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61-496: The Castle Green was landscaped in the late eighteenth century by Capability Brown , but the park itself was laid out from 1873 on by Andrew Pettigrew , head gardener to the 3rd Marquess. In 1947, the 5th Marquess of Bute presented the park to Cardiff County Borough Council . Its successor Cardiff Council still owns and manages it. The park is situated along the east bank of the River Taff and adjoining Cardiff Castle , and offers

122-564: A combination of arboretum, flower gardens and recreation grounds. Most of the park is laid to grassland but there is an abundance of woodland and tree-lined avenues. Sophia Gardens and Pontcanna Fields are on the opposite side of the river, reached by two footbridges. Sophia Gardens is home to the Glamorgan County Cricket Ground , where test matches are played, and to the Sport Wales National Centre . Within

183-472: A comma, and there' pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject. ' " Brown's patrons saw the idealised landscapes he was creating for them in terms of the Italian landscape painters they admired and collected, as Kenneth Woodbridge first observed in

244-473: A few ideas of Kent and Mr. Southcote . By the 1760s he was earning on average £6,000 (equivalent to £1,036,000 in 2023) a year, usually £500 (equivalent to £86,300 in 2023) for one commission. As an accomplished rider he was able to work fast, taking only an hour or so on horseback to survey an estate and rough out an entire design. In 1764, Brown was appointed George III 's Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace , succeeding John Greening and residing at

305-432: A great boost in the 19th century, as many hybrids from Asian species were developed, above all from rosa chinensis (the "China rose"), which is still the dominant parent in most modern garden roses . Large rose gardens became highly popular as features of public parks at the end of the century, and remained popular additions in the 20th. Many rose breeders also show off their plants in gardens at their nurseries. After

366-427: A hands-on gardener and provided his clients with a full turnkey service, designing the gardens and park, and then managing their landscaping and planting. He is most famous for the landscaped parks of English country houses , many of which have survived reasonably intact. However, he also included in his plans "pleasure gardens" with flower gardens and the new shrubberies , usually placed where they would not obstruct

427-492: A landscape gardener. As a proponent of the new English style Brown became immensely sought after by the landed families . By 1751, when Brown was beginning to be widely known, Horace Walpole wrote somewhat slightingly of Brown's work at Warwick Castle : The castle is enchanting; the view pleased me more than I can express, the River Avon tumbles down a cascade at the foot of it. It is well laid out by one Brown who has set up on

488-538: A large extent planted with shrubs, as well as small trees. Technically the rose garden is a specialized type of shrub garden, but it is normally treated as a type of flower garden , if only because its origins in Europe go back to at least the Middle Ages in Europe, when roses were effectively the largest and most popular flowers, already existing in numerous garden cultivars . Roses were never out of fashion, but received

549-814: A new style within the English landscape, a 'gardenless' form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles. His landscapes were at the forefront of fashion. They were fundamentally different from what they replaced, the well-known formal gardens of England which were criticised by Alexander Pope and others from the 1710s. Starting in 1719, William Kent replaced these with more naturalistic compositions, which reached their greatest refinement in Brown's landscapes. At Hampton Court Brown encountered Hannah More in 1782 and she described his "grammatical" manner in her literary terms: " 'Now there ' said he, pointing his finger, 'I make

610-424: A rain. A walk in the shrubbery offered a chance for a private conversation, and a winding walk among shrubs surrounding even quite a small lawn was a feature of the garden behind a well-furnished Regency suburban villa . "Mr Rushworth," said Lady Bertram, "if I were you, I would have a very pretty shrubbery. One likes to get out into a shrubbery in fine weather." — Jane Austen , Mansfield Park (1814). In

671-516: A son in 1754 who died shortly afterwards, Anne who was born and died in 1756, Margaret (known as Peggy) in 1758 and Thomas in 1761. In 1768 he purchased the manor of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire in East Anglia for £13,000 (equivalent to £2,180,000 in 2023) from Lord Northampton. This came with two manor houses, two villages and 2,668 acres of land. The property stayed in the family until it

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732-473: A sudden jolt; the wood ends with a hard line, sometimes with a path along it, accentuating the defect." In the expansive space of even a small Edwardian garden, Miss Jekyll recommended a space "from twenty-five to forty feet" planted so as to bring wood and garden into harmony, "so planted as to belong equally to garden and wood." Rhododendrons were the stand-by in these shrub belts, combined with ferns, wood-rush, lilies, white foxgloves and white columbines. In

