10 Facts About ‘Capability’ Brown
Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown is one of Britain’s most celebrated landscape architects.
His natural eye for the ‘capabilities’ of an estate would develop a garden style now recognised as the quintessential English landscape.
His work would be praised by Earls, paid for by Dukes and discussed by royalty across the world. Yet the Northumbrian upbringing of the young Lancelot Brown was far from grand.
1. He had a relatively simple childhood
William, his father, was a yeoman farmer; Ursula, his mother, worked as a chambermaid at Kirkharle Hall. Brown attended the village school in Cambo, along with his five siblings.
After leaving school at 16, Brown kicked off his career as the head gardener’s apprentice at Kirkharle Hall. Flourishing in this world of horticulture, he left the comfort and bucolic safety of his childhood home, and headed south to make a name for himself.
2. He made his name at Stowe
Brown’s big break came in 1741 when he joined Lord Cobham’s gardening staff on the estate at Stowe. He worked under the guidance of William Kent, who had rejected the rigid formality of garden design from Versailles, which asserted man’s dominance over nature.
Kent famously ‘leapt the fence and saw that all nature was a garden’, thus introducing the natural landscape garden which Brown would later perfect.
Brown clearly made a great impression at Stowe, officially appointed as Head Gardener in 1742, a post he held until 1750. Whilst at Stowe he married Bridget Waye, with whom he would have nine children.
3. He knew how to network
As his work at Stowe became more well-known, Brown started to take freelance commissions from Lord Cobham’s aristocratic friends, creating a name for himself as an independent designer and contractor.
Through word of mouth, Brown’s work soon became the height of fashion for the crème-de-la-crème of British landed families.
4. His work was all about natural landscapes
Following in Kent’s path of rejecting French formality, Brown sort to embrace and enhance the appearance of the natural landscape to match the romantic visions of painters like Claude Lorrain, whilst providing practically for the needs of a great estate.
To achieve this aesthetic and practical ideal, Brown moved huge amounts of earth and redirected vast bodies of water to create a ‘gardenless’ form of landscape gardening. The result was smooth, uninterrupted lawns, sprawling woods, quaint farms linked by carriage drives and flowing lakes linked by serpentine rivers.
5. He adopted pioneering techniques
Brown adopted a number of new techniques in this ‘place-making’. For example, in order to mark boundaries without compromising aesthetics, Brown developed the sunk fence or ‘ha-ha’. Different areas of parkland, whilst being managed and stocked totally differently, could appear as one uninterrupted space – both practical and elegant.
Whilst walking in the grounds of Hampton Court in 1782, Brown pointed at different landscape features and explained his ‘grammatical’ technique to a friend, saying:
‘Now there, I make a comma, and there, where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon, at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis, now a full stop, and then I begin another subject.’
6. His nickname stemmed from his visionary mind
As an accomplished rider, Brown would take about an hour to survey a new garden or landscape, and rough out an entire design. The ‘great capabilities’ in the estates he saw earnt him the nickname ‘Capability’ Brown.
Contemporaries noted the irony in Brown’s work – his ability to mimic nature was so remarkable that his meticulously crafted landscapes were taken as organic. This was noted in his obituary:
‘where he is the happiest man he will be least remembered, so closely did he copy nature his works will be mistaken’.
7. He was extremely successful
By the 1760s, Brown was earning the modern equivalent of £800,000 a year, receiving over £60,000 per commission. In 1764 he was appointed as George III’s Master Gardener at the palaces of Hampton Court, Richmond and St James, and resided in the magnificent Wilderness House.
His work was renowned across Europe, including in the state rooms of Russia. Catherine the Great wrote to Voltaire in 1772:
‘I am presently madly in love with English gardens, with curved lines, gentle slopes, lakes formed from swamps, and archipelagos of solid earth’.
8. His work can be found across Britain
Over his lifetime, Brown was associated with around 260 landscapes, including those at Belvoir Castle, Blenheim Palace and Warwick Castle. All those who could afford his services wanted them, and his work transformed the landscapes of estates and country houses across Europe.
9. He was not universally loved
However, Brown’s work was not universally admired. The most vocal contemporary critic, Sir Uvedale Price, condemned his landscapes as results of a mechanical formula, reproduced thoughtlessly with little consideration for individual character. The clumps of trees were ‘as like each other as so many puddings turned out of one common mould’.
By favouring wide, flowing lines, Price argued the ‘improvers’ ignored the true picturesque qualities of roughness, sudden variation and irregularity, naming Brown’s work as dull, formulaic, unnatural and monotonous.
