Outward and Inward-Looking Gardens: The Garden of Euphues

The effects of this difference in situation are considerable. In any great garden (and these were not common for political as well as topographical reasons) the impact of an axial design was much lessened by the presence of a stronger line, often but not always parallel to it on one flank. And, whereas an ornamental canal in such a position would attract some attention, a canal that was also a busy traffic route would inevitably be of far greater importance and would draw to it the life of the garden. It was a barrier between the ideal and the real, but it was even more a point of contact between them, a line of demarcation to which the garden-users were naturally drawn. There are, indeed, pleasant promenades on the canal side in several French gardens, notably at Chantilly, but the French canal was really to be looked along, not to be walked beside... probably no one has ever attempted to walk for pleasure beside the great canal at Versailles. And then, too, the grand manner was much less at home in Holland than in France and in the prince-states of the Holy Roman Empire. Vast prospects were no part of the Dutchman's taste; he had those already; no hills enclosed his horizons, and he had no need to engineer the impression of distance. Furthermore, there was no wild or ostensibly wild land over which he could look, and parks which were so common elsewhere in Europe were rare in his country; when land had been arduously dragged back from the sea there was little to use for pleasure. An outward-looking garden would merely overlook its neighbours or long miles of intensively cultivated chequer-board with dikes and windmills and tidy farmsteads. The moderate garden, on the other hand, wherever it is found is generally inward-looking. In Holland it is inward-looking with a difference; the canal at the end or at one side gave to it a little of the character of an open court. Just as the suburban front garden in England today is influenced by the road that passes the gate, and cannot ignore it, so the Dutch garden could not ignore its canal. Such gardens have a quality quite distinct from any others. Formerly all gardens we have considered were either to be seen from the house or to be seen from within the garden itself; these which are passed by road or by canal and are open to the passer-by are intended principally to be viewed from outside.