793-450: A team of Park Rangers and gardeners based on site, who are supported by volunteers. Capability Brown Lancelot " Capability " Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783) was an English gardener and landscape architect , a notable figure in the history of the English landscape garden style. Unlike other architects including William Kent , he was

854-434: A tree here or a concealed head of water there. His art attended to the formal potential of ground, water, trees and so gave to English landscape its ideal forms. The difficulty was that less capable imitators and less sophisticated spectators did not see nature perfected... they saw simply what they took to be nature." This deftness of touch was recognised in his own day; one anonymous obituary writer opined: "Such, however,

915-479: Is a part of a garden where shrubs , mostly flowering species, are thickly planted. The original shrubberies were mostly sections of large gardens, with one or more paths winding through it, a less-remembered aspect of the English landscape garden with very few original 18th-century examples surviving. As the fashion spread to smaller gardens, linear shrub borders covered up walls and fences, and were typically underplanted with smaller herbaceous flowering plants. By

976-505: Is clearly seen on the Bute Estate Maps of 1824. In 1833, the line of the mill stream was incorporated as a water source for the development of Cardiff Docks by the 2nd Marquess of Bute and was reformed as the dock feeder when the docks were constructed between 1836 and 1841. The dock feeder is still the main water supply to the docks. Between 1981 and 2019, the park hosted an annual Guy Fawkes Night firework display, named Sparks in

1037-490: Is dead!". Brown was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul, the parish church of Brown's small estate at Fenstanton Manor. He left an estate of approximately £40,000 (equivalent to £6,080,000 in 2023), which included property in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire. His eldest daughter Bridget married the architect Henry Holland . Brown sent two of his sons to Eton . One of them, Lancelot Brown

1098-413: Is overshadowed by his great reputation as a designer of landscapes. Repton was bound to add: "he was inferior to none in what related to the comfort, convenience, taste and propriety of design, in the several mansions and other buildings which he planned". Brown's first country house project was the remodelling of Croome Court , Worcestershire , (1751–52) for the 6th Earl of Coventry , in which instance he

1159-424: The English manner , or the gardenesque style of the early part of the century. A shrubbery was a collection of hardy shrubs, quite distinct from a flower garden, which was also a cutting garden to supply flowers in the house. The shrubbery was arranged as a walk, ideally a winding one, that made a circuit that brought the walker back to the terrace of the house. Its paths were gravel, so that they dried quickly after

1220-469: The line of beauty promoted by William Hogarth 's book The Analysis of Beauty of 1753. In plans some of these proceed in a single overall direction, with several more or less curves to left and right, and often no exit shown at the end. With large shrubs these would first bring plants into view when fairly close, supplying a succession of surprises. There was great emphasis on "graduation" in planting, with shorter plants, including herbaceous flowers, at

1281-724: The 1980s John Nash 's never-executed plans for the garden setting of the Brighton Pavilion , illustrated in Nash's volume Views of the Royal Pavilion (1826), were finally carried out in connection with the extensive restorations of the Pavilion itself. Its "fairly open landscape of soft lawns dotted with trees and set with lightly-wooded, sinuous shrubberies" are best illustrated in Augustus Charles Pugin 's watercolor view c. 1822 of

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1342-422: The English poet and satirical author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'." This was a typical statement reflecting the controversy about Brown's work, which has continued over the last 200 years. By contrast, a recent historian and author, Richard Bisgrove, described Brown's process as perfecting nature by "judicious manipulation of its components, adding

1403-607: The Park in its later years. The event was organised by Cardiff's local branch of Round Table and profits were distributed to charity. The event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, and in 2022 it was cancelled indefinitely due to increasing costs and organisational issues. The Cooper's Field part of the park has hosted concerts by artists including Florence and the Machine , You Me at Six and Emeli Sandé . Bute Park and

1464-659: The Wilderness House. In 1767 he bought an estate for himself at Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire from Spencer Compton, 8th Earl of Northampton and was appointed High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire for 1770, although his son Lance carried out most of the duties. It is estimated that Brown was responsible for more than 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. His work endures at Belvoir Castle , Croome Court (where he also designed

1525-497: The fanatical gardener William Shenstone : "Nature has been so remarkably kind this last Autumn to adorn my Shrubbery with the flowers that usually blow at Whitsuntide ". The shrubbery developed to display exciting new imported flowering species, initially mostly from the East Coast of British America , and quickly replaced the older formal " wilderness ", with compartments of smaller trees surrounded by hedges, and little colour. It

