Dutch garden

In the 17th century and into the 18th, the Dutch dominated the publishing of botanical books, and established the very strong position in the breeding and growing of garden plants, which they still retain.

[1] They were perhaps also distinguished by their efficient use of space, and in large examples, the use of topiary (sculptured bushes and trees) and small "canals", long thin, rectangular artificial stretches of water.

[6] Even the grandest Dutch 17th century gardens are small in comparison to their French and English equivalents, but often combine the same set of elements "into happily crowded enclosures, with trellises and hedges and curling parterres mirroring the grills of the popular ironwork gates".

[7] Land values were high, and the Dutch felt they suffered from strong winds, as well as too much water, dictating a style with ponds, canals and hedges.

[9] Westbury Court Garden, now carefully restored to its design around 1700 is perhaps the best example in England of a more native Dutch style for a large house.

Even in England, Dutch artists completely dominated the newly popular genre of paintings and prints of country houses and their gardens from about 1660 to the 1730s.

The Dutch version of the French formal garden, this space would be laid out in a highly cultivated and geometrical, often symmetrical, fashion, shaped by plantings of highly coloured flowers, originally very well-spaced by modern standards, and edged with box or other dense and clipped shrubs, or low walls (sometimes in geometrical patterns), and sometimes, also, with areas of artificial water, with fountains and water butts, which were also laid out in symmetrical arrangements.

The flower beds and areas of water would be intersected by geometrical path patterns, to make it possible to walk around the garden without damaging any of its features.

The Privy Garden at Hampton Court Palace has been restored in recent decades in a more authentic version of the style around 1700, when it was planted under William III.

[17] The small, fenced, Garden of Holland, defended by the Dutch Maiden and the Batavian Lion was, and to some extent still is, a popular patriotic metaphor for the independence of the Netherlands, first seen in the late 16th century.