Cultivating wildness: Ecological aesthetics in the British landscape, 1870 - 1910

As cultural products, gardens and landscapes are inherently imbedded with meaning. Recent scholarship has shown that in Late Victorian and Edwardian Britain, the creation of gardens and the design of landscapes were linked with ideas about nationalism and class. However, far less attention has been paid to the ecological implications of these actions. After 1870, aesthetic ideas regarding the creation of gardens shifted in response to the urbanization and industrialization of society, including the rigidity of rectangular field patterns associated with the large-scale enclosure of common land. A new style of design, "the wild garden," was conceived and popularized as an antidote to what many considered an excessive display of order and control exemplified by industrial landscapes. In tandem, reformers advocated for the cultivation of plants in urban environments and also for increased access to nature for people of all social classes, particularly through the preservation of common land.;This thesis examines three figures in Britain who sought to reform the environment and society. The work of William Robinson, Gertrude Jekyll, and Octavia Hill encompassed the creation and popularization of gardens within Britain's countryside, suburban villages, and cities, as well as the protection of open spaces in both rural and urban areas. Individually, each of these figures advanced the development of an ecological aesthetic and contributed to the conservation of the British landscape at the turn of the twentieth century. Collectively, they offered Britain a renewed vision of society. At the core of this vision was the cultivation of wildness.