1586-464: The field of architecture was a natural outgrowth of his unified picture of the English country house in its setting: "In Brown's hands the house, which before had dominated the estate, became an integral part of a carefully composed landscape intended to be seen through the eye of a painter, and its design could not be divorced from that of the garden" Humphry Repton observed that Brown "fancied himself an architect", but Brown's work as an architect

1647-407: The foreground seem to throw bluish green-leaved shrubs deeper into a perceived distance. The desirable undulations of paths and islands and bands of shrub plantings would ideally undulate in elevation too: "break up the level by throwing up elevations,' Philips suggested, "so as to answer the double purpose of obscuring private walks and screening other parts from the wind." Nash was at work also on

1708-554: The founders of the new English style of landscape garden . In 1742, at the age of 26, he was officially appointed Head Gardener, earning £25 (equivalent to £4,900 in 2023) a year and residing in the western Boycott Pavilion. Brown remained at Stowe until 1750. He made the Grecian Valley at Stowe under William Kent's supervision. It is an abstract composition of landform and woodland. Lord Cobham let Brown take freelance work from his aristocratic friends, thus making him well known as

1769-473: The front near the path or lawn, with middle-sized ones behind, and the largest, and any trees, at the back. This principle, to some extent self-evident, has governed much planting ever since, for example that of Gertrude Jekyll , but was rather novel in European gardening at this point, where the different sizes of plants were usually planted in different areas. A shrubbery was a feature of 19th-century gardens in

1830-405: The garden historian Mark Laird, "by the early 1750s, we may reasonably claim that the shrubbery had been invented". The exact appearance of the earliest examples needs careful reconstruction from such plans, letters, poems and visual images as have survived. A high proportion seem to have been viewed from "serpentine" paths, already a very fashionable layout for gardens, using an expanded version of

1891-588: The grounds of Cardiff Castle are designated Grade I on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales . From 2007 Cardiff Council undertook a £5.6 million restoration project, which was part-funded by a £3.1 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund . The project provided new facilities and restored historic features in the park, including: The park is maintained by

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1952-527: The harmony and calmness of Brown's landscapes was inevitable; the landscapes lacked the sublime thrill which members of the Romantic generation (such as Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price ) looked for in their ideal landscape, where the painterly inspiration would come from Salvator Rosa rather than Claude Lorrain . During the 19th century he was widely criticised, but during the twentieth century his reputation rose again. Tom Turner has suggested that

2013-423: The house), Blenheim Palace , Warwick Castle , Harewood House , Chatsworth , Highclere Castle , Appuldurcombe House , Milton Abbey (and nearby Milton Abbas village) and in traces at Kew Gardens and many other locations. His style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scatterings of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers were

2074-556: The idea that our sublime poet formed of Eden. It originated in England and is as peculiar to the British nation as landscape planting. The formulas for arranging a shrubbery were founded on contemporary painterly requirements for the Picturesque ; judicious contrast and variety were essential, but Philips seems to have been among the first garden writers to notice that yellowish-green leaves in

2135-616: The issues facing the survival of these landscapes as well as suggested solutions. A commemorative fountain in Westminster Abbey ’s cloister garth was dedicated for Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown after Evensong on Tuesday 29 May 2018 by the Dean of Westminster , Dr John Hall . The fountain sits over an old monastic well in the garth. It was designed by Ptolemy Dean , the Abbey's Surveyor of the Fabric , and

2196-691: The landscape at Stourhead , a "Brownian" landscape (with an un-Brownian circuit walk) in which Brown himself was not involved. Perhaps Brown's sternest critic was his contemporary Uvedale Price , who likened Brown's clumps of trees to "so many puddings turned out of one common mould." Russell Page , who began his career in the Brownian landscape of Longleat but whose own designs have formal structure, accused Brown of "encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes." Richard Owen Cambridge ,

2257-479: The late 20th century, shrubs, trees and smaller plants tend to be mixed together in the most visible parts of the garden, hopefully blending successfully. At the same time, shrubs, especially very large ones, have become part of the woodland garden , mixed in with trees, both native species and imported ornamental varieties. The word is first recorded by the OED in a letter of 1748 by Henrietta Knight, Lady Luxborough to

2318-493: The later part of the 19th century hardy Asian shrubs from the hills around the Himalayas and Western China became the most exciting new additions to the European garden, and large Asian rhododendrons now often dominate shrubberies and woodland gardens planted in the period that have not been carefully maintained, especially the invasive rhododendron ponticum . This had a wide range across Asia, extending to southern Spain, and it

