Modern Garden Decoration: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Beginnings
Modern Garden Decoration: Large Outdoor Water Fountains and their Beginnings The dramatic or ornamental effect of a fountain is just one of the purposes it fulfills, in addition to delivering drinking water and adding a decorative touch to your property.Pure practicality was the original role of fountains. Cities, towns and villages made use of nearby aqueducts or springs to supply them with potable water as well as water where they could bathe or wash.
Up to the late 19th century, water fountains had to be near an aqueduct or reservoir and higher than the fountain so that gravity could make the water move down or shoot high into the air. Serving as an element of adornment and celebration, fountains also supplied clean, fresh drinking water. Animals or heroes made of bronze or stone masks were often used by Romans to beautify their fountains. Throughout the Middle Ages, Muslim and Moorish garden planners included fountains to create smaller variations of the gardens of paradise. Fountains enjoyed a considerable role in the Gardens of Versailles, all part of French King Louis XIV’s desire to exert his power over nature. The Romans of the 17th and 18th centuries manufactured baroque decorative fountains to glorify the Popes who commissioned them as well as to mark the location where the restored Roman aqueducts entered the city.
Indoor plumbing became the main source of water by the end of the 19th century thereby limiting urban fountains to mere decorative elements. Gravity was substituted by mechanical pumps in order to enable fountains to bring in clean water and allow for beautiful water displays.
Decorating city parks, honoring people or events and entertaining, are some of the purposes of modern-day fountains.
Anglo Saxon Gardens During the Norman Conquest
Anglo Saxon Gardens During the Norman Conquest Anglo-Saxons experienced incredible changes to their day-to-day lives in the latter half of the eleventh century due to the accession of the Normans. The Normans were much better than the Anglo-Saxons at architecture and horticulture when they came into power. But before centering on home-life or having the occasion to think about domestic architecture or decoration, the Normans had to subjugate an entire population. Most often designed upon windy summits, castles were straightforward constructs that permitted their occupants to devote time and space to offensive and defensive schemes, while monasteries were rambling stone buildings frequently installed in only the most fecund, broad valleys. Peaceful activities such as gardening were out of place in these destitute citadels. Berkeley Castle is probably the most complete model in existence at present of the early Anglo-Norman style of architecture. The keep is said to date from William the Conqueror's time. An enormous terrace encompasses the building, serving as an obstacle to assailants intending to dig under the castle walls. A picturesque bowling green, covered in grass and enclosed by battlements cut out of an ancient yew hedge, makes one of the terraces.