What was Capability Brown’s style? How to recognise a landscape park

Lancelot Brown was born in Northumberland in 1716, trained as a gardener, and was head gardener at Stowe in Buckinghamshire in the 1740s, where he worked under William Kent. From 1751 he worked on his own account, and in the next thirty years he made or remade the grounds of some two hundred country houses, among them Croome, Petworth, Bowood, Blenheim, Burghley, Chatsworth and Harewood. The nickname came from his habit of telling owners that their land had “capabilities”. He wrote no book, so his style must be read from the parks themselves and from Thomas Whately’s Observations on Modern Gardening (1770), which describes their parts.

What to look for

Grass to the walls of the house. There is no formal garden, no terrace and no parterre in front of the main rooms. The lawn runs right up to the house, and from the windows it seems to run on without a break into the park, where sheep, cattle or deer graze.

The ha-ha. What keeps the animals off the lawn is a ha-ha, a ditch with a vertical wall on the house side and a turf slope on the other. It cannot be seen from the house. Walk out across the lawn and you will come to its edge. Brown did not invent it, but he used it everywhere.

℟The ha-ha: a boundary that cannot be seen

In place of a wall, bound the garden with a ditch whose side towards the garden is a vertical retaining wall and whose other side slopes up to the field, so that cattle are kept out and the view from the house runs on uninterrupted into the park.

ditch c. 1.5–2 m deep: wall on the garden side, turf slope on the park side

The lake. Below the house, in the valley, lies a long lake of irregular outline, made by damming a stream. Its ends are hidden round a bend, behind trees or under a bridge, so that it reads as a broad river flowing through the park; the dam is usually disguised as a cascade or planted over. A Brown lake is placed to be seen from the principal rooms, below the level of the eye.

℟A lake that seems a river

Make the lake by damming a stream in its valley, give it a winding, irregular outline with promontories, and hide both its ends behind trees, a bend or a bridge, so that it seems a river flowing through the park.

Clumps and single trees. Trees stand in clumps of a few to a few dozen, usually on the brows of rising ground, and singly on the open grass. A Brown clump has an irregular outline; the fenced, round clump of identical trees is more often the work of an imitator. The trees are mostly native or long naturalised: oak and beech above all, with sweet chestnut, lime, elm (now mostly lost to disease) and Scots pine. The great spreading cedars of Lebanon near so many houses are often Brown’s planting, and a cedar or beech of 250 years old is the best evidence on the ground that a park is his.

The belt. The park is enclosed by a belt of woodland that hides its boundary and the farmland beyond, so that it seems to go on for ever. Inside the belt a drive or ride circles the park and shows it in a sequence of views.

℟Lawn to the door, clumps on the rises, a belt round the edge

Bring grass up to the walls of the house and keep the cattle off it with a ha-ha; plant trees in clumps on the rising ground and as single specimens on the lawn; and enclose the park with a belt of woodland, with a drive inside it from which the park is seen.

Few buildings. Kent’s gardens were full of temples and inscriptions. Brown used few: a bridge, a lodge, perhaps one temple or a rotunda on a rise, often designed by an architect. The kitchen garden and the flower garden were walled and placed out of sight.

What it is confused with

Natural countryside. That is the point: a Brown park is meant to look like the best of the English countryside, and many visitors take it for nature. The signs of design are the hidden ha-ha, the lake that is too smooth and too well placed, and the clumps on every brow.

Kent’s gardens and the circuit gardens of the 1730s and 40s. Stowe’s Elysian Fields, Rousham and Stourhead are earlier or different in kind: they are walked as a sequence of pictures, close and enclosed, each with its temple, statue or inscription. Brown’s park is wider and emptier, seen from a carriage or from the house, and it carries no message.

Repton. Humphry Repton, Brown’s successor from 1788, kept the park of grass, trees and water but put back a terrace, a balustrade and flower gardens round the house, and disliked the belt. A park with a terrace or a flower garden at the foot of the house is usually Repton’s or later, even where the park beyond is Brown’s.

℟A terrace and flower garden at the foot of the house

Do not bring the park up to the walls of a house: give the house a terrace, steps and a flower garden in formal lines between it and the park, because the house is a work of art and must be joined to the landscape by art.

The Picturesque. The parks of the 1790s influenced by Price and Knight are rougher: old trees left to grow and decay, undergrowth, rocky streams, ruins and rustic buildings, intricate views. Brown’s parks are smooth by comparison, and that smoothness was what the critics attacked.

The Victorian park. Public parks such as Birkenhead (1843–47) use Brown’s elements, lake, lawn and clumps, but add a drive round the edge, winding paths, specimen trees from abroad (monkey puzzles, Wellingtonias, cedars of other kinds), bedding and glasshouses. A Wellingtonia, introduced in 1853, cannot be Brown’s.

The rules he followed

Brown’s rules were never written by him. Whately’s book describes them, Walpole’s History of the Modern Taste in Gardening (1780) praises and dates them, and Repton’s Sketches and Hints (1795) restates them in four requisites: show the place’s natural beauties and hide its defects, disguise the boundary, conceal the art, and hide whatever serves only convenience. Hannah More recorded in 1782 how Brown described his method himself: like a writer, he said, he made a comma in one place and a colon in another, a parenthesis to break a view, and then a full stop before beginning another subject.

℟The four requisites of landscape gardening

Show the natural beauties of a place and hide its defects; give it an appearance of extent and freedom by disguising the boundary; conceal every interference of art, so that the whole seems natural; and remove or hide whatever serves only convenience and cannot be made ornamental.