The Renaissance Garden in England

The great formal gardens of Tudor and Stuart England are a lost art form, swept away in a wave of destruction by the later movement toward a more naturalistic landscape style.

No examples survive of this era’s beautifully sculpted grounds, and we are left only with inaccurate, romanticised reconstructions created in Victorian times. In this pioneering study, however, Roy Strong paints a vivid portrait of such legendary garden complexes as those of Henry VIII’s Hampton Court, Lord Burghley’s Theobalds, and Lord Pembroke’s Wilton. Using rare plans, diagrams, and engravings from the period, the author evokes not only the lost gardens, but also the people and ideas that led to their creation. Intertwined with this story, which touches on the history of politics, art, architecture, literature, and ideas, are some of the great figures of the Francis Bacon, Inigo Jones, the Countess of Bedford, and Charles I.