Lancelot "Capability" Brown's 300th anniversary

2016 is the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot “capability” Brown, the influential and highly successful 18th century landscape architect.

He designed and oversaw the development of many English country house estates and parklands, using features such as lakes, gently rolling hills, and plantations, to create a naturalistic setting for the house and an ordered wider estate that seemed to “perfect nature”. He often included garden architecture such as manmade bluffs, follies, grottos, or a Ha-Ha to subtly suggest relationship between house, garden and estate. His “grand design” has been much copied and developed ever since so that it has become almost quintessentially English and is the archetype for large English country estates such as Chatsworth House

There are many celebrations happening around the country throughout the year and quite a few of his gardens are open to the public through The National Trust for example.

You can see other ways to celebrate the great man at capabilitybrown.org