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A shrubbery, shrub border or shrub garden is a part of a garden where
shrub A shrub (often also called a bush) is a small-to-medium-sized perennial woody plant. Unlike herbaceous plants, shrubs have persistent woody stems above the ground. Shrubs can be either deciduous or evergreen. They are distinguished from tree ...
s, mostly flowering species, are thickly planted. The original shrubberies were mostly sections of large gardens, with one or more paths winding through it, a less-remembered aspect of the
English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (french: Jardin à l'anglaise, it, Giardino all'inglese, german: Englischer Landschaftsgarten, pt, Jardim inglês, es, Jardín inglés), is a sty ...
with very few original 18th-century examples surviving. As the fashion spread to smaller gardens, linear shrub borders covered up walls and fences, and were typically underplanted with smaller herbaceous flowering plants. By the late 20th century, shrubs, trees and smaller plants tend to be mixed together in the most visible parts of the garden, hopefully blending successfully. At the same time, shrubs, especially very large ones, have become part of the
woodland garden A woodland garden is a garden or section of a garden that includes large trees and is laid out so as to appear as more or less natural woodland, though it is often actually an artificial creation. Typically it includes plantings of flowering shr ...
, mixed in with trees, both native species and imported ornamental varieties. The word is first recorded by the OED in a letter of 1748 by
Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough Henrietta Knight, Baroness Luxborough (;born 15 July 1699, died 26 March 1756), was an English poet and letter writer, now mainly remembered as a gardener. She married the rising politician Robert Knight in 1727, but he banished her to his es ...
to the fanatical gardener
William Shenstone William Shenstone (18 November 171411 February 1763) was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, ''The Leasowes''. Biography Son of Thomas Shenstone and Anne Penn, ...
: "Nature has been so remarkably kind this last Autumn to adorn my Shrubbery with the flowers that usually blow at
Whitsuntide Whitsun (also Whitsunday or Whit Sunday) is the name used in Britain, and other countries among Anglicans and Methodists, for the Christian High Holy Day of Pentecost. It is the seventh Sunday after Easter, which commemorates the descent of the H ...
". The shrubbery developed to display exciting new imported flowering species, initially mostly from the East Coast of
British America British America comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, which became the British Empire after the 1707 union of the Kingdom of England with the Kingdom of Scotland to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, in the Americas fro ...
, and quickly replaced the older formal "
wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plural), are natural environments on Earth that have not been significantly modified by human activity or any nonurbanized land not under extensive agricultural cultivation. The term has traditionally re ...
", with compartments of smaller trees surrounded by hedges, and little colour. It was a further part of the garden, beyond the terrace and
flower garden A flower garden or floral garden is any garden or part of a garden where plants that flower are grown and displayed. This normally refers mostly to herbaceous plants, rather than flowering woody plants, which dominate in the shrubbery and ...
that the house usually opened onto, and when mature provided shade on hot days, some shelter from a wind, and some privacy. The shrubbery was at first the development of the plant collector wing of the growing movement of English gardeners, who in the early and mid-18th century eagerly awaited the new seeds and cuttings arriving at London
nurserymen A nursery is a place where plants are propagated and grown to a desired size. Mostly the plants concerned are for gardening, forestry or conservation biology, rather than agriculture. They include retail nurseries, which sell to the general p ...
such as Thomas Fairchild (d. 1729) from America. There was some tension between them and the more landscape-oriented gardeners such as
Capability Brown Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English lan ...
, though Brown's designs in fact allowed for flower gardens and shrubberies, which have very rarely survived as well as his landscape vistas in the parks. Shrubbery is also the collective noun for shrubs in other contexts, sometimes used for
shrubland Shrubland, scrubland, scrub, brush, or bush is a plant community characterized by vegetation dominated by shrubs, often also including grasses, herbs, and geophytes. Shrubland may either occur naturally or be the result of human activity. It ...
, a type of natural landscape dominated by shrubs or bushes. The many distinct types of these include
fynbos Fynbos (; meaning fine plants) is a small belt of natural shrubland or heathland vegetation located in the Western Cape and Eastern Cape provinces of South Africa. This area is predominantly coastal and mountainous, with a Mediterranean clim ...
,
maquis Maquis may refer to: Resistance groups * Maquis (World War II), predominantly rural guerrilla bands of the French Resistance * Spanish Maquis, guerrillas who fought against Francoist Spain in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War * The netwo ...
, shrub-steppe, shrub swamp and
moorland Moorland or moor is a type of habitat found in upland areas in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands and montane grasslands and shrublands biomes, characterised by low-growing vegetation on acidic soils. Moorland, nowadays, generall ...
.


