Far from bringing Nature to heel, Britain’s finest avenues of trees awe us with their powers
Avenues, say most garden and landscape historians, reflect our desire to master nature, yet Britain’s finest seldom give that impression. Consider three different cases.
In the 1770s, James stuart lined the approach to his house in Co Antrim with beech trees. These grew into the tunnel of writhing limbs now known as The Dark Hedges (preceding pages), a landmark so gothic in atmosphere that it has served as a location for Game of Thrones.
In 1977, an avenue of hornbeams was planted at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire to mark The Queen’s silver Jubilee. Their columnar trunks recede to a Classical urn and their crowns meet in a vault. Their leaves form mosaics—emerald and decorating the ceiling in spring, gold and carpeting the floor in autumn. A numinous and enchanted place, this avenue recalls Baudelaire’s description of nature as a temple of living pillars.
Last, but emphatically not least, there’s The Long Walk, two double ranks of trees (originally elms and now a mixture of species) that sweep across the 2.65 miles from snow Hill in Windsor Great Park to the Castle’s George Iv Gate. Charles II is said to have taken versailles as his model for this feature, which he began in 1683. Yet nothing in the sun King’s uptight arboreal geometry matches its splendour, which is royal but also rural, generous, open and free, showing an art in naturalness that is especially english.
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