Some more 'froufrou' for those who have an interest in it - or who don't mind it.... I've finished reading The Chinese Taste in Eighteenth-Century England and An Analytical Inquiry Into the Principles of Taste. Neither had much direct relevance to gardening but did connect to the Hogarth book I read. The Chinese Taste book was largely about the process/stages/impact of how exposure to a different culture affects the first culture. What I 'took away' from the book was as follows: The initial reaction to Chinese porcelain imports into 18th century England was very positive - a widespead fascination with the beautiful porcelain and the culture that produced it. Later, there was a negative reaction against it, mainly led by those with an aesthetic philosophy bent. Later still, certain aspects of it became adopted as part of English culture and identification (think - afternoon tea....) Aesthetic philosophies of the time were heavily based on the 'authority' of the 'ancients' (mainly Roman, Greek, and - to a lesser extent - Egyptian civilizations). So the initial exposure to an even more ancient, and obviously highly civilized and enduring, civilization was one of fascinated admiration. However, as they learned more about Chinese culture, it became evident that the Chinese aesthetic was entirely different than the western one. Given that 'ancients' were considered authoritative, that posed a dilemma/threat to western aesthetics because here was an even more ancient civilization who had an entirely different aesthetic approach! So the backlash against the Chinese imported articles/cultural ideas seemed to be in large part motivated by a desire to 'protect' the western aesthetic framework. This description of some of the differences in appoaches to landscape painting seems to be a good summary of the different aesthetics: " One of the central organizing principles in early modern Chinese landscape painting and gardening is the balance of tension between eternally opposed forces, yin and yang, water and rock, earth and sky. Human figures, like pine trees, typically represent a merely transient, intermediate state between these poles, rather than the fully consummate pinacle of devine creation." Women became the major purchasers/collectors of Chinese porcelain. The author - and others he refers to - speculate that a large part of the attraction was that the portrayal of women on Chinese porcelain seemed to depict them as having more autonomy and dignity than in Western classical art (where women often nude and/or the object of - often violent or coarse - male desire). Nudes were absent in the Chinese depictions of women. So, the presentation of women in Chinese art seemed compatible with emerging trends of women actively seeking greater autonomy and control in 18th century England. (Of course, women's place in Chinese society was not as rosy as it appeared on the Chinawares....) Chinese porcelain became a symbol in the art of Hogarth and his contemporaries of rebellious women challenging/undermining male authority. Hogarth did not like Chinese porcelain - it had none of his lines of beauty or grace. The author of this book clearly did not like Hogarth! The impression you get is that he thought Hogarth was a sexist lech! (He probably was - but so were most 18th century men...) In summary, the book was interesting but I didn't learn much about Chinese gardens or where serpentines might fit into the picture. It did leave me wanting to know more about Chinese gardening traditions so I will look for a good book on that once I finish some other (non-gardening) books. Moving on to the Analytical Inquiry Into The Principles of Taste.... I confess - I didn't finish this one! At about the 75% complete point he was talking about architectural styles and referring to his house. I went on-line (good old Wikipedia...) to see what his house looked like - and found the bio summary on him. His first book was The Worship of Priapus - which apparently sought to recover the importance of ancient phallic cults! Sheesh...! That destroyed his credibility as an arbiter of taste IMO!! I was finding the book a struggle to read anyway. It's one of those where you read something and say 'that makes sense', but each piece doesn't make a strong narrative that hangs together in a memorable way, so you keep losing the point.... I would be hard put to try to clearly state what his principles af taste actually were! He didn't approve of Hogarth's lines of beauty and grace because he didn't like rule-based approaches to art and consideration of beauty. One of the interesting things about the book was that it really hits you over the head that a classical education at the time involved 'reading the classics' (i.e. Latin and Greek writers - in Latin and Greek). Many of his footnotes are in Latin or Greek (with the Greek ones in the Greek alphabet). I now thoroughly understand why when something completely baffles you, you say 'It's all Greek to me..."! The INKognito effect can lead you down some interesting - and a bit strange - roads... :-)

Marian - the paper size is 11"x17" for the course but I gather in 'real life' it would be at least 24"x36" or bigger... Mary - I have noticed the ads for the English Gardening School in the RHS magazine. And there are the RHS courses too... I guess one advantage of the U of G courses is you can just take the courses that interest you and they can count towards a certificate/diploma or not, as you like. So there no feeling that you didn't complete a program if you want to stop after just one course. The Internet format was ideal for me; it's just that the course content wasn't quite what I was looking for. I'll have to look around at options and then see whether I'm still in the mood to do something more once the gardening season is over for this year. Saucy - The reference to the clematises is in the verbal description of the plan. You need the plant list key to find them on the drawing (and the drawing posted here is too small to read the numbers anyway! :-) GB - I was going to consult with you about what ones to use but ran out of time and just named ones I was familiar with! The transparent house was interesting. I had to 'build' it from scratch with only the floor plan outline, the height of the walls as provided by the teacher, and the fact that there was a 2' roof overhang! It's not quite right I think on the back part of the house but good enough for the purpose of the assignment. The whole isometric drawing thing is actually quite simple to do - if a bit fiddly and tedious! You follow a straightforward process using fairly crude shapes for the plants (drawn to scale based on mature height and spread) and, when you put it all together, it produces that rather astonishing drawing - with zippo artistic talent required on my part! Since it was all done at a scale of 1/8" = 1' small details were killers to work with. It took me two days to draw that table and tuteur! Rotating things 30 degrees when they're that small and have so many lines (all those chair legs etc.!) is hard on the eyes... And since the technique produces a 3-D effect, I kept losing track of what was bottom and what was top as the little image seemed to have a life of its own and 'morphed' a lot :-) And tilting everything at 30 degrees started to 'get' to me - when I was reading something after working on the drawings for a while, the text of what I was reading seemed to be on a slant! But it was mostly fun - and good mental exercise :-) But now it's time to mess around in the real garden! I do hope to get out and measure things next week and do a proper scale drawing of the front garden and the changes I want to make there. (I suspect I may end up just 'winging it' as usual if spring gets underway quickly sometime soon and I run out of planning time....:-)

The weather has not been very cohesive to taking pictures lately, so one of these is from this past spring and the landscape photo is from a couple weeks ago. I cropped both to try and get the right affect. My adventurous and demur (not really!) kitty A sunset scene from near our place, which I think would be better if the trees on the right were taller. I'll be keeping this assignment in mind for future photography for sure, it really is a nice effect that one could get very creative with. Thanks again ladies :)

Great idea! I'm looking at my computer, that has your computer on it, that has Ian's pics on it...Cooool! Kt