Built to impress Welcome back to Period Dramas, a weekly column that alternates between rounding up historic homes on the market and answering questions we?ve always had about older structures.
English country estates are often associated with intricate networks of rooms and strict social hierarchies. But just outside the country house is an entirely different world?the garden, a freer, more whimsical space where the rules are relaxed.
?The garden is a place of diversion and distraction,? says Michael Lewis, professor of art history at Williams College. ?While the house itself is organized, ordered culture, outside one encounters rain and heat and wind?capriciousness! The walk through the garden is different every time.?
One means of diversion was through the construction of garden follies, little structures that punctuate the landscape. Wildly popular in 18th-century garden design, they serve no purpose aside from delighting the eye and sparking conversation. While garden pavilions gained popularity through the 18th century, they took inspiration from centuries-old landscape architecture: ?The source of all of our modern garden is rooted in the Italian Renaissance,? explains Lewis. ?From the beginning, that garden was a fanciful place, with fountains and grottos and eccentric grotesque carvings and sculptures.?

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The Great Pagoda through the trees at Kew Gardens.

In the 18th century, as the British Empire reached th...