Pleasure Ground
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In English gardening history, the pleasure ground or pleasure garden was the parts of a large garden designed for the use of the owners, as opposed to the
kitchen garden The traditional kitchen garden, vegetable garden, also known as a potager (from the French ) or in Scotland a kailyaird, is a space separate from the rest of the residential garden – the ornamental plants and lawn areas. It is used for grow ...
and the wider park. It normally included
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 w ...
s, typically directly outside the house, and areas of lawn, used for playing games (bowling grounds were very common, later
croquet Croquet ( or ) is a sport which involves hitting wooden, plastic, or composite balls with a mallet through hoops (often called Wicket, "wickets" in the United States) embedded in a grass playing court. Variations In all forms of croquet, in ...
lawns), and perhaps "groves" or a
wilderness Wilderness or wildlands (usually in the plurale tantum, plural) are Earth, Earth's natural environments that have not been significantly modified by human impact on the environment, human activity, or any urbanization, nonurbanized land not u ...
for walking around. Smaller gardens were often or usually entirely arranged as pleasure grounds, as they still are, and as are modern public parks. The concept survived a number of major shifts in the style of English gardens, from the Renaissance, through Baroque formal gardens, to the
English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (, , , , ), is a style of "landscape" garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal ...
style. The pleasure grounds of
English country house image:Blenheim - Blenheim Palace - 20210417125239.jpg, 300px, Blenheim Palace - Oxfordshire An English country house is a large house or mansion in the English countryside. Such houses were often owned by individuals who also owned a Townhou ...
gardens have typically been remade a number of times, and awareness has recently returned that even the designs of the famous 18th-century landscapists such as
Capability Brown Lancelot "Capability" Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783) was an English gardener and landscape architect, a notable figure in the history of the English landscape garden style. Unlike other architects ...
originally included large areas of pleasure gardens, which unlike the landscaped parks, have rarely survived without major changes.
Pleasure garden A pleasure garden is a park or garden that is open to the public for recreation and entertainment. Pleasure gardens differ from other public gardens by serving as venues for entertainment, variously featuring such attractions as concert halls, b ...
more often had a different meaning, a public space of entertainment, though often charging for entry, for example
Vauxhall Gardens Vauxhall Gardens is a public park in Kennington in the London Borough of Lambeth, England, on the south bank of the River Thames. Originally known as New Spring Gardens, it is believed to have opened before the Restoration of 1660, being me ...
in London. By 1847, "pleasure ground" had become the preferred American term for the private garden space after George William Johnson added it to his gardening dictionary. In German, the adopted and adapted term "Pleasureground" means an area in a park or large garden landscaped in the German idea of the
English landscape garden The English landscape garden, also called English landscape park or simply the English garden (, , , , ), is a style of "landscape" garden which emerged in England in the early 18th century, and spread across Europe, replacing the more formal ...
style. The English term "pleasure garden" was probably taken from the French ''jardin de plaisance'', with the same meaning. This seems to go back at least to the end of the 15th century, as an important anthology of poetry (the first French one to be printed) published in Pais in the 1490s is called ''Le Jardin de plaisance et fleur de rhétorique'' (lierally "The Garden of Pleasure and Flower of Rhetoric").


