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From HGwiki
HGwiki is a subsidiary of Historical Gardens blog (HGblog), the weblog about historical gardens I've started working on in June 2006. HGwiki followed in August 2007, to house content for which the blog is not a suitable medium. To underline the connection between HGblog and HGwiki, here's a link to the Tags overview available at HGblog. What I try to provide here on HGwiki is a general context of (mainly Dutch) gardens and garden history, which will gradually be supplemented by full blown descriptons of particular objects and people. National borders have never stood in the way of the development of garden history, which means that both HGblog and HGwiki will inevitably expand to incorporate sites and developments in other countries.
The form I have chosen by using wiki software almost automatically suggests that HGwiki is a garden history encyclopedia in the making, but that is not the final goal. Actually, there is no final goal. This project should develop in its own pace and in its own direction. I'll adjust when necessary, or when exiting (sub)projects present themselves.
Henk van der Eijk
Contents |
Developments in Dutch garden history
The specialists at Wageningen University (Wageningen UR) have already written this concise overview, which is more than sufficient to get a general idea of the main developments in Dutch garden history, as well as of the key players of their time. Over time, I will devote pages on specific episodes of gardening in Holland. Links to these writings will appear here.
Parks & Gardens
To avoid a long list of names cluttering the main page, the following links will direct you to the separate lists of Parks & Gardens that are currently featured on HGwiki.
Parks & Gardens in The Netherlands
Landscape and Garden Professionals
This section contains both architects, botanists, nurserymen and gardeners. To avoid a long list of names cluttering the main page, the following links will take you directly to the lists of Landscape and Garden Professionals that are currently featured.
Landscape Architects working in The Netherlands
Artists & Map makers
Because gardens inevitably change over time or disappear altogether, our view of historical gardens primarily depends on the work of Artists & Map makers. Artists who depict gardenviews and views in gardens and map makers doing the same from a different angle and for a different reason. In their turn, these views and maps have influenced the development of gardening styles. The most famous example of that is the way the 'picturesque' landscape style in the 18th century has been influenced by fictional depictions of the Chinese landscape, and by 'classical' landscapes painted by the likes of Lorrain during the 17th century.
Yet we rely on these (and other) artist's work to create a view of the history of gardening or of a particular site ourselves. Most of the 'noise' has been identified by comparing their work with other maps or drawings and the actual site they depicted. More often than not, though, the artists themselves are merely footnotes in the descriptive narrative of the garden historian, and their work is used to illustrate events or sites without any remark about their usefulness in that respect. In this section I would like to highlight some of these artists and map makers, as well as the way the peculiarities of their work have sometimes put us on the wrong foot -or not.
