Stowe Landscape Garden, Buckinghamshire, England

I’ve always been in love with gardens. I grew up in what were called garden apartments, in a complex called Glen Oaks, in the area of Queens known as Kew Gardens. But although there were oaks, there were no glens and no gardens to be seen. I loved trees, plants, and flowers from an early age.

England is famous for its gardens, among them the lovely Stowe Landscape Garden north of London in Buckinghamshire https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/stowe/features/the-garden-at-stowe. A National Trust property, the magnificent mansion, once the home of Lord Viscount Cobham, is now home to Stowe School.

The property, which contains 250 acres of gardens and 750 of parkland, is considered to have influenced gardening all over the Western World, and also boasts of inspiring the work of poets and artists for centuries. According to the garden’s website, Lord Cobham designed the gardens to reflect his beliefs about politics and morality. There are three “ways” one can go – a path of “vice” (past Greek gods, the Garden of Love, with temples related to stories of female temptresses), a path of “virtue,” with temples dedicated to the great men of British history, and the Path of Liberty, the longest walk, with temples that depict Britain’s dominance in the eighteenth century.

The day I visited was breathtakingly beautiful, the lights and shadows dramatically falling on the temples and statues situated about various areas, dappling and sparkling the small ponds “Eleven Acre Lake” and “Octagon Lake.” The entire space is designed so that as one wanders from one area to another, there’s no sense of what will be around the next bend, lending a constant sense of discovery. There are wide expanses and large vistas contrasting with small intimate spaces and gardens, such as “Grecian Valley” and “Elysian Fields.”

As I walked I thought about the process of designing this magnificent but constructed world out of fields, woods, and ponds and what it means to impose a grand vision on nature’s own. I found myself wondering where the line falls between nurturing/improving on nature and the hubris of humans who feel the imperative to impose a vision on the natural world.