Word: claremonters
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...members, from legacies and from small admission fees, the National Trust completed the restoration of three beautiful historic gardens: Ham House, an 18-acre compound on the banks of the Thames on the outskirts of London; Erd-dig, a 13-acre retreat in North Wales; and Claremont, a 50-acre spread near Esher, 40 minutes from Charing Cross...
...evolution of British gardening from Ham House, the oldest of those restorations, to Claremont, the youngest, is a story of art conquering artifice. Ham House, completed around 1675, is one of those formal, highly decorative gardens popular during the 17th century. Such landscapes were influenced by the fussy Dutch and autocratic French traditions, which attempted to organize nature into geometric perfection. The Ham House gardens are meticulously divided into parterres, groves and banks by avenues...
...first idea." Mocking such conceits as clipping bushes into the shapes of beasts, Alexander Pope urged that the three arts of poetry, painting and gardening be united. The first to execute Pope's grand vision successfully was Architect, Painter and Landscape Artist William Kent, who began work on Claremont around 1725. Nature abhors a straight line, maintained Kent, as he set about demolishing walls and ploughing parterres. The result: an elegant wilderness that resembled a painting by Claude Lorraine. Claremont gives the appearance of an untouched landscape complete with grassy knolls and an irregular lake...
Kent's garden at Claremont was refined by Lancelot Brown, a royal gardener who was known as "Capability" for his habit of looking at a site and declaring that it had capabilities. His was a romantic vision, sweeping away the last vestiges of formalism in broad pictorial vistas of lawn, woods and streams. In his work, Continental influences were finally replaced by a kind of landscaping thoroughly in harmony with the damp English climate and the contour of the land...
Reardon, formerly director of communications for the development office, replaces Alfred M. Gibbens. Gibbens announced last month he was leaving Harvard to become vice president for development at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif...