Nature and nurture

It was decidedly January-esque, but a visiting friend and I braved the windchill and undertook a reccie of Croome Park NT. For future reference, we deemed it worthy of more leisurely visits at balmier times of the year. According to the NT leaflet, it "pioneered the English Landscape Style of gardening. This aimed at perfecting nature by creating a landscape as a work of art". And indeed, coming from the church over the brow of the hill, the setting of the house was impressive. The sweep of the drive would have given visitors in their carriages plenty of time to reflect on the wealth and power of the 6th Earl of Coventry. As well as the view of the house, it twists and turns to give views back to the church and along the river to the neo-classical greenhouse.

'Capability' Brown was responsible for the overall design of the estate. I remembered that Jonathan Bate writes about landscape gardening in his excellent book "The Song of the Earth", which I have mentioned before:

"In book three of The Task, [William] Cowper attacks 'Capability' Brown for altering houses and landscapes that had for generations been integrated with their local environment. Brown is presented as a dangerous magician who subverts the course of nature: 'The lake in front becomes a lawn, / Woods vanish, hills subside, and valleys rise.' ... Instead of having a responsible, nurturing relationship to the soil, the improver has a purely aesthetic one. He [sic] regards his estate as a pleasure-garden rather than as land which needs to be managed with care and consideration."

Croome Park looks entirely artificial, from monoculture grassland studded with specimen trees, to the 'river' which is really a long, thin lake, from the haha which prevents a more direct approach to the house, to the Pleasure Ground with its pavilions and monuments and the shrubberies which were planted where village dwellings once stood. But then, there is very little land in England that isn't artificial. Even the uplands of Dartmoor are the product of human use and occupation. Mucknell also will have changed, changed and changed again. It is an obvious thing to write, but we just have to start with the land in the condition it is in, and take the responsibility of nurturing it and managing it with care and consideration.