18th century

According to the garden historian Mark Laird, "by the early 1750s, we may reasonably claim that the shrubbery had been invented". The exact appearance of the earliest examples needs careful reconstruction from such plans, letters, poems and visual images as have survived. A high proportion seem to have been viewed from "serpentine" paths, already a very fashionable layout for gardens, using an expanded version of the line of beauty promoted by
William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraver, pictorial satirist, social critic, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from realistic portraiture to comic strip-like ...
's book ''
The Analysis of Beauty ''The Analysis of Beauty'' is a book written by the 18th-century artist and writer William Hogarth, published in 1753, which describes Hogarth's theories of visual beauty and grace in a manner accessible to the common man of his day. The "L ...
'' of 1753. In plans some of these proceed in a single overall direction, with several more or less curves to left and right, and often no exit shown at the end. With large shrubs these would first bring plants into view when fairly close, supplying a succession of surprises. There was great emphasis on "graduation" in planting, with shorter plants, including herbaceous flowers, at the front near the path or lawn, with middle-sized ones behind, and the largest, and any trees, at the back. This principle, to some extent self-evident, has governed much planting ever since, for example that of
Gertrude Jekyll Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrot ...
, but was rather novel in European gardening at this point, where the different sizes of plants were usually planted in different areas.


19th century

A shrubbery was a feature of 19th-century gardens in the English manner, or the gardenesque style of the early part of the century. A shrubbery was a collection of hardy shrubs, quite distinct from a flower garden, which was also a cutting garden to supply flowers in the house. The shrubbery was arranged as a walk, ideally a winding one, that made a circuit that brought the walker back to the terrace of the house. Its paths were gravel, so that they dried quickly after a rain. A walk in the shrubbery offered a chance for a private conversation, and a winding walk among shrubs surrounding even quite a small lawn was a feature of the garden behind a well-furnished
Regency A regent (from Latin : ruling, governing) is a person appointed to govern a state '' pro tempore'' (Latin: 'for the time being') because the monarch is a minor, absent, incapacitated or unable to discharge the powers and duties of the monarchy ...
suburban
villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became ...
.
"Mr Rushworth," said Lady Bertram, "if I were you, I would have a very pretty shrubbery. One likes to get out into a shrubbery in fine weather." —
Jane Austen Jane Austen (; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for her six major novels, which interpret, critique, and comment upon the British landed gentry at the end of the 18th century. Austen's plots of ...
, '' Mansfield Park'' (1814).
In the later part of the 19th century hardy Asian shrubs from the hills around the
Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...
and Western China became the most exciting new additions to the European garden, and large Asian
rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; from Ancient Greek ''rhódon'' "rose" and ''déndron'' "tree") is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are nati ...
s now often dominate shrubberies and woodland gardens planted in the period that have not been carefully maintained, especially the invasive ''
rhododendron ponticum ''Rhododendron ponticum'', called common rhododendron or pontic rhododendron, is a species of ''Rhododendron'' native to the Iberian Peninsula in southwest Europe and the Caucasus region in northern West Asia. Description ''R. ponticum'' is a d ...
''. This had a wide range across Asia, extending to southern Spain, and it was introduced to England in the 1760s. But many sections of gardens, mostly from about 1890 to 1950, were planted as "rhododendron gardens" or "azealea gardens" from the start. A variant on this, from the 1890s onwards, was a European interpretation of the
Japanese garden are traditional gardens whose designs are accompanied by Japanese aesthetics and philosophical ideas, avoid artificial ornamentation, and highlight the natural landscape. Plants and worn, aged materials are generally used by Japanese garden des ...
