable world--not so different from the dreams of gardeners today.