World Famous Landscapes Gallery

Now we head off to a virtual gallery of world renowned landscaping. When we ponder landscaping, there are several examples that immediately pop into our consciousness--some of the greatest designs in history: The Gardens at Versailles, the Vatican Gardens and Japan's Kenrokuen Garden.

The Gardens at Versailles landscape gave new and unparalleled definition to the French Baroque garden. It's grand conception and design by Andre Le Notre was helped along by Le Roi Soleil himself, the "Sun King" Louis XIV.

Ephemeral words lack the capacity to describe this tangible, historic and so awe-inspiringly scale of landscape. The garden spokes out from one main axis. Within the garden, the Grand Canal spans over 105 acres of landscape. A particular garden dubbed L'Orangerie boasts 1000 orange, pomegranate and lemon trees. Scores of flower beds and fastidiously clipped privet hedges riddle the landscape.

Immaculate symmetry and geometric shapes give Versailles its commanding character. Paths, akin to rays of the sun, radiate from the core of the garden and reach out to circular basins lined with classical statues. Their use now reserved for Sundays, the thirty-two fountains across landscape complete Versailles' regal nature.

Flanking the Vatican in Rome, the Vatican Gardens were the brainchild of Pope Nicholas V who envisioned these glorious garden landscapes as a site for papal ceremonies and divine contemplation.

The Vatican Gardens are flecked with fountains and statues in the classic Renaissance style. Throughout the history of changing popes, the landscape has evolved as each man nuanced a different part of the garden. Where one monument commemorating Gregory the Great watches over a section of the landscape, the coat of arms of Pope John Paul II keeps a vigil over another. Miles of combined earthly and ethereal splendor make up the Vatican Gardens.

A rather different style of garden, the Kenrokuen Gardens in Japan translates to the "Garden of the Six Sublimities" which, according to Asian tradition, are the six features that come together to form the perfect garden landscape. The Kenrokuen Garden indeed boasts tranquil seclusion, abundant space, plentiful water, wide vistas, artificial creation and antiquity.

A copious water supply is evidently a chief feature of this landscape filled with waterfalls. Tea houses line peaceful ponds and traditional Japanese bridges stretch their architecture across streams in this paradisiacal landscape. A classic Japanese landscape of this virtue invariably brings its visitors a sense of harmony and calm.

After viewing and becoming acquainted with these three landscapes (as if you weren't already!) you may be brimming with the inspiration to produce your very own classic landscape design.