Mazes

Mazes. . , Many Victorian gardens had buildings and plantings that were fanciful, romantic and mysterious. The maze, revived as a garden element at the beginning of the 19th Century, exemplifies these qualities., Henry Shaw could have been inspired by several mazes existing in England during the Victorian era. He was probably most influenced by the Hampton Court maze. It was planted in 1690 and was the only known trapezoidal maze in Victorian England., Shaw's first St. Louis maze , a trapezoidal design , was planted in Tower Grove Park. It consisted of hemlock, spruce, and cedar hedge, surrounded by a row of Osage orange. At the center of the maze was an observatory., Shaw also constructed a maze, described as an intricate winding labyrinth, at the Missouri Botanical Garden. It stood south of where the Climatron is today.[Captions:] , The legendary origin of the maze is the Greek myth of the Minotaur. Daedalus, a prisoner of Cretan King Minos, built a maze to hide the Minotaur, a beast with the body of a man and the head of a bull. Theseus killed the Minotaur, then escaped from the maze by following the shread of Ariadne., Maze or labyrinth patterns can be found in antique rock carvings, Roman mosaics, and motifs on churches or church floors. The maze became a garden feature during the Renaissance, and it fell in and out of popularity through the centuries.