The Georgian era is often seen as the pinnacle of garden design in England, as the formal, baroque style of the late 17th century gave way to the looser, more naturalistic designs of what became known as the English Landscape Movement. It was a style that spread around the world.
This Gardens Trust online series will trace the development of the landscape style, beginning with early examples full of decorative garden buildings and classical allusions, and then the impact of England’s most famous landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who laid out vast parklands with rolling lawns, serpentine lakes and clumps of trees. As we’ll see, the century ended with a clash between the wild, rugged aesthetic of the Picturesque and the start of a return to formality and ornamentation in garden-making.
As well as examining individual gardens and designers, we will explore some of the myriad social and economic influences at work on Georgian design. These included political upheaval, changing land use, foreign trade and the lure of exoticism, alongside the impact of the European ‘Grand Tour’ undertaken by wealthy men, which instilled an admiration for classical art and poetry, and for French and Italian landscape painting.
The third lecture takes place November 19 with Dr. Laura Mayer. The architect and designer Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, born in 1716, is credited with formulating the iconic English landscape garden. Even today, his rolling lawns, scattered with tree clumps and ornamented with glittering lakes, continue to define our perception of rural Britain. As a result, his hundreds of landscapes have eclipsed the study of eighteenth-century garden history almost entirely.
Both a visionary and a practical plantsman, the scale of Brown’s work is truly extraordinary. However, no designer works within a cultural vacuum, leading us to question just how many of his landscape schemes can be attributed solely to him. And when we look at the man behind the name, what, in fact, was Brown’s greatest ‘capability’? This lecture considers that it was not just his aesthetic insight – nor even his practical gardening talents – that set Brown apart from his peers, but arguably something entirely more mercenary.
Dr Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher, with an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century patronage. Originally an art historian with a side of Spanish, she accidentally fell into garden history whilst working at the Alhambra in Granada. Laura has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot Brown and Humphry Repton – as well as on the historic gardens of Cambridgeshire. She lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and works as a conservation consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura lives in Bristol, in a lilac-and-blue Georgian house with a tiny garden overlooking Repton’s Ashton Court estate.
Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/a-history-of-gardens-3-tickets-1011314337407
Image: The Brownian landscape at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, photo © Jill Sinclair
