The Rococo Garden

Friday, 23 November 2018 Award Winning Gardens Garden Design Ideas Great Places to Visit Romantic Gardens

I am often asked if I have been to visit certain gardens and I have to admit I wish I had the time, as there are so many places I haven’t yet visited in the UK.

However, a couple of weeks ago I had a couple of days off and was very excited to visit a garden I have had on my long list of places to get to ‘one day’.

The Painswick Rococo Garden. Rococo describes a period of art fashionable in Europe in the 1700s, identifiable particularly in furniture and architecture and some features include highly ornamental decoration, the use of pastel colours and asymmetry.

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Looking towards the vegetable garden

As you walk up the hill away from the amazing town of Painswick, known as the ‘Queen of the Cotswolds’ which is brimming with beautiful grand houses built from local quarried stone for the wool trade, you come to a long drive and enter a most unusual garden full of theatre nestled in a valley.

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The garden was designed in the 1740s by Benjamin Hyett to entertain guests and dotted around various areas are little pavilions and  theatrical style garden buildings. The garden has a true sense of theatre and was a country gentleman’s experimental creation not the realisation of a horticultural dream like some other well known gardens.

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Another quirky building at the end of a hedged path

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The freshwater plunge pool fed by a natural spring in the autumn sunlight

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Models of sheep grazing add to the fun theme

The was a time in England when there was a certain joie de vivre amongst the upper middle classes. To show off how wealthy you were, there was a real indulgance in the flamboyant and frivolous.

Gardens were the playroom of the house and somewhere for Georgians could entertain and party.

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The view from the lake up towards the vegetable garden

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One of the two round ponds in the vegetable garden

The Rococo garden is well worth a visit if you find yourself in this beautiful part of Gloucestershire. The unique garden is the only surviving garden of the Rococo period.

The lighthearted and frivolous style will not only make you smile but it’s experimental nature is quite inspirational and I am looking forward to re visiting in bluebell and snowdrop season to see the valley carpeted by these tiny Spring jewels.

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