Capability Brown

Yesterday I ran across Lancelot "Capability" Brown in Sir Roy Strong's "Story of Britain." (You may recall from an earlier post that Sir Roy's one volume history only rarely stops to take heed of a non-royal person; since the ones in that post he has added Sir Isaac Newton, Oliver Cromwell and now Mr. Brown.) Brown was England's greatest landscape designer; he was the primary reason English country estates switched from the formal, Versailles-style French garden to the more naturalistic "serpentine lakes" and "clumps of trees with sweeping vistas" look. His gardens at Blenheim and Kew still survive.

Now when somebody mentions landscape architects at a cocktail party I will know of one besides Fredrick Law Olmstead, designer of Central Park and the grounds at the Biltmore Estate.