Ground plans for beds Engraving from the 4th book of s.Serlio’s tract, 1537. Villa Lante, Parterre.
E
ngland.
It cannot really be said that the English garden evolved entirely
independently of continental developments, although English Baroque
gardens differ in many details from French gardens.
Hampton Court is a good example of how French concepts were taken up and put into practice. The alleys leading outward from a rondel in the shape of a star to structure the park or garden site were popular and easy to lay out. The pathways often provided interesting views of distant church steeples or of fountains installed within the garden area.
The golden age of Hampton Court falls in the reign of King William. Christopher Wren, the most famous architect in Europe at that time, was commissioned in 1689 to extend the palace, following the model of Versailles. A semicircular ornamental garden was created in front of the east wing of the palace. The alleys and the canal were pushed back. Gravel paths interspersed with rondels and fountains, as extensions of the alleys and the canal, now cut through the semicircular main parterre as far as the garden frontage of the palace. This area was adorned with thirteen larger and smaller fountains along with numerous sculptures, so that even then people spoke of the Great Fountain Garden.
Russia. It is not until the 18th century that it is possible to speak of a specifically Russian garden culture. Peter the Great studied architecture and garden design on his extended journeys through Europe. He drew much inspiration from Holland, England, and Germany. In 1715 the czar decided to have a summer residence built facing St. Petersburg on the south coast of the Gulf of Finland. The location was favorable, as the terrace for the palace rises some 12 m above sea level at this point, and slopes quietly down to the sea. Petrodvorets, named after the czar, was to be built in the style of French Baroque residences with their adjoining gardens.
I
n
1716 a pupil of Le Notre, Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond was
brought to St. Petersburg to plan and build the palace and gardens.
The garden extended from the palace terrace down to the sea. The czar
had trees and plants brought in from all over Europe. Over 40,000
elms and maple trees from Russia, fruit trees from Italy , and many
other exotic plants from the Near East were transported to St.
Petersburg. The new plants
thrived, despite the long and severe Russian winter.
The entire layout is still there to be admired today: the double cascade on the two sides of a grotto, which descends via seven steps made of colored marble, edged with gilded figures into a pool. There an artificial cliff towers up, with a mighty Samson forcing open the lion’s mouth to allow a jet of water to spurt out of it. From the pool a canal edged with water jets flows quietly toward the sea.
2 Reading
2.1 Scanning. Look through the text and define whether your hypothesis is right. Compare the information from the text with your notes (1.1).
2.2 Skimming. Find in the text the answers to the questions you failed to respond before reading. Add the missing answers to the table (1.3).
Grammar. State the sense relations between words of the marked sentences by using the proposed algorithm in the Tips.
Lexis
Tick in the list (1.4) the words and expressions you realized after reading the text without dictionary. Write down their translation in the table and calculate the percentage of your ability to guess the meaning of the words from the context.
Find in the dictionary the words you could not translate. Write down their translation in the table (1.4) and calculate the percentage of new words you should learn.
Abstracting. Write an abstract using the algorithm proposed in the Tips.
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