, whose aesthetic was introduced to the English-speaking world by Josiah Conder's ''Landscape Gardening in Japan'' ( Kelly & Walsh, 1893). Conder was a British architect who had worked for the Japanese government and other clients in Japan from 1877 until his death. The book was published when the general trend of
Japonisme ''Japonisme'' is a French term that refers to the popularity and influence of Japanese art and design among a number of Western European artists in the nineteenth century following the forced reopening of foreign trade with Japan in 1858. Japon ...
, or Japanese influence in the arts of the West, was already well-established, and sparked the first Japanese gardens in the West. Initially these were mostly sections of large private gardens, but as the style grew in popularity, many Japanese gardens were, and continue to be, added to public parks and gardens. These are to a large extent planted with shrubs, as well as small trees. Technically the
rose garden A rose garden or rosarium is a garden or park, often open to the public, used to present and grow various types of garden roses, and sometimes rose species. Most often it is a section of a larger garden. Designs vary tremendously and roses m ...
is a specialized type of shrub garden, but it is normally treated as a type of
flower garden A flower garden or floral garden is any garden or part of a garden where plants that flower are grown and displayed. This normally refers mostly to herbaceous plants, rather than flowering woody plants, which dominate in the shrubbery and ...
, if only because its origins in Europe go back to at least the
Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the late 5th to the late 15th centuries, similar to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire ...
in Europe, when roses were effectively the largest and most popular flowers, already existing in numerous garden
cultivar A cultivar is a type of cultivated plant that people have selected for desired traits and when propagated retain those traits. Methods used to propagate cultivars include: division, root and stem cuttings, offsets, grafting, tissue culture ...
s. Roses were never out of fashion, but received a great boost in the 19th century, as many hybrids from Asian species were developed, above all from ''
rosa chinensis ''Rosa chinensis'' (), known commonly as the China rose, Chinese rose, or Bengal rose, is a member of the genus ''Rosa'' native to Southwest China in Guizhou, Hubei, and Sichuan Provinces. The first publication of ''Rosa chinensis'' was in 1768 ...
'' (the "China rose"), which is still the dominant parent in most modern
garden rose Garden roses are predominantly hybrid roses that are grown as ornamental plants in private or public gardens. They are one of the most popular and widely cultivated groups of flowering plants, especially in temperate climates. An enormous numbe ...
s. Large rose gardens became highly popular as features of public parks at the end of the century, and remained popular additions in the 20th. Many rose breeders also show off their plants in gardens at their nurseries.


20th century

After the turn of the new century
Gertrude Jekyll Gertrude Jekyll ( ; 29 November 1843 – 8 December 1932) was a British horticulturist, garden designer, craftswoman, photographer, writer and artist. She created over 400 gardens in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States, and wrot ...
offered a chapter of suggestions for "Wood and Shrubbery Edges" in ''Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden'' (London, 1908) in which her descriptions were based on her own garden at Munstead Wood, south of
Godalming, Surrey Godalming is a market town and civil parish in southwest Surrey, England, around southwest of central London. It is in the Borough of Waverley, at the confluence of the Rivers Wey and Ock. The civil parish covers and includes the settlement ...
, but her shrubbery and hardy perennial plantings were designed to soften transitions: "Where woodland joins garden ground there is often a sudden jolt; the wood ends with a hard line, sometimes with a path along it, accentuating the defect." In the expansive space of even a small Edwardian garden, Miss Jekyll recommended a space "from twenty-five to forty feet" planted so as to bring wood and garden into harmony, "so planted as to belong equally to garden and wood."
Rhododendron ''Rhododendron'' (; from Ancient Greek ''rhódon'' "rose" and ''déndron'' "tree") is a very large genus of about 1,024 species of woody plants in the heath family (Ericaceae). They can be either evergreen or deciduous. Most species are nati ...
s were the stand-by in these shrub belts, combined with ferns, wood-rush, lilies, white foxgloves and white columbines.


