Villa Gardens : Garden Design Style

The suburban villa garden was symbolic of the country estate men thought they would want if circumstances had permitted them to have one. There was no thought that all the world should be like that. They were far too practical and knew that man is hopelessly split between need and dream. Because a view or prospect would have reminded them that the dream they lived in was untrue, these gardens became again what all gardens had been in the beginning; enclosed sanctuaries. Behind the garden wall or paling the irregular groves of laurel, holly, arbutus, and holm oak, put up an impenetrable barrier between each garden and its neighbour. Within the charmed circle the lawns were edged with serpentine borders of flowers and spangled with beds cut out in ovals, stars, and crescents. Outside the circle the ugly battle for existence went on. Large gardens in the hands of Barry tried to be pure Italian sixteenth century; but the small villa gardens of the great middle class did not try to be pure anything; they knew no theory. Yet it was the small garden, rather than the architecturally designed garden of the great, that was the true expression of the age inasmuch as it fulfilled the spiritual needs of the increasingly important class that made it.