10. His ideals live on to this day
Soon after his death, Brown’s reputation declined rapidly. Victorian appetites favoured the sublime, which delighted in extreme emotions and the thrilling but terrifying power of nature. As Turner popularised ferocious sea storms, rocky crags and rushing torrents, Brown’s picturesque pastoral idylls failed to cut the mustard.
In modern times, Brown’s reputation has revived. A series of restorations to mark his tercentenary have revealed impressive feats of engineering and sustainable water-management which have adapted impressively to modern demands.
With the popularity of recent ‘Capability’ Brown festivals and conservation initiatives, it seems that Brown will retain his position as a ‘genius’ of landscape architecture.
My tomatoes have gotten so over crowded in their starter trays that I divided them into bigger pots.
It’s still a bit early to put them out. The forecast for the next 10 days is great, but we’re not out of the danger zone yet for last frost date and I really don’t relish the thought of covering up ~40 individual tomato plants.
Good Morning!
:-)
Hello my friends!
Still un the middle of packing and preparing for my move to Texas.
I have worked my last shift at present employer and have a Monday morning meeting to turn in gear, equipment, and my duty weapon, the off to HR to sign papers making my leaving employment official and begin my “retirement.”
At the end of next week I drive to Texas with my daughter who will be living in Austin.
I will be renting from a friend for a month before moving to another rental when my wife and son arrive.
Our house is almost ready to go in the market.
My well was finally drilled and we have 20+ GPM at 480 ft. When I get down there I will be meeting with my contractor and the well driller to finalize where the storage tank and pump house will be.
I start my new career on thr 23rd.
Things are happening!
This artist's concept shows what the night sky might look like from a hypothetical planet around a star tossed out of an ongoing four-way collision between big galaxies (yellow blobs). NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope spotted this "quadruple merger" of galaxies within a larger cluster of galaxies located nearly 5 billion light-years away.
Though the galaxies appear intact, gravitational disturbances have caused them to stretch and twist, flinging billions of stars into space -- nearly three times as many stars as are in our Milky Way galaxy. The tossed stars are visible in the large plume emanating from the central, largest galaxy. If any of these stars have planets, their night skies would be filled with the monstrous merger, along with other galaxies in the cluster (smaller, bluish blobs).
This cosmic smash-up is the largest known merger between galaxies of a similar size. While three of the galaxies are about the size of our Milky Way galaxy, the fourth (center of image) is three times as big. All four of the galaxies, as well as most other galaxies in the huge cluster, are blob-shaped ellipticals instead of spirals like the Milky Way.
Ultimately, in about one hundred million years or so, the four galaxies will unite into one. About half of the stars kicked out during the merger will fall back and join the new galaxy, making it one of the biggest galaxies in the universe.
You saw it here! One of the largest galaxies IN THE WHOLE UNIVERSE, in the making. :-)
I suck at planting aesthetically. Haven’t done much of it here but tried back in FL. OCD. I tend to end up with rows of things and am unable to do free-form organic design.
Rows works for veggies though. Just brought everything outside and anything that’s big enough is going in the ground this afternoon when the sun is low.
It was another wet and cool week here in Central Missouri. Finally saw a bit of sunshine yesterday. Garden is ankle-deep mud.
Yukon Gold spuds are up. Beets/salad/kale/radishes are up and looking decent. All the baby plants in the greenhouse are badly needing to get out of their pots/flats and go in the dirt but it’s just too stinking muddy to do it.
Hopefully my Nephew will be able to keep that stuff from croaking while Mrs. Augie and I are out in sunny kansas visiting the grands next week.
I was checking out the garden today.
The onion sets are coming up and doing better than the onions I started from seed, but that’s probably cause some critter dug up my seed started ones and I had to replant them. That set them back some.
My garlic is a foot high already. Still on the lookout for my asparagus. I found evidence not mouse burrows in my asparagus bed so am hoping they didn’t eat the roots and destroy the plants. This is the third year for that bed and I was expecting a harvest from it.
Joe Bastardi is expecting a “torrid” summer. It’s going to be very warm here, but I am still cautious about setting out cold sensitive plants.
Apple tree bloomed yesterday! Time to plant bush beans. Old time garden wisdom from my grandfather. Go by nature not by your calendar!
-SB
A question about black walnuts.
I have a bunch and I think I did not let the nuts cure for a few weeks before shelling them. I shelled them right away.
The meats are chewy/rubbery and bitter but they look fine.
I can’t eat them but mr. mm isn’t sure if they are OK, so I was wondering if there was some way of curing them after cracking.
With their bitter taste, how can you tell if they are good or not?
They have a somewhat sweet, apply smell to them at the moment.
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