49

In their garden practice and discourse, the British show a bitter hostility towards certain horticultural uses and misuses and a willingness to act with nature by placing a high premium on the ideas of diversity, surprise, respect, and self-management which echo today’s preoccupations. In the recent historiography of “English” gardens, the central place allocated to nature, as well to the care for the immediate environment of habitat, has been relegated to second place after a political and/or artistic explanation (the pictorial paradigm). This article highlights the importance of the commitment to “nature”, wildness and the idea of an ‘invisible hand’. In choosing an artistic posture of invisibility the British forged an image of man “serving” nature; the art of the landscape gardener hides by means of nature – by means of thinking out, respecting and caring for biodiversity as well as being unobtrusive.