Some of you will have seen this before, but I thought it deserved another outing; ideal for Becky’s #GeometricJanuary.
We came upon it a few years ago when visiting National Trust stately home, Berrington Hall, in Herefordshire. It is the work of installation artists Heather and Ivan Morison; their interpretation of the Georgian garden pleasure principle, which included all manner of temporary structures for dining, conducting assignations, or communing with the great outdoors. It’s called Look, Look, Look!
In the 18th century, Britain’s landed rich expended their often questionably-gotten gains in the creation of pleasure parks around their grand houses. These were places for promenading, a little sporting activity (fishing, sailing, archery), for re-enactments of famous naval battles (if you had your own lake); there were ‘eye-catcher’ summer houses, grottos, fake ruins, and classical temples. It was also the era of wholesale removal of villages from the sight-lines of the gentry in the ‘big house’. Garden tunnels were also dug so the horticultural workforce could go about their labours largely unseen. Above all, these gardens were ‘show off’ places, and if you wanted the best, you employed the likes of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown to design it.
Another show-off item was exotic fruit, especially the pineapple whose possession, in the flesh, produced in your own very expensive-to-run hot house, or as architectural motifs about the house, demonstrated your wealth and prestige. At Berrington Hall there are both pineapple allusions, and the surviving landscape contrivances of Capability Brown. The park is magnificent, and Brown’s last endeavour as a garden designer. There is currently an extensive garden restoration project which aims to recover his original groundworks.
Inspired by the pineapple, detail from a Berrington Hall bed quilt
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N.B. You can find full details of the Pink Pineapple’s construction, with architectural plans HERE.