Structural components

In the 1980s John Nash's never-executed plans for the garden setting of the
Brighton Pavilion The Royal Pavilion, and surrounding gardens, also known as the Brighton Pavilion, is a Grade I listed former royal residence located in Brighton, England. Beginning in 1787, it was built in three stages as a seaside retreat for George, Prin ...
, illustrated in Nash's volume ''Views of the Royal Pavilion'' (1826), were finally carried out in connection with the extensive restorations of the Pavilion itself. Its "fairly open landscape of soft lawns dotted with trees and set with lightly-wooded, sinuous shrubberies" are best illustrated in
Augustus Charles Pugin Augustus Charles Pugin (born Auguste-Charles Pugin; 1762 – 19 December 1832) was an Anglo-French artist, architectural draughtsman, and writer on medieval architecture. He was born in Paris, then the Kingdom of France, but his father was Sw ...
's watercolor view c. 1822 of the west front of the Pavilion, reproduced in Nash's publication. The winding perimeter walk circling the lawn among the shrubs and trees, enriched with island beds of herbaceous perennials, began to be laid out in 1814, with a flush of activity 1817-21. Two books of commentaries proved indispensable for the replanting scheme. One was Henry Phillips, who wrote in 1823
The shrubbery is a style of pleasure-garden which seems to owe its creation to the idea that our sublime poet formed of Eden. It originated in England and is as peculiar to the British nation as landscape planting.
The formulas for arranging a shrubbery were founded on contemporary painterly requirements for the
Picturesque Picturesque is an aesthetic ideal introduced into English cultural debate in 1782 by William Gilpin in ''Observations on the River Wye, and Several Parts of South Wales, etc. Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the Summer of the Year ...
; judicious contrast and variety were essential, but Philips seems to have been among the first garden writers to notice that yellowish-green leaves in the foreground seem to throw bluish green-leaved shrubs deeper into a perceived distance. The desirable undulations of paths and islands and bands of shrub plantings would ideally undulate in elevation too: "break up the level by throwing up elevations,' Philips suggested, "so as to answer the double purpose of obscuring private walks and screening other parts from the wind." Nash was at work also on the public parks of London, devising the shrubberies of
Regent's Park Regent's Park (officially The Regent's Park) is one of the Royal Parks of London. It occupies of high ground in north-west Inner London, administratively split between the City of Westminster and the Borough of Camden (and historically betwee ...
and of
St. James's Park St James's Park is a park in the City of Westminster, central London. It is at the southernmost tip of the St James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St James the Less. It is the most easterly of a near-continuous ch ...
, where the German visitor Prince Pückler-Muskau discerned that
Mr Nash ... masses the shrubs more closely together, allows the grass to disappear in wide sweeps under the plants or lets it run along the edges of the shrubs without trimming them ... hence they soon develop into a thicket that gracefully bends over the lawn without showing anywhere a sharply defined outline
Such precise effects were made immeasurably simpler by the invention in 1827 by the English engineer
Edwin Beard Budding Edwin Beard Budding (25 August 1796 – 25 September 1846), an engineer born in Eastington, Stroud, was the English inventor of the lawnmower (1830) and adjustable spanner (1842). Lawnmower Budding had the idea of the lawnmower after seeing a ma ...
of the rotary lawn mower, an extrapolation of machinery commonly used to cut velvet pile.


Cultural references

"A shrubbery" is the innocuous demand made by the less-than terrifying Knights Who Say "Ni!" in the 1975 film ''
Monty Python and the Holy Grail ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' is a 1975 British comedy film satirizing the Arthurian legend, written and performed by the Monty Python comedy group ( Graham Chapman, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, and Michael Pa ...
'': :ARTHUR: O Knights of Ni, you are just and fair, and we will return with a shrubbery. :HEAD KNIGHT: One that looks nice. :ARTHUR: Of course. :HEAD KNIGHT: And not too expensive. :ARTHUR: Yes.


Notes


References

*Laird, Mark, ''The Flowering of the Landscape Garden: English Pleasure Grounds, 1720-1800'', 1999, University of Pennsylvania Press,
google books
* Wulf, Andrea, ''The Brother Gardeners: A Generation of Gentlemen Naturalists and the Birth of an Obsession'', 2008, William Heinemann (US: Vintage Books), {{ISBN, 9780434016129 Gardening Shrubs