Carpet Parterres, Green Trellises, Bosquets And Labyrinths Of A Regular Garden - How To Use Them In A Country Garden

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Residents of Tsarskoye Selo and its guests watch with great pleasure how from year to year the floral decoration of our unique old parks becomes more elegant, sophisticated and romantic, visually transferring us to the brilliant 18th century - the century of the reign of Russian empresses - Elizabeth Petrovna and Ekaterina Alekseevna.

The old garden in front of the park façade of the Palace invariably delights visitors of the park with its lush backstage of maples and lindens, revealing the richness of the grand parterre patterns created by the invention of garden masters of the past and present, the well-groomed carpet flower beds and the severity of the forms of tui cut into a cone, shading the white marble sculpture. And along the facade of the Palace, as of old, there are tubs of laurel trees with a spherical crown on a high trunk. The lines of A. S. Pushkin involuntarily come to mind:

"Confused by memories, Filled with sweet longing, Beautiful gardens, under your sacred twilight I enter with my head bowed."

The beauty of Tsarskoye Selo gardens strikes the heart of any guest of our city, and plant lovers, gardeners of all "directions" involuntarily "try on" these outfits for their small (on the scale of the park), but beloved garden. It would seem that the regular style is an anachronism in the gardening art of the 21st century. But actually it is not. There are many lovers of antiquity, reproducing elements of a regular garden in their suburban areas. And the more spacious the garden, the more opportunities to arrange in it fragments of garden styles from different eras and peoples.

The architectural accent of the front parterre in front of the Palace is antique female allegorical figures. In front of them and around them - a carpet of terracotta (broken brick), black lilies - irises (patterns-symbols of royal power) of coal, snow-white marble chips and green curls of the lawn. Each parterre square is decorated with four tall cone-shaped candles - thujas.

But what if you project this idea onto a fragment of your front garden in your own estate? In the center there may be a sculpture of the family Bereginya or a slender coniferous tree (bouquet planting of several pyramidal thujas, columnar junipers, golden forms of conifers, etc.). The surroundings of the central dominant can be made of masonry with small cobblestones, rubble of different colors, mosaic tiles, brick chips, sand, etc. The family coat of arms - a symbol on the plane - will also be appropriate, and you will have time to come up with it on long winter evenings, you can also establish a home or clan-family competition. On pebbles, gravel, an analogue of the "regal lily" can be made in living material - edging from young of different types and colors, and then rosettes of saxiphrage shady, carpets from thyme with various colors and aroma of leavesevergreen and variegated periwinkle and other species will create the desired texture and color. The shape of the patterns is supported by metal or plastic guides dug into sand, gravel, earth. And they were young in gravel and they themselves will perfectly hold the necessary lines.

Going down to the lower ledge along the marble steps, we find ourselves in another elegant parterre, recreated quite recently. It is made of living plants, unlike the minerals of the upper parterre. A trident of paths radiate from the flower parterre, and each part of the garden has its own face and character. The central path runs along the main axis of the park and leads into the depths of the Wild Grove to the Hermitage. The path is framed by linden trees "planted in tubs" - their near-stem circles are decorated with squares of turf that make just such an impression, and the shape of the crown is trimmed either in a ball or square, as if echoing the laurel trees near the palace itself. Trellises of clipped lime trees create high walls that frame large lawns of regular geometric shape, on which apple trees solo. In spring and autumn, they attract attention with their white-pink bloom and elegant fruits. The combination of green openwork tapestries and white openwork forged park sofas is surprisingly harmonious. The crowns of standard limes, trimmed with a ball, candelabrum, cube, delight the eye with a variety of figures and skillful work of gardeners. Bush linden tapestries create labyrinths for romantic walks, as it should be in the gardens of that romantic era (read "The Poetry of Gardens" by DS Likhachev!). And how many green rooms there are in these labyrinths of the garden! Their walls are transparent and brownish in winter and early spring, gently turn green in spring, become thick and mysterious in summer, especially on white nights, when nightingales sing incessantly in them. In autumn, living walls gilded, again revealing their unique graphics of branches and trunks. And it's impossible to pass bywithout looking into these favorite places of solitude during leisurely walks, Tsarskoye Selo masquerades, evening balls by candlelight and lanterns, with musicians playing in the open air (and old trees, "… where there are so many lire hung on branches", remember these stories, costumes of gentlemen and ladies' outfits, confessions and vows, poems and romances, and roses …).

The trellis bushy linden, which is cut several times per season, is used to create tall hedges around fairly large gardens. Moreover, the trellises, as in the park, are combined with standard linden trees with a curly haircut of the crown, planted along the inner perimeter of the garden, and the trellises - along the outside, protecting the garden from prying eyes. A few years after planting, they close, and a solid wall of linden of various shapes is obtained. The decorative effect of this combination is no less interesting in a summer cottage than in a large-scale park.

The flower parterre at the Nizhnyaya, or Kavalerskaya, pavilion, the bathtub is "woven" from carpet summer houses that bloom profusely all summer. The profile of the royal iris, which for some reason is more often called a lily, is filled with warm pink gracilis begonia, bordered with a low maiden feverfew with golden carved leaves. Baroque curls on the velvety green of the lawn were "woven" of lilac ageratum and a border of silver-gray seaside cineraria with "suede" patterned leaves. In the sun, these living carpets shine with bright colors, reflecting the blueness of the sky and snow-white clouds. On the slope of the day, when the shadow of the ancient fir trees on the next alley mutes and softens the colors, you suddenly realize that a cool lilac-blue stream flows through the green meadow, whimsically curling into ancient arabesques, and life-giving freshness after a hot meal,a sultry day descends on everyone who is near these places. Low, fluffy oval kochias, like cypresses, create the rhythm set by the gardener in this kingdom of living patterns. Each slender beauty kokhia is surrounded by a cuff of white and pink ever-flowering begonia, lined with yellow-leaved ageratum or maiden feverfew. This module seems to repeat in miniature the motifs of the upper parterre and echoes the bright round flower beds located on the green carpet of the Own garden of the Catherine Park. This module seems to repeat in miniature the motifs of the upper parterre and echoes the bright round flower beds located on the green carpet of the Own garden of the Catherine Park. This module seems to repeat in miniature the motifs of the upper parterre and echoes the bright round flower beds located on the green carpet of the Own garden of the Catherine Park.

(The ending follows)