Once dubbed “preposterous inconveniences” by Horace Walpole in his hugely influential essay “On Modern Gardening” of 1780, the extravagant formal gardens of late Stuart and early Georgian England have been consistently eclipsed by their famed “Natural” successors, known the world over as members of that vaunted movement: the “English Landscape Garden.” With their array of literary, political, and painterly allusions, English landscape gardens have captivated generations of scholars and punters alike. Prominent surviving examples at Stowe, Rousham, and Stourhead are lauded for their crucial role in the birth of the picturesque, while Lancelot “Capability” Brown remains the most celebrated figure in British horticultural history, as the scores of monographs and widespread celebrations for the tercentenary of his birth in 2016 attest. In stark contrast, however, Brown’s formal forebears, such as Henry Wise, George London, and Stephen Switzer, continue to languish in the obscurity of specialist publications. Their sumptuous avenues and intricate parterres, once the acme of fashionable garden design between 1630 and 1730, have been almost entirely wiped out, save for a smattering of painstakingly restored survivors, such as William III’s Privy Garden at Hampton Court.

The reason for this collective amnesia, suggests David Jacques in his excellent new survey of Stuart and Georgian formal gardening, has much to do with the parochialism of the customary Whig history of Western garden development. To the exclusion of everything in between, Whig teleology stresses the importance of the villa gardens of the Italian Renaissance in the sixteenth