Stephen Switzer

From Stephen Switzer and Garden Design in Britain in the Early 18th Century by WILLIAM ALVIS BROGDE

Chapter 1: Biography Stephen Switzer was a native of Hampshire' and was brought up at Stratton near Winchester2. His baptism is recorded as 25 February 16823 but it has not been possible to establish his date of birth. His family was English and apparently 1on73 settled in Hampshire: 4
the circumstance of his birth and upbringing seems to have been, in the terms of the time, neither mean nor gentle, 5
the family apparently having a farm at East Stratton copyhold from Lady Rachael Russell6. Switzer's mother died shortly after his baptism and his father did not remarry. There are no details for the first 15 years of his life and the circumstances of "the happiness I have had in an.. education none of the meanest for one of my profession"7 are unknown and tantalizing. He does not appear in the records of Winchester College, 8 nor of either of the English universities9 and it would appear unlikely that he received instruction in the Russell household at Stratton Park's nor, on present evidence, " to any significant extent at home. In late July 1697 Switzer*s father made his will "being sick and weak in body" and left to him "the sum of twenty pounds for the settlement of him as an apprentice, and likewise a bed and bolster and pillow in ye room over ye hall. ..,, 12 The father was buried on 7 August 1697.13 Within a year it would appear that Switzer had become an apprentice at Brompton Park Nursery, London. 14 How he came to Brompton Park is unknown; 15 it would not appear that Switzer was originally intended to become a gardener. 16 If becoming a gardener was a disappointment of S witzer's expectations'7 he could not have been more fortunate in his choice 2
of masters George London (d 1713) and Henry Wise (1653-1738) who were, in turn, Royal gardeners and also responsible for "most of the gardens and plantations 'of Great-Britain". 18 Although their reputation has survived largely through Switzer's own efforts they were famous in their own time, being cited as the "heroick poets"19 of gardening in the Spectator and Wise ultimately retired to Warwickshire a rich man. Brompton Park was a large establishment, extending from Brompton to Kensington Gore. It was also a lucrative one, for besides the Crown contracts "the National was afterwards stockId" from the nursery. Switzer's first work with thea, when he "tasted... the meanest labours of the Scythe, Spade, and Wheel-barrow"21 was likely in the Royal garden in St. James' Park, then under George London's direct- 22 ion. Kensington Gardens and Hampton Court were underway in the late 17th century as were Longleat, Wiltshire, Chatsworth. Derbyshire, and Dyrham, Gloucestershire, and Switzer likely laboured in these and other gardens. But two works had a profound effect on his subsequent thought and works the gravel pit amphitheatre in Kensington Gardens, carried out by Henry Wise in 1704; and Wray Wood, Castle Howard from 1700 with George London. 23 There is reason for believing that both these works were "prentice pieces by Switzer himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~ From Wikipedia

Stephen Switzer (1682–1745) was a garden designer and writer on garden subjects, an early exponent of the English landscape garden who admired and emulated the formal grandeur of French broad prospects and woodland avenues, finding in the state of horticulture an index of cultural health, in Augustan Rome as in contemporary Britain, where "August Designs [his example is Blenheim Palace] denote that Greatness of Mind that reigns in the English Nobility and Gentry".[1] His landscape design principles parallel those expressed in Alexander Pope's Epistle to Lord Burlington and the views on "natural" gardening expressed in essays by Joseph Addison.

Switzer received sufficient early training in Hampshire to be taken on as a garden boy working for George London and Henry Wise in their Brompton nursery, in Kensington, now part of London. Switzer helped execute London's designs at Castle Howard, Yorkshire (from 1706), notably the "wilderness", at Cirencester Park, Gloucestershire (from about 1713), and at Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire.[2] Switzer also designed the garden at Grimsthorpe Castle, Lincolnshire (about 1716).

In 1715 Stephen Switzer published a work on "Forest, or Rural Gardening", The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation,[3] which he expanded to form his Ichnographia (1718; lightly revised and enlarged with two further essays[4] as Ichnographia Rustica 1741-42). He also published The Practical Husbandman and Planter (1733) and An Introduction to a General System of Hydrostaticks and Hydraulicks (1729).

Stephen Switzer included the first lengthy historical sketch of the progress of gardening in England in The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation[5] was vocal in the criticism of topiary and the formality of the "Dutch Garden"[6] and introduced the term ferme ornée, the "ornamental farm" integrating the ‘useful’ and ‘profitable’ aspects of kitchen gardening and animal husbandry with apparently artless beautiful and charming views and details.

His main rival in the practical, though not the literary, aspects of early tentative exercises in "naturalistic" planting schemes was Charles Bridgeman.

Notes

Jump up ^ Switzer, The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation 1715:63, quoted by James Turner, "Stephen Switzer and the Political Fallacy in Landscape Gardening History", Eighteenth-Century Studies 11.4 (Summer 1978:489-496) p. 490. Jump up ^ Today's Blenheim landscape is largely the product of Lancelot "Capability" Brown, who remade the earlier landscape features. Jump up ^ Its full title is The Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation, or, an Introduction to Gardening, Planting, Agriculture, and the other Business and Pleasure of a Country life Jump up ^ One, A further Account of Rural or Extensive Gardening, appears from its text to have been written about 1730, according to David Jacques, "The Art and Sense of the Scribblerus Club in England, 1715-35", Garden History 4.1 (Spring 1976:30-53) p. p. 52 note 7. Jump up ^ "His lengthy 'History of Gardening' in his Nobleman, Gentleman, and Gardener's Recreation (1715) was the first attempt at a comprehensive history of English garden-writing and -making", observed Jacques 1976:119. Jump up ^ David Jacques, "Who Knows What a Dutch Garden Is?", Garden History 30.2, Dutch Influences (Winter 2002:114-130).