British Gardens: Stowe & Herstmonceux

Follies at Stowe (first) and Herstmonceux Castle (from min 3:22)

The author: Lancelot Brown (1716 -- 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown
His work: Over 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain, such as Stowe, Croome Court , Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Bowood House, Milton Abbey (and nearby Milton Abbas village), partially Kew Gardens.
His style: naturalistic compositions of smooth undulating grass running straight to the house, clumps, belts and scattering of trees with serpentine lakes, small rivers... His 'landscaped/grammatical garden' swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles.
His critique: Russell Page accused him of 'encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes'. Conversely, Sir William Chambers and others complained that Brown's grounds "differ very little from common fields, so closely is nature copied in most of them".
After him: A reaction against the smooth blandness of Brown's landscapes was inevitable. During the nineteenth century he was widely criticised, but during the twentieth century his popularity returned. Dorothy Stroud wrote the first full monograph on Capability Brown, fleshing out the generic attributions with documentation from country house estate offices.

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Travel & Events

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• Stowe
• Stowe garden
• Palladian bridge
• Herstmonceux
• Herstmonceux Castle
• British gardens
• landscape gardens
• Capability Brown
• Follies
• asoaita
• Adriana Soaita
• travel log
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Opeth - Morningrise :D!