Capability Brown and the English Landscape Garden

Description

The name Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1716-83) has become synonymous with the eighteenth-century English landscape garden. Ruthlessly efficient, he could stake out the 'capabilities' of a particular terrain within an hour on horseback. Rising to the position of Master Gardener to George III, his trademark features included bald lawns, clumped trees, lakes and enclosing belts of woodland on the estate's perimeter, setting a park formula that lasted well into the next century. Laura Mayer presents a concise and colourful introduction to Brown and other leading landscape gardeners of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, such as William Kent, Richard Payne Knight and Humphry Repton. She explores how competing ideas in garden design were shaped both by changes in prevailing fashion and by the innovations of particular designers, and why Brown's designs are currently considered to be the epitome of landscape gardening in this period.

Laura Mayer holds a PhD in eighteenth-century landscape and lectures on Humphry Repton and Capability Brown for the University of Buckingham. She is the author of Humphry Repton and co-author of The Historic Gardens of England: Cambridgeshire and the Isle of Ely.

"With its many reproductions of line engravings and color photographs, this work is equivalent to many larger printed tomes on English garden history. Capability Brown (1716-83) took the English landscape and turned it into his ideal: large lawns, ponds, and forests in the distance. Nature was simplified in his hands. He changed the course of British estate landscaping and had enormous influence in the United States and elsewhere. Take this little book on your next British trip." --Adele Kleine, Library volunteer and garden writer, Chicago Botanic Garden