Ferme ornée

The term ferme ornée as used in English garden history derives from Stephen Switzer's term for 'ornamented farm'. It describes a country estate laid out partly according to aesthetic principles and partly for farming. During the eighteenth century the original ferme ornée was Woburn Farm, made by Philip Southcote, who bought the property in 1734. William Shenstone's garden at The Leasowes was also a ferme ornée. Marie Antoinette made a later example at Versailles in the form of le Petit hameau, created between 1783 and 1787, but it was much more for pleasure than for food production. The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm was said to be the largest 'ferme ornée' in 18th-century Europe. The most complete surviving example is said to be Larchill near Kilcock, Ireland.

Stephen Switzer, in The Nobleman, Gentleman and Gardener's Recreation (1715), describes the practice of the ferme ornée "By mixing the useful and profitable parts of Gard'ning with the Pleasurable in the Interior Parts of my Designs and Paddocks, obscure enclosures, etc. in the outward, My Designs are thereby vastly enlarg'd and both Profit and Pleasure may be agreeably mix'd together". His English readers would detect, in the juxtaposition of useful and pleasurable, the classical view of the twin aims of poetry, inherited from Horace, "to instruct and to delight".

The 'Ferme Ornée' gardens of the 18th century were an expression in landscape gardening of the Romantic movement. Emulating Arcadia, a pastoral paradise was created to reflect Man's harmony with the perfection of nature. A working farm, domestic animals and the natural landscape were ornamented by allusions to Arcadia: follies and grottoes, statuary and classical texts were combined with serpentine avenued walks, flowing water and lakes, areas of light and shade, special planting and inspirational framed views. Freed from the restrictions of the 17th century formal garden, the 'Ferme Ornée' was the first move towards the Brownian landscape parkland.

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