History

The type of garden known as the pleasure ground in the shape of an ornamented area of lawn right next to the house was already known in England during
the Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
, and continued to be an essential part of the garden. Encouraged by the landscape architect,
Humphry Repton Humphry Repton (21 April 1752 – 24 March 1818) was the last great designer of the classic phase of the English landscape garden, often regarded as the successor to Capability Brown. His style is thought of as the precursor of the more intric ...
, this division of the grounds of a country house spread to Germany around 1800 and was employed ''inter alia'' by Prince Pückler-Muskau and
Peter Joseph Lenné Peter Joseph Lenné (the Younger) (29 September 1789 – 23 January 1866) was a Prussian gardener and landscape architect. As director general of the Royal Prussian palaces and parks in Potsdam and Berlin, his work shaped the development of 1 ...
, who made use of it in their designs at Muskau, Glienicke and
Babelsberg Babelsberg () is the largest quarter of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The neighbourhood is named after a small hill on the Havel river. It is the location of Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Palaces and Park ...
. The first pleasure ground in
Prussia Prussia (; ; Old Prussian: ''Prūsija'') was a Germans, German state centred on the North European Plain that originated from the 1525 secularization of the Prussia (region), Prussian part of the State of the Teutonic Order. For centuries, ...
is probably that laid out at Glienicke Palace by Lenné in 1816.
Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...
makes use of the pleasure grounds in her 1814 novel ''
Mansfield Park ''Mansfield Park'' is the third published novel by the English author Jane Austen, first published in 1814 by Thomas Egerton (publisher), Thomas Egerton. A second edition was published in 1816 by John Murray (publishing house), John Murray, st ...
'' when describing a visit by the young people to Sotherton Court where the owner, James Rushworth plans to hire Repton to make further improvements.


A German description

The German landscape gardener, Hermann, Prince of Pückler-Muskau, explained the meaning of this term in his 1834 publication ''Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei'' ("Ideas On Landscape Gardening") as follows: :''"The word pleasure ground is difficult enough to render in German and I have therefore felt it better to retain the English expression. This means a piece of land adjacent to a house, which is fenced in and ornamented, of much greater extent than gardens, and something of an intermediate thing, a connecting element between the park and the actual gardens."''Hermann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau: ''Andeutungen über Landschaftsgärtnerei''. Fünfter Abschnitt, Park und Gärten, Stuttgart 1834, p. 48 :And further: ''" ..if the park is an idealised, condensed piece of the natural world, so the pleasure garden is an extended residence ..in this way ..the suite of rooms, is continued on a larger scale in the open air, ..'Pückler-Muskau, Andeutungen, p. 52/53 Pückler-Muskau's description refers to one of the three elements of the English landscape garden that are, from the outer perimeter of the estate to its main building, the park, the pleasure ground and the flower gardens. Usually there was also a flower-bedecked terrace on the house itself so that the transition from the open countryside to the house was in several stages.


Form

The German ''pleasureground'' was an ornately designed garden area. It consisted of an ornamental lawn at several levels immediately next to the house. This lawn required a lot of maintenance, because the aim was to make the lawn appear like a "velvet carpet". The ornamentation included native and exotic plants that were laid out as flower carpets in various, mostly geometric, shapes and, according to Repton's advice, placed tastefully in the lawn, with round or oval flower baskets hanging mostly near the paths, as well as special individual shrubs and trees, statues, water features, small ponds or garden buildings. A fence separating the pleasure ground from the rest of the park area was intended, on the one hand, to make the separation between the idealized nature of the English landscape garden and the artistic design of the ornamental garden visible. On the other hand, the enclosure was made for pragmatic reasons, in order to keep grazing cattle or wild animals away from the ornamental garden. Around the outside of the pleasure ground, and sometimes partly through it, a winding system of paths – belt walks – led through an area formed by gentle hillocks with groups of shrubs and trees to various viewing points. These could be experienced at places along the walks and offer views of buildings and the surrounding landscape, which is set out as a backdrop.


Sources

* Klaus-Henning von Krosigk, chapter about the pleasure ground in: Dieter Hennebo: ''Gartendenkmalpflege''. Verlag Eugen Ulmer, Stuttgart 1985, p. 232–253. * Klaus-Henning von Krosigk: ''Klein-Glienicke mit Pleasureground''. In: Landesdenkmalamt Berlin (ed.): ''Gartenkunst Berlin. 20 Jahre Gartendenkmalpflege in der Metropole''. Schlezky & Jeep, Berlin 1999 * Anne Schäfer: ''Der Pleasureground und die Sondergärten in Branitz''. In: Kommunale Stiftung Fürst Pückler Museum – Park und Schloß Branitz (ed.): ''150 Jahre Branitzer Park''. Cottbus 1998, p. 90–99


References

{{Reflist Garden design history Garden design history of England Gardens in Germany