2379-605: The latter resulted from a favourable account of his talent in Marie-Luise Gothein 's History of Garden Art which predated Christopher Hussey 's positive account of Brown in The Picturesque (1927). Dorothy Stroud wrote the first full monograph on Capability Brown, fleshing out the generic attributions with documentation from country house estate offices. Later landscape architects like William Sawrey Gilpin would opine that Brown's 'natural curves' were as artificial as

2440-439: The main house in a sea of turf, some water, albeit often an impressive feature, and trees in clumps and shelterbelts", giving "a uniformity equating to authoritarianism" and showing a lack of imagination and even taste on the part of his patrons. He designed more than 170 parks, many of which survive. He was nicknamed "Capability" because he would tell his clients that their property had "capability" for improvement. His influence

2501-404: The master builder Henry Holland, and by Henry's son Henry Holland the architect , whose initial career Brown supported; the younger Holland was increasingly Brown's full collaborator and became Brown's son-in-law in 1773. Brown's reputation declined rapidly after his death, because the English landscape style did not convey the dramatic conflict and awesome power of wild nature. A reaction against

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2562-495: The park there are sculptures such as wood carvings formed from retained tree stumps (in 2012, a series of additional carvings were commissioned as part of the Restoration Project) which encourage natural play. An ironwork sundial, originally placed in the park in 1990 after a Festival of Iron event, was removed in 2006 and replaced by a small, round formal garden to honour Stuttgart (Cardiff's German twin town ). This feature

2623-465: The public parks of London, devising the shrubberies of Regent's Park and of St. James's Park , where the German visitor Prince Pückler-Muskau discerned that Mr Nash ... masses the shrubs more closely together, allows the grass to disappear in wide sweeps under the plants or lets it run along the edges of the shrubs without trimming them ... hence they soon develop into a thicket that gracefully bends over

2684-605: The straight lines that were common in French gardens. Brown's portrait by Nathaniel Dance , c. 1773, is conserved in the National Portrait Gallery , London. His work has often been favourably compared and contrasted ("the antithesis") to the œuvre of André Le Nôtre , the French jardin à la française landscape architect. He became both "rich and honoured and had 'improved' a greater acreage of ground than any landscape architect" who preceded him. A festival to celebrate

2745-549: The tercentenary of Brown's birth was held in 2016. The Capability Brown Festival 2016 published a large amount of new research on Brown's work and held over 500 events across Britain as part of the celebrations. Royal Mail issued a series of Landscape Stamps in his honour in August 2016. The Gardens Trust with support from Historic England , published Vulnerability Brown: Capability Brown landscapes at risk in October 2017 to review

2806-519: The turn of the new century Gertrude Jekyll offered a chapter of suggestions for "Wood and Shrubbery Edges" in Colour Schemes for the Flower Garden (London, 1908) in which her descriptions were based on her own garden at Munstead Wood , south of Godalming, Surrey , but her shrubbery and hardy perennial plantings were designed to soften transitions: "Where woodland joins garden ground there is often

2867-401: The views across the park of and from the main facades of the house. Few of his plantings of "pleasure gardens" have survived later changes. He also submitted plans for much smaller urban projects, for example the college gardens along The Backs at Cambridge . Criticism of his style, both in his own day and subsequently, mostly centres on the claim that "he created 'identikit' landscapes with

2928-452: The west front of the Pavilion, reproduced in Nash's publication. The winding perimeter walk circling the lawn among the shrubs and trees, enriched with island beds of herbaceous perennials, began to be laid out in 1814, with a flush of activity 1817-21. Two books of commentaries proved indispensable for the replanting scheme. One was Henry Phillips, who wrote in 1823 The shrubbery is a style of pleasure-garden which seems to owe its creation to

2989-553: The younger, became the MP for Huntingdon . His son John joined the Royal Navy and rose to become an admiral. Many of Capability Brown's parks and gardens may still be visited today. A partial list of the landscapes he designed or worked on includes: More than 30 of the gardens are open to the public. [REDACTED] Media related to Capability Brown at Wikimedia Commons Shrubberies A shrubbery , shrub border or shrub garden

3050-441: Was 16. Brown's father, William Brown, had been Sir William Loraine ’s land agent and his mother, Ursula (née Hall ), had been in service at Kirkharle Hall . His eldest brother, John, became the estate surveyor and later married Sir William's daughter. His older brother George became a mason-architect. After school Lancelot worked as the head gardener's apprentice at Sir William Loraine 's kitchen garden at Kirkharle Hall until he

