Mediaeval gardens on the Continent paralleled the development of those in England described in the following section. The monks in hortus and herbularis fostered horticulture—as we see from plans of the abbey of St. Gall of the 9th century—and in cloister earths made pleasant arrangements for outdoor meditation.
In Spain the flowering of garden art came with the Moors, who through Africa from Persia had brought the conception of shel tered arcaded pleasure grounds, sweetened by rare plants and cooled by deep shade and water in many forms. Between the 8th and 15th centuries great works of art were created in Cordova, Toledo and Granada, where the Alhambra and Generalife remain to suggest their original beauty. In Seville, the Moorish Alcazar suffered from the French grand style, which, however, found suc cessful expression in La Granja and Aranjuez. In Spain to-day Spanish-Moorish tradition is being sympathetically revived, with in the Maria-Luisa park at Seville and the new Spanish-American Exposition.
In Italy, with its tradition of classical villas, the Renaissance brought renewed desire for princely residence in town and coun try. Beginning with early Florentine villas, as Palmieri (described in Boccaccio) and Castello, characterized by simple terraces, excel lent sculpture and water display, not motived by any general axial arrangement, we see in Villa Madama (Rome) transition to a gen erally unified scheme. The i6th century villas—best represented to-day by Lante (Bagnaia), d'Este (Tivoli), Medici (Rome) and the upper terrace of Farnese (Caprarola)—are evidently the con scious application of architectural design to outdoor settings, im portant points being recognized by statues or fountains, with fan ciful elaboration of water in many forms. In the late i6th and 17th century villas, the Baroque style (see BAROQUE ARCHITEC TURE), often carried to extremes, produced striking and pictur esque contrasts in scheme and detail, as exemplified by Aldobran dini (Frascati), Garzoni (Collodi), Giovio (Como) and Isola Bella. Through these three centuries of Italian garden develop ment, the great artists were architects, sculptors, painters or land scape designers, as occasion demanded : the villa was one design.
France, where from the 15th century, as security and wealth increased, chateau gardens in walled units had been gradually spreading out, succeeded Italy in the late 17th century as the central influence over European garden design. Le Notre seized and created elements to express in new terms the magnificence of Louis XIV. When he undertook Versailles, after successes at Vaux and Chantilly, he secured grandeur by effects of almost un limited extent. From great open parterres, the view extended along allees cut through wood lands on vaster scale than ever before, intersecting allees offering a succession of vistas marked by one splendid axially-placed foun tain after another. This simplicity and spaciousness, combined with multitudinous subordinate de tails, characterized the French grand style, which, in the hands of a great designer like Le Notre during his 5o years of practice, aided by many sculptors, gave us also St. Germain, Fontainebleau and St. Cloud. Although the grand style found numerous imi tators, in less skilful hands it often degenerated into stiffness, barren decoration or inappropriate treatment of topography. The impatience with artificiality developing in the i8th century gave rise in France, following the English "landscape school," to a gar den style in which nature and romantic detail were employed to arouse the emotions, as at Ermenonville. Under Napoleon III. the great public parks of Paris designed by M. Alphand exerted inter national influence.
In Holland pre-eminence in cultivation of flowers joined to Italian Renaissance influences produced a style of garden design in which closely enclosed geometrically-designed areas on a small scale were filled with gay beds and specimens of topiary work, overlooked by tiny garden houses. In the i8th century the French grand style spread to Holland, where the expanse of fertile flat country lent itself to allees and parterres, usually richer in horti cultural than in sculptural embellishment. Views of these, such as Loo, are fortunately preserved in contemporary albums, since many succumbed to the succeeding landscape craze.