There have been two central traditions in European gardening.
Each one associated with a great European nation.
The first originated in 17th century France,
and became known as the "Jardin à la française" or "formal French garden".
The most sublime example of this school of gardening is to be found in the chateau of Vaux-le-Vicomte
which is about 50 kilometers southeast of Paris.
It was laid out in the late 1650s by André le Nôtre
the most important figure in the history of the French Garden.
And the son of the gardener of Louis XIII.
The idea was to arrange everything around symmetry, flattening the existing
natural landscape so as to create perfect arrangements of borders, flower beds
and reflecting pools.
A grand perspective, a thousand five hundred meters long extended from the foot of the chateau to the end point:
a statue of Hercules.
The alleyways were decorated at regular intervals by statues, basins
fountains and carefully sculpted topiaries.
It was in an extremely logical precise unyielding way perfect .
Another masterpiece of French gardening was then constructed at Versailles also by André Le Nôtreto.
Here to there was astonishing symmetry and a will to bend the unruliness of nature to the designs of man.
The French gardening tradition achieved enormous popularity and was widely
copied in far more modest homes across Europe for a century at least.
But the dominance eventually gave way to a new theory of gardening that developed in England in the 18th century.
And was known as the "Jardin à l'anglaise" or "English Garden".
The central figure in this tradition was Capability Brown,
a gardener of genius responsible for a 170 gardens up and down the United Kingdom,
including Petworth in West Sussex, Chatsworth and Darbyshire
Bowood in Wilshire and Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire.
The Jardin à l'anglaise couldn't have been more different from the Jardin à la française.
In the English tradition everything was about working with rather than flattening natural features .
Wildness of nature wasn't the enemy.
It was the starting point which the skilled English gardener would enhance and work with.
A good English garden relish the raw impulses of nature
it was about accommodating and delighting in nature
even though this was nature that was tampered with in order to get it to look just that bit more natural.
The English garden usually included a lake, sweeps of gently rolling lawns and groves of trees.
The English tradition reign supreme for a century at least.
These are two historical traditions of gardening but they are also along the way two modes of being.
The French style is about a confident rationalism and willpower.
This is how we might feel when we want to change the world through thought and planning.
The English tradition is about accommodating ourselves to what already exists,
bending with what is there, trying to make the most out of what we've been given
and to see its beauty and its charm.
It looks like a battle but ideally we need the two attitudes, the French and
the English in our lives in order to call upon them in diverse situations.
Each of us is probably a bit biased towards one or the other and could
benefit from seeking out the distinctive wisdom of either the French or the English style.
The opposition of the to gardening styles is stark
but in truth we need integration, the Jardin à la française and the Jardin à l'anglaise,
rational willpower and acceptance of nature.
There are in fact a few places that do show the two integrated like
Sissinghurst Garden in Kent which borrows from both traditions.
This shows us the model of how an ideal individual might be, someone with a
French and an English garden sight to their nature.
Ready to call upon either faculty depending on the occasion.
That would be interesting gardening and wise psychology.