3111-459: Was 23. In 1739 he journeyed south to the port of Boston , Lincolnshire . Then he moved further inland, where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall , Oxfordshire . He moved to Wotton Underwood House , Buckinghamshire , seat of Sir Richard Grenville. In 1741 Brown joined Lord Cobham 's gardening staff as undergardener at Stowe Gardens , Buckinghamshire , where he worked under William Kent , one of

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3172-656: Was a British architect who had worked for the Japanese government and other clients in Japan from 1877 until his death. The book was published when the general trend of Japonisme , or Japanese influence in the arts of the West, was already well-established, and sparked the first Japanese gardens in the West. Initially these were mostly sections of large private gardens, but as the style grew in popularity, many Japanese gardens were, and continue to be, added to public parks and gardens. These are to

3233-488: Was a further part of the garden, beyond the terrace and flower garden that the house usually opened onto, and when mature provided shade on hot days, some shelter from a wind, and some privacy. The shrubbery was at first the development of the plant collector wing of the growing movement of English gardeners, who in the early and mid-18th century eagerly awaited the new seeds and cuttings arriving at London nurserymen such as Thomas Fairchild (d. 1729) from America. There

3294-564: Was designed by the Parks Service in Stuttgart and planted by horticultural apprentices from both cities as part of a programme of exchange visits between the two parks departments. The dock feeder canal runs along the eastern edge of the park. Its origins go back to medieval times when it was a millstream, constructed to feed the Lord's Mill, situated below the western walls of Cardiff Castle. This line

3355-519: Was developed with the assistance of gardener Alan Titchmarsh . The fountain was made in lead by sculptor Brian Turner. On 22 November 1744 he married Bridget Wayet (affectionately called Biddy) from Boston, Lincolnshire , in Stowe parish church. Her father was an alderman and landowner while her family had surveyors and engineers among its members. They had eight children: Bridget in 1746, Lancelot (known as Lance), William (who died young), John in 1751,

3416-538: Was introduced to England in the 1760s. But many sections of gardens, mostly from about 1890 to 1950, were planted as "rhododendron gardens" or "azealea gardens" from the start. A variant on this, from the 1890s onwards, was a European interpretation of the Japanese garden , whose aesthetic was introduced to the English-speaking world by Josiah Conder 's Landscape Gardening in Japan ( Kelly & Walsh , 1893). Conder

3477-418: Was likely following sketches by the gentleman amateur Sanderson Miller . Fisherwick, Staffordshire, Redgrave Hall, Suffolk, and Claremont , Surrey, were classical, while at Corsham his outbuildings are in a Gothic vein, including the bathhouse . Gothic stable blocks and decorative outbuildings, arches and garden features constituted many of his designs. From 1771 he was assisted in the technical aspects by

3538-463: Was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked; even Kent's champion Horace Walpole allowed that Kent "was succeeded by a very able master". Lancelot Brown was the fifth child of a land agent and a chambermaid , born in the village of Kirkharle , Northumberland , and educated at a school in Cambo until he

3599-526: Was sold in lots in 1870s and 1880s. Ownership of the property allowed him to stand for and serve as High sheriff of Huntingdonshire from 1770 to 1771. He continued to work and travel until his sudden collapse and death on 6 February 1783, on the doorstep of his daughter Bridget Holland's house, at 6 Hertford Street , London while returning after a night out at Lord Coventry's. Horace Walpole wrote to Lady Ossory : "Your dryads must go into black gloves, Madam, their father-in-law, Lady Nature’s second husband,

3660-540: Was some tension between them and the more landscape-oriented gardeners such as Capability Brown , though Brown's designs in fact allowed for flower gardens and shrubberies, which have very rarely survived as well as his landscape vistas in the parks. Shrubbery is also the collective noun for shrubs in other contexts, sometimes used for shrubland , a type of natural landscape dominated by shrubs or bushes. The many distinct types of these include fynbos , maquis , shrub-steppe , shrub swamp and moorland . According to

3721-452: Was the effect of his genius that when he was the happiest man, he will be least remembered; so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken." In 1772, Sir William Chambers (though he did not mention Brown by name) complained that the "new manner" of gardens "differ very little from common fields, so closely is vulgar nature copied in most of them." Capability Brown produced more than 100 architectural drawings, and his work in

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