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English Landscape Gardens in the 1700s: The History of English Garden Design from Classical to Natural Style - Page 2

© Kirk Johnson

Lancelot Brown and Humphrey Repton

The most important of the early English landscape gardens was at Stowe, where William Kent’s ideas about garden design were implemented. In 1741, Lancelot Brown (1716-83) was hired as head gardener, in charge of executing Kent's designs. In 1751, Brown left Stowe and became the dominant garden designer in England, and remained so for the rest of his life. Brown’s gardens lacked Kent’s close connection with the Classical world; instead, most of them were idealized visions of the English countryside.

Brown’s landscapes were composed of trees and lawn, with a body of water as a focal point. Cedars of Lebanon were the only non-native trees commonly planted and there was little space for flowering shrubs or herbaceous flowers. This was frustrating for plant lovers, as this was a period when many flowering plants were being introduced from America and Asia.

Brown’s successor, Humphrey Repton, responded to the desires of plant lovers by allowing flower gardens next to the house. He felt gardens could contain a variety of features while remaining unified by the overall composition. Repton's ideas were most fully realized at Woburn Abbey where he added a private garden for the family, a flower garden and an “American garden” to an existing landscape garden.

Classical English Gardens vs. Picturesque Gardens

In 1795, Repton published a book entitled Scetches and Hints on Landscape Gardening, provoking an attack from Sir Uvedale Price (1747-1829) in his essay The Landscape and Richard Payne Knight (1750-1824) in his Essay on the Picturesque. Price and Knight were friends who hated the uniform compositions that Brown's style imposed on the English landscape, favoring a more picturesque approach.

The controversy between those who favored the classical English landscape gardens and those who preferred picturesque gardens lasted into the early the 19th century. By the time that the controversy ended, the landscape garden had evolved - the Victorian English garden with its rose gardens, rock gardens, herb gardens and shrubberies had been born.

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