The Time Machine: Gardens, Part 3-Capability Brown

Ordinarily, I don’t like to do too many similar posts in a row, and I know I’m posting a biography directly following a double biography, but I have to strike while the iron is hot. I’ve just arrived home from a trip to the UK, where I visited one of his gardens, so it’s relevant. Plus, what better time to talk about gardens than the spring?

Lancelot Brown was born on August 30, 1716, in Kirkharle, Northumberland. His mother, Ursula, worked in service for Sir William Loraine at Kirkharle Hall, where his father, William Brown, was the land agent. After school, Lancelot got a job at Kirkharle, working for the head gardener’s assistant in the kitchen garden. When he was 23, he began moving around the country, working in various gardens until he got his first commission, a new lake in the park at Kiddington Park, Oxfordshire.

In 1741, he went to Stowe Gardens, where he worked under William Kent, probably Britain’s next most famous gardener. He stayed here for nearly ten years, during which time, his employer, Lord Cobham allowed him to take freelance commissions from other landowners, which helped him grown his reputation as a landscape gardener. He was a skilled horseman, and that allowed him to not only travel quickly, but assess the properties quickly. Indeed, he earned his nickname, ‘Capability,’ from his habit of telling people that their land had capability, or potential, for improvement.

In the 1760s he was already known to the Crown, having been appointed by King George III as Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace, and he was earning enough from commissions to buy an estate off the Earl of Northampton, where he was appointed High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire. Not bad.

On February 6, 1783, he suddenly collapsed on the doorstep of his daughter’s house after a night out, and subsequently passed away. He was buried in the churchyard outside his estate, and left what would be valued at £6m to his family.

Famous gardens

Several of Brown’s gardens survive to this day. You may have heard of some of them

Cardiff

Nearest and dearest to my heart, is the central courtyard of Cardiff Castle. We’re going to cover in a second why I didn’t appreciate it at the time for what it was.

For those of you who don’t know, I am an American, but I went to university in Cardiff. I got my undergrad in Archaeology there, so I was there for three years, and obviously, as a medievalist, I spent a lot of time at the castle. A lot of the recogniseable details of Cardiff Castle are attributed to the Marquis of Butte, who’s aesthetic is on full display in the Tý, or House, the residential part of the Castle, where the Marquis and his family actually lived. However, the most seen and used area, the courtyard and Norman Keep on its lil motte (or small hill inside the castle), are the work of Capability Brown.

Now, as the name implies, the Norman Keep does date back to the Norman Conquest. Brown didn’t build that. But the motte originally had a moat, which he filled in, and he added a spiral path up the motte, which was replaced later by a staircase at the front. You can still see indentations of the spiral path, though. He also removed all of the other small buildings and a full height wall, complete with its own buildings, which had spanned the distance from the gate entrance to the Keep. The foundations of that wall are still there, but it is said that the stones from that wall built many homes in Cardiff after that. The result was a flat, smooth lawn, with the Norman Keep standing proud in the centre.

Style

When I was doing research for this post, I came across the extant garden at Cardiff Castle, and I was very confused. Garden? What garden? I’ve been all over that castle, where is the garden? There are gardens and parks all over Cardiff, but no, they’re talking about the one inside the Castle.

Right there.

That one.

You’re looking at it.

The confusion came from not yet fully understanding the aesthetic of 18th century gardens and Capability Brown’s influence, specifically. I knew he was a big deal, I knew the name, but gardening, to me, was very much hedge mazes and rose bushes, that is the exact opposite of what we’re looking at here.

To understand, we have to look back, back further than the 1760s. That sort of formal, geometrical style of gardening was the norm for most of British history, and it came back after Brown. It takes a lot of upkeep, which requires a gardening staff, which is a form of conspicuous consumption; it often features exotic plants, which shows off wealth; and it takes up massive parcels of land that could be used for crops but instead is used for leisure and beauty. Also pretty plants with pretty smells. You get it.

Enter, the Enlightenment. What is the nature of Man? What is the nature of nature? Is man higher than God?

Also, tension was cooking in Europe, so travel to Europe was awkward. Brown died before the French Revolution and the following Napoleonic Wars, but he would have known about the American Revolution. Change was in the air.

At this time, we had the birth of the staycation, or their version, which was taking sketching holidays to the Lake District. Basically, they were stuck inside the house and were forced to appreciate what they had. Britain learned to fall in love with their own natural beauty. It was a very pariotic time.

Capability Brown was a pioneer in this area. When he said a property had capability, he meant it had natural beauty he could enhance. He loved a flat lawn, or a gently rolling hill, maybe an accent bush, like a beauty mark on the upper lip of a fine lady. Not for him was the hedgerow or orchid house. The idea was a vista, wide open space- a pastoral countryside captured, tamed, and nurtured within the property of a landowner. The simple, unadorned, natural beauty of Britain. Nothing fussy or frilly. Look at the gardens at Versailles- you wouldn’t want anything fake and French like that, would you? Ew.

And people ate it up. It was the minimalism craze in the 1760s. Rich people love conspicuous underconsumption, as well. It’s still a lot of perfectly good land that just…had nothing on it lol, and a massive staff required to keep that lawn looking meticulously unmanicured. It requires the same amount of upkeep, it’s every bit as curated and deliberate as a more traditional looking garden.

But god, they make for some really nice paintings. The picnics you could have on that lawn, can you imagine?

So that wide, smooth, flat lawn with a tidy Keep on a moat-less motte at Cardiff Castle? That IS the garden.