Lancelot Brown is Blogging!

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown (1716-1783)

Now then.  Lancelot 'Capability' Brown is one of the most contentious designers  in British garden history, and its often a case of love him or hate him.  He is often accused of destroying so many of the English Renaissance gardens of the 17th century.  Considering that the Civil War had taken a hefty toll of gardens and that Brown was the third in a line of great landscapists and oftentimes worked on landscapes they had, I am not sure how far this accusation sticks.  

And he is occasionally accused of designs that resulted in the displacement of villages and villagers.  This is certainly true, but the Enclosure Acts were far more pernicious than the mild-mannered Brown.

Brown's landscape at Montacute: more natural than nature!

I am sure you can see by now that I fall into the former category and think that Brown's work was genius.  To be able to envisage how a mature landscape should look at its peak - 200 years into the future - takes vision; and there is also something humbling about Brown and his work for he must have know that he would never live to see one of his designs reach maturity.

Brown's landscape at Blenheim - perhaps his finest.

And for my money he was also the first Modernist.  For if we apply the maxim 'form follows function' then that is exactly what his designs achieved.  They were the 'natural' English landscape perfected, and thus performed their artistic function, whilst simultaneously demonstrating that the owner was at the cutting edge of fashion.  Yet they were also productive and yielded an income and also met the requirements of countryside recreations.

Chatsworth set within Brown's landscape 

So, may I introduce you to the new blog Lancelot Capability Brown which is dedicated to proselyting about the man, his work and celebrating the forthcoming tercentenary of his birth.

You can also follow Lancelot on Twitter: @Brown2016

E is for English Landscape Garden

Brown's landscape at Longleat - more natural than nature

Many thousands of acres of downland Britain that we assume are ‘natural’ were, in fact, parts of carefully designed English landscape gardens created in the 18th and early 19th centuries.  The move away from the formal, French-inspired garden of the late 17th century towards a reappraisal of Nature was stimulated by the Grand Tour, innovative farming techniques, and Enclosure. 

Charles Bridgeman

The first ‘landscapist’ was Charles Bridgeman (d.1738), and his greatest contribution was the introduction of the sunken hedge or ‘ha-ha’.  

A ha-ha

This brought the broader landscape into the garden, which evolved not just as something to look at, but also to look through.  

William Kent

The pace of change was maintained by William Kent (1684-1748) - the subject of an earlier post - who further de-formalised the garden and created idealised, picturesque landscapes - works of art inspirited by the Classics and set within a tamed, sculptured Nature. 

Venus Vale at Rousham

However, it was the much-maligned Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-83) who created what has been described as Britain’s greatest contribution to world art. 

Lancelot 'Capability' Brown

His landscapes were wholly English in their character and inspiration, and Sir Horace Walpole perfectly encapsulated Brown’s work: ‘Such was the effect of his genius that when he was the happiest man he will be least remembered, so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken.’  

Blenheim Palace

I also argue that if you apply the maxim ‘form follows function’ Brown was the original Minimalist Modernist - a work of art composed of water, grass, trees and topography that simultaneously turned in a profit as a productive landscape.

Humphry Repton

Brown’s successor was Humphry Repton (1752-1818), who I call 'Practicality' Repton because he combined beauty with utility primarily by reintroducing the terrace, but as Industrial Revolution suburbia rose and gardening for the masses arrived, formality returned to the garden....

Sheringham Hall

If you want to experience these works of art here are some suggestions of gardens to visit.  There is no unadulterated Bridgeman garden extant, although Claremont in Surrey and Chiswick House in London retains elements. The latter was designed in co-operation with Kent with whom Bridgeman worked on several projects

The finest example of Kent’s work is Rousham in Oxfordshire.  Brown’s crowning glory is Blenheim Palace, also in Oxfordshire: and Repton’s ‘darling child’ is Sheringham Hall in Norfolk.

This is a link to a feature on Georgian Gardens.

Mediaeval Gardens

Mary in a hortus conclusus

One of my favourite periods of garden history and one which is sadly neglected is the Mediaeval garden.  If you wish to know more,  John Harvey's Mediaeval Gardens (1981) is a masterful tome.  Albeit an expensive one these days.  There are also a couple of blogs worth visiting: St Mary de Haura and The Medieval Garden Enclosed.

Monastic Self sufficiency

While the Islamic world grew in size and created beautiful gardens, Europe entered a period well deserved of its title, ‘The Dark Ages’.  The peaceful conditions required for ornamental garden making were lost, but the missionary zeal of the monks took Christianity swiftly across Europe, and since their Rule demanded self-sufficiency, with it went the art of gardening.

Plan of St Gall - garden is in top left corner

One 9th century document, a plan by Abbot Hiato of St Gall, a monastery in Switzerland shows a blueprint for the perfect monastery and reveals the garden to be full of raised, rectangular beds in each of which was grown a single crop.  Monsativc gardens were made for utility and purpose - to provide plants to eat, from which to make medicines and to use in the everyday running of a monsatic establishment.  They were not for ornament and repose, and by the late 11th century, the monasteries were large, well established, and powerful

Exotic Secular

Virgin and Child with Saints, c.1510-1520. Attribution: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos.  GFDL Licence

As a sort of peace settled across Europe, with its return, so did garden making – but protected behind thick castle walls.   Such enclosed gardens were often called hortus conclusus and had a religious overtone referring to Mary.  However unlike monks, the nobility were neither celibate nor ascetic and many had seen the erotic, sensuous Moorish (Islamic) gardens in Spain, Sicily and on the Crusades.  Thus Islamic influences began to creep into the garden.

The Abbey House Garden, Malmesbury

The mediaeval garden mingled beauty with utility.  It was a place for relaxation, and in a malodorous world, a retreat full of sweetly scented plants.  Like the monasteries the plants were grown in raised beds, and many species still served medicinal or culinary uses, but they were grown in a way to make them look beautiful – a mix of species to create a floral tapestry.  Other beds were raised further to make seats, and carpeted with fine turf richly sprinkled with herbs such as thyme, camomile and other fragrant plants.  Alternatively the enclosed space was entirely covered in a ‘flowery mead’ - fine grass studded with many wild flowers.  

Favourite features

Boccaccio’s Teseida

Other popular features included arbours, the simplest being a structure of wooden  poles cloaked with climbers such as honeysuckle, vine or clematis.  More ornate frameworks were made from woven willow or wooden trellis.  This notion of a romantic retreat received a fillip with the story of fair Rosamund Clifford, mistress to the English king, Henry II.  In the grounds of Woodstock (now Blenheim Palace), the King built Rosamund a bower, where they had their trysts, until his jealous wife, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine learned of their trysts and killed her rival.
  

An Enclosed Garden

Ornate water features, especially tanks, baths, pools, and fountains were another favourite, as were mazes and labyrinths, often copied from patterns on Cathedral floors.  However these were not mazes as we know them – tall yew hedges - instead they were patterns cut into turf.

The Normans loved hunting, and they must have heard tales of the great Assyrian pairadaeza full of exotic animals, trees and flowers.  A ‘replica’ was built in 1123 by Henry I, who enclosed the park at Woodstock and stocked it with animals including lions, leopards, lynx, porcupine and camels. 

P.S.  The links of the above two images lead so some rather interesting, albeit not garden, facts.  Try them if you dare.