"If you don't know where you want to go, then it doesn't matter what path you take" ~Alice in Wonderland
The meaning of the term flower garden remained relatively unchanged between 1650 and 1850, and the placement of the flower garden within a designed landscape, as well as the plants and their arrangement contained therein, helped distinguish it from other garden features. Although flowers might appear in kitchen gardens, the kitchen garden carried connotations of utility while the flower garden signified ornament and pleasure. Moreover, the flower garden required specialized care and expertise, as implied by Charles Carroll (of Annapolis) in his 1775 query about the training of a potential gardener.
https://heald.nga.gov/mediawiki/index.php/Flower_garden
The siting of the flower garden distinguished it from the kitchen garden and orchard, which, as mainly utilitarian features, were often situated beyond the view of the main house. Flower gardens, in keeping with their ornamental function, were often placed in relative proximity to the most prestigious rooms of the house. In this location they could be viewed from the house and could act as adjuncts to reception and entertaining rooms. Some 18th-century British treatise writers stated that the flower garden should be situated at the “back-front” of the house, meaning the area adjacent to the rear of the house and often just below the terrace. Such a location also provided a degree of shelter conducive to nurturing plants.
Flower gardens also could be placed at some distance from the house. Batty Langley (1728), for example, advised situating the flower garden within a wilderness. At the seat of John Penn, near Philadelphia, the flower garden was located in a wooded area away from the mansion. This placement of the flower garden distinguished it from the parterre, which, typically in the British and European context, was placed adjacent to the house. The 18th-century parterre used common plants, whereas the 18th-century flower garden was often devoted to exotic, unusual, or rare plants; hence Benjamin Henry Latrobe (1796) expressed disappointment in the flower garden at Mount Vernon because it contained “nothing very rare.” This “neat” layout arranged with precision met with Latrobe’s sarcasm as he described a parterre as “the expiring groans I hope of our Grandfather’s pedantry.” A sketch of John Bartram's famous garden depicts the botanist’s care and interest in “new flowers,” which were separated from the “common flower garden”
Category:Scenic
Subcategory:Seasonal
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Keywords:angel, bench, bird, daisy, flower, garden, goose, house, lawn, lily, orange, ornament, path, pottery, season, seat, spring, statue, stone, summer, texture, urn, walk, yellow