Geograph - photograph every grid square

Compiled by Brian Robert Marshall from rococogarden.org.uk

Painswick House was built in the mid 1730's. Its owner, the asthma suffering Charles Hyett came to Painswick to escape the smog of Gloucester and named his new house 'Buenos Ayres'. Sadly this move was not enough and he died soon after the House was completed. It was his son, Benjamin, who created the fanciful Garden in a hidden valley behind the House. It was in the 1970's that Garden Historians became very interested in the period of Garden Design between 1720 and 1760. It was a time of great change and gardens became very frivolous, they were a place for garden parties, somewhere for Georgian folk to let their hair down. These Garden Historians named the period Rococo.

Their pursuit of a Rococo Garden to restore brought them to the jungle that was our Garden here at Painswick. Their encouragement led Lord Dickinson, a descendant of Charles Hyett, to begin an ambitious programme of work. In 1988 he handed control of that programme to Painswick Rococo Garden Trust and granted the Trust a long lease of the Garden.

In August 2012 the Garden was host to an exhibition of contemporary art with the theme 'Embarkation for Dangerous Liaisons' explained thus

'Our theme for 2012 ... takes aspects of potential inspiration from the gardens conception into consideration.

The first are the paintings, Embarkation for Cythera & Embarkation to Cythera both by the French Rococo artist Jean-Antoine Watteau.

The second inspiration is the epistolary novel, Les Liaisons Dangereuses by Choderlos de Lacios.'

The contributing artists are as follows:


Andrew Flint
Fiona Haines
Helen Burgress
Ann-Margreth Bohl
Ruth Moillet
Neil Wilkin
Natasha Houseago
Lynn Chadwick
Lyn Forrester
Quercus
Hans Borgonjon
Rick Kirby
Patricia Volk
Peter Garrard
Donald Foxley
Robin Wade
Malcolm West
Ian Gill
Erica Bibbings
Lit Smith
Neil Kilby
Pete Moorhouse
Richard Cresswell

Created: Thu, 6 Sep 2012, Updated: Sun, 9 Mar 2025