Читать книгу The book of topiary онлайн

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It must not, however, be assumed that the Romans were entirely without appreciation of natural beauty and scenery. Far from it. But they loved lavish displays of art, and this also led them to use the gardens immediately surrounding their dwellings as a gallery in which to arrange their collections of sculptured trees. Roman poets and philosophers alike have left in their writings ample evidence that the beauties of nature were greatly admired by their countrymen, but at that period, when Rome was the mistress of the world, Italy was well supplied with natural sylvan scenery, and consequently, where it was not at all necessary to cultivate this particular form of gardening, the desire for contrast and display led to a very widespread adoption of the art of Topiary.

LEVENS GARDENS

THE BROAD WALK

From the gardens of the wealthy Romans the taste for clipped trees and general formality of design was carried throughout the Empire. Doubtless the monks who carried the arts of gardening throughout the European continent took with them and put into practice a taste for Topiary. In their wall-encircled monastic gardens dense hedges would rise both for the provision of shelter and to afford additional seclusion, and in a modest way these would in all probability be embellished by verdant sculptures.