The garden came to represent two things for the English in the Victorian era: home in the face of a massive Empire, andstability in the face of industrialization and a perceived disintegration of society.
Planting Home in the Empire: Gardens as a Metaphor for England
England had been compared to a garden since at least the time of Shakespeare, but this metaphor took on particular significance in the Victorian Era as it infiltrated visual, literary, and everyday culture in England. This image was particularly important during the Victorian Era as England expanded her empire and influence across the globe. Increasingly, English citizens were spread across the globe, and began to seek a symbol that would unify those at home, and that would serve as a memory of home for those in the colonies. According to Anne Helmreich, gardens came to represent “a rooted sense of home to which even the most far-ranging imperialist longed to return.” (Hemreich 11)
The English appreciation for gardening became closely linked with the national character, as Roberts later claimed “the Englishman’s love of gardens and of gardening is one of the most characteristic things about him.” (Roberts 14) Style was particularly important in the connections between England and gardens. For example,the French style of gardening “came to symbolize autocracy and the absolute rule of man over nature" in a period of imperial conflict, while the English garden symbolized "constitutionalism and man’s alliance with nature.” (Clark 22)
By this period, many in England had begun to fear the destabilization and decline of their cultural order, on both the domestic and the international level. As Froude said, "we live in times of disintegration." As a result, they felt the need to “invoke a stable, coherent image of the nation. Many commentators located that image in the garden, with its associations of home and fidelity compounded by sensations of pleasure and beauty.” (Helmreich 8) The wealthy middle classes began to increasingly identify with the countryside, particularly as they identified a necessary bond between the individual and nature, threatened by industrialization. (Helmreich 10)
