Lancelot "Capability" Brown was born in a small village in Kirkharle, Northumberland in 1715. Young Lancelot was educated at Cambo School by Thomas Gastle, with a good general education. Lancelot had only remained in school till the age of 16, but he proved to work on equal terms with men who had received the highest education possible. He first served as a gardener's boy in the service of Sir William Loraine. From there he moved on to Wotton, owned by Sir Richard Grenville in Oxfordshire.
From Wotton he joined the gardening staff of Lord Cobham, at Stowe, Buckinghamshire. At the age of twenty-four Brown found himself working in England’s greatest and most famous garden. There he served under William Kent, one of the founders of the new English style of Landscape Gardening, for seven years. From Kent he learned the crafts and calculations of architecture and landscape drainage engineering. The men became close, and Brown married Kent's daughter.
At Stowe, Brown was responsible for actually implementing Kent's designs, but it seems clear that Lord Cobham also allowed Brown to take on work for his aristocratic friends while he was still employed at Stowe.
Lord Cobham died in 1749, and Brown left Stowe to set up his own gardening practice based in London two years later. In 1751, Brown set himself up as a independent landscape gardener, and just a few years after that, having a garden designed by Capability Brown was to be at the forefront of fashion. To say that Brown was successful in his profession is an understatement of the highest order.
He became immensely sought after by the aristocracy, and it is estimated that he was responsible for some 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. So numerous are his designs, and so widespread was his influence, that it is almost harder to find a prominent country house that did not have a garden designed by Capability Brown.
Lancelot Brown soon acquired the peculiar nickname "Capability" from his habit of telling clients that their gardens had "great capabilities". In his talented hands, they certainly did. He always seemed bring out something that his clients could never have imagined. His capabilities were best described in an anonymous work, “The Rise and Progress of the Present Taste in Planting Park, etc”:
‘He barren tracts with every charm illumes,
At his command a new creation blooms;
Born to grace Nature and her works complete,
With all that’s beautiful, sublime and great!
For him each Muse enwreaths the Laurel Crown,
And consecrates to fame immortal Brown.’


Brown has been criticized, with some justification, for destroying the works of previous generations of gardeners to create his landscapes. Some bitterly condemned his sweeping away of many beautiful old formal gardens, ancient woods, and fine old avenues. William Cowper wrote in, “The Garden”, of Brown’s ways:
‘Improvement too, the idol of the age,
Is fed with many a victim. Lo, he comes!
The omnipotent magician Brown appears!
Down falls the venerable pile, the abode
Of our forefathers…
He speaks, the lake in front becomes a lawn;
Woods vanish, hills subside and valleys rise,
And streams, as if created for his use
Persue the track of his directing wand.’


He worked with a grand vision, and preferred to sweep away the past and create a fresh garden to his own standards, all in order that nature might ‘retain her rights’.
What were those standards? The English landscape garden under Capability Brown was a place of wide green rolling lawns with winding bands and clumps of trees, planted with the utmost care to give the impression of a romantic natural scene.
The trees opened up to give carefully planned glimpses of interest points, often classical temples, bridges, or monuments. He hated the idea of using walls, fences and barriers. Everything was carefully assembled to give a sense of informality, of natural beauty, though of course nothing in the garden was "natural" at all.
A Brown landscape is known as a pure landscape. Lancelot, a man of determination, used his power of persuasion to convince his clients to destroy their expensive and extensive formal gardens and replace them with a landscape that they would never see mature. After all of Lancelot's expensive, land-moving changes were done the finished product was a landscape that was productive and cheap to run.
Some of the major themes that he used were belts and clumps of trees to break up the landscape or soften or emphasize the vast open spaces leading right up to the houses. Capability’s greatest power was probably his management of water. He created many 'natural' lakes, which were often then connected by bridges or cascades, as seen here.

{Picture of Bridge over 'Capability' Brown's lake at Blenheim.}

In later life Brown was appointed head gardener at Hampton Court Palace in 1761, though he continued his private practice with greatest success. He also advised on numerous gardens for the royal family.
Capability Brown died Feb. 6, 1783, in London, leaving behind himself a legacy unparalleled in the history of English gardening. His extraordinarily extensive and particularly long lasting qualities of the landscapes he designed have long lived on.

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