‘NOBLE PROSPECTS IN THE NORTH’ with Richard Heathcote

Capability Brown designed over 20 landscapes in Yorkshire alone and in Derbyshire created for the Duke of Devonshire the definitive Arcadian landscape at Chatsworth his estate in The Peak District.  This year Richard Heathcote visited some of these cultural landscapes in the north of England and his talk will present his view on the shift in taste that Brown brought to the English country house with the style the French called 'Le Jardin Anglais'.

RICHARD HEATHCOTE is the Director of Carrick Hill historic house and garden in Adelaide and the National Chairman of the Australian Garden History Society.  His main interests as a garden historian and art curator concern the social use of gardens and how art informs our understanding and inspires our imaginations.

IN PRAISE OF LANCELOT ‘CAPABILITY’ BROWN | 2016 marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown who changed the face of 18th century England, designing country estates and mansions, moving hills and making serpentine lakes and flowing rivers, a magical world of green.

‘Capability’ Brown (1716 – 1783) is best remembered for landscape on an immense scale, constructing not only gardens and parkland, but planting woods and building farms linked by carriage drives, or `ridings', many miles from the main house. Although his work is continually reassessed, every landscape gardener and landscape architect since, both in Britain and around the world, has been influenced in one way or another by Brown.