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Victorian Gardens

Victorian Gardens

In The Victorian House Book, by Robin Guild, there is a great summary of Victorian gardens states the following:

“The survival of gardens anything like their original form is even more precarious than that of houses.  Where a Victorian house may have endured through a century and then been spoiled by the addition of an inappropriate dormer, it is at least possible to make out the lines of the original.  In the case of gardens, a few months of vigorous reshaping and replanting will obliterate almost all evidence of what was there before.  Conservatories, summer houses, pavilions, pergolas and garden seats are also more at risk than houses.  They are exposed to weather and vulnerable as seasonal accessories, forgotten and abandoned during the winter.  Were it not for these processes of decay, we would have far more evidence today of the various metamorphoses that gardening underwent in the Victorian period.

The key change was that gardening ceased to be an occupation pursued only by the rich for their pleasure and the poor for their survival, becoming instead a popular pastime for almost anyone with a little plot of land to cultivate.  This popularity reflected not just changes in the distribution of wealth resulting from the Industrial Revolution, but also the much greater variety of plants available, new species having been discovered and brought to England and the United States from all over the world.

It is difficult today, with our immense catalog of readily available species, to realize how restricted was the range of plants in the American and British garden right up to the beginning of the 19th century.  Many of the everyday landscape plants we are likely to take for granted as indigenous species were in fact introduced from abroad during this period.  Dahlias arrived in England in 1788, followed over the next decades by tea roses, hydrangeas, salvias, camellias, hybrid rhododendrons, gardenias, chrysanthemums, and fuchsias, among countless others.  From England these many new varieties were quickly imported into the United States.”

As much as we love all Victorian furniture, lighting, lamps, outdoor lamp posts, clocks, aquariums, fencing, gates, outdoor statuary, tree guards, hardware (knobs, hinges, and grills), our number one passion is for the ultimate Victorian decor: Original fine art.

We welcome you to visit the homepage to link to the Bedford Fine Art Gallery. You will have a fun experience. Over 300 original Victorian paintings for you to fall in love with.

Graphic5Aurther Hoeber-Milking Time Nutley New Jerseyavif
Graphic5George Herbert Mccord-Valley Scene With Sunset
Graphic5Rene Charles Edmund His-Natures Mirroravif
Graphic5albert francis King Still-life wtih Clay Jugavif
Graphic5batcheller haystacks grid gallery cropavif
Graphic5charles drew cahoon-uss constitutionavif
Graphic5charles grant beauregard-horse in landscapeavif
Graphic5james hamilton-ships off the cuastavif
Graphic5jonas joseph lavalley-roses in a glassavif
Graphic5olive parker black-fall landscape with creekavif
Graphic5peter john valdemar-Busch Ancient Beeches IMG 2386 full gall cr mjtjuwavif
Graphic5van boskerck-rocky new england streamavif