Recorded Series - A History of Gardens 3

For those who missed the third series of A History of Gardens, which originally ran in November 2024, this is a chance to access the recordings of the talks.

You can buy a ticket for the whole recorded series, or for any of the individual sessions. The recordings will all be available from 19th Aug to 30th Sep 2025. You will also receive the short reading list produced for the original run of the series.

A History of Gardens from the Gardens Trust is suitable for anyone curious about gardens and their stories – whether absolute beginners or those with some garden history knowledge. It aims to help participants recognise important eras, themes and styles in mainly British garden history from the earliest times to today, grasp something of the social, economic, political and international contexts in which gardens have been created and find greater pleasure in visiting historic gardens.

This introductory series can be followed by the ‘Building the C18th Garden’ talks that we’re running from late October, for those who would like to know more.

We will be offering access to recordings of talks from the subsequent series of A History of Gardens over the next few months.

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A HISTORY OF GARDENS 3: 18th-CENTURY GARDENS

The Georgian era is often seen as the pinnacle of garden design in England, as the formal, baroque style of the late 17th century gave way to the looser, more naturalistic designs of what became known as the English Landscape Movement. It was a style that spread around the world.

This series will trace the development of the landscape style, beginning with early examples full of decorative garden buildings and classical allusions, and then the impact of England’s most famous landscape designer, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, who laid out vast parklands with rolling lawns, serpentine lakes and clumps of trees. As we’ll see, the century ended with a clash between the wild, rugged aesthetic of the Picturesque and the start of a return to formality and ornamentation in garden-making.

As well as examining individual gardens and designers, we will explore some of the myriad social and economic influences at work on Georgian design. These included political upheaval, changing land use, foreign trade and the lure of exoticism, alongside the impact of the European ‘Grand Tour’ undertaken by wealthy men, which instilled an admiration for classical art and poetry, and for French and Italian landscape painting.

Image: Antony Walker, A View of the Moon Pond and Temple of Piety at the early landscape garden of Studley Royal in Yorkshire, 1758, Rijksmuseum, public domain

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Please scroll down below the links to see the full details of each talk.

This ticket is for the third series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 or you may purchase a ticket for individual talk recordings, costing £8 via the links below (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25).

Tickets will be released on 19th Aug, and the recordings will be available to view until 30th September 2025. The Zoom links will be in the confirmation email sent directly after booking, if you do not receive that email, please contact us.

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Recording 1: Early Landscape Gardens with Oliver Cox. First in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Recording 2: Poetry and Prose with Judith Hawley. Second in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Recording 3: Lancelot Brown: Assessing the ‘Capabilities’ with Laura Mayer. Third in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Recording 4: Chinoiserie: Tea, Trade Routes & a Taste for the ‘Exotic’ with Laura Mayer. Fourth in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

Recording 5: Humphry Repton: from Picturesque provocateur to Regency ornamentalist with Laura Mayer. Last in a series of 5 online lectures, £8 each or all 5 for £35 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25)

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Recording 1: Early Landscape Gardens with Oliver Cox

Often presented as a dramatic shift, the change from baroque designs to the landscape style, in reality, happened gradually over many years. Early glimpses of irregular layouts and whimsical features started to appear alongside the blurring of boundaries between gardens and the wider rural landscape. With wars in Europe and shifting political values at home, there was perhaps a desire for a less grandiose, more patriotic garden style, and so stiff baroque geometry slowly softened into gentler glades, serpentine lakes, irregularly placed garden buildings and allusions to classical and British myths and legends. Designers such as Charles Bridgeman and William Kent (who memorably ‘leaped the fence and saw that all nature was a garden’) were among the leading figures in the emerging naturalistic style.

Many significant 18th-century gardens – Chiswick House, Rousham, Castle Howard, Studley Royal, Stowe and Stourhead - remain today as well-loved visitor attractions, and their stories have much to tell us about the values, influences and aesthetics of the early landscape garden-makers.

Dr Oliver Cox is a historian by training and received his undergraduate, masters and doctoral degrees from the University of Oxford. His recent publications include contributions to The Country House: Past, Present and Future (Rizzoli International Publications, 2018); Sport and Leisure in the Irish and British Country House (Four Courts Press, 2019), and journal articles including the challenges of interpreting eighteenth-century spaces for twenty-first-century visitors. He also writes regularly for Apollo and is a frequent contributor to television and radio programmes. Currently, he is Head of Academic Partnerships at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).

Image: Coplestone Warre Bampfylde, The Grotto, Stourhead, 1753, ©the Trustees of the British Museum, shared under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

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Recording 2: Poetry and Prose with Judith Hawley

Gardens are composed of earth, air, water and living things but they are sometimes composed by writers; this is particularly the case in the eighteenth century. Joseph Addison and Alexander Pope fostered the adoption of classical ideals of gardening derived from the writings of Homer, Virgil, Cicero and Horace. The gardens at Stowe, Stourhead, Cirencester and Rousham Park as well as Pope’s more modest garden in Twickenham attempt to embody classical ideals of arcadian simplicity, virtuous self-sufficiency and temporary retirement from the busy world. The influences were not only classical: eighteenth-century gardens proudly foregrounded British traditions in the form of Druidical and Gothic elements. Literature also features in the placing of quotations around gardens. As well as considering famous and great gardens, Judith will also briefly touch on some of the more eccentric ones such as those created by William Stukeley, Jonathan Tyers and Francis Dashwood.

Judith Hawley is Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has published and broadcast on a range of eighteenth-century literary and cultural topics. As Trustee of the Pope’s Grotto Preservation Trust and The London Luminaries she is involved in bringing the heritage of West London to a wider audience.

Image: Nathaniel Parr, after Pieter Andreas Rysbrack, An Exact Draught and View of Mr Pope’s House at Twickenham, 1735, ©London Borough of Richmond upon Thames Art Collection

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Recording 3: Lancelot Brown: Assessing the ‘Capabilities’ with Laura Mayer

The architect and designer Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown, born in 1716, is credited with formulating the iconic English landscape garden. Even today, his rolling lawns, scattered with tree clumps and ornamented with glittering lakes, continue to define our perception of rural Britain. As a result, his hundreds of landscapes have eclipsed the study of eighteenth-century garden history almost entirely.

Both a visionary and a practical plantsman, the scale of Brown’s work is truly extraordinary. However, no designer works within a cultural vacuum, leading us to question just how many of his landscape schemes can be attributed solely to him. And when we look at the man behind the name, what, in fact, was Brown’s greatest ‘capability’? This lecture considers that it was not just his aesthetic insight – nor even his practical gardening talents – that set Brown apart from his peers, but arguably something entirely more mercenary.

Dr Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher, with an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century patronage. Originally an art historian with a side of Spanish, she accidentally fell into garden history whilst working at the Alhambra in Granada. Laura has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot Brown and Humphry Repton – as well as on the historic gardens of Cambridgeshire. She lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and works as a conservation consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura lives in Bristol, in a lilac-and-blue Georgian house with a tiny garden overlooking Repton’s Ashton Court estate.

Image: The Brownian landscape at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, photo ©Jill Sinclair

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Recording 4: Chinoiserie: Tea, Trade Routes & A Taste for the ‘Exotic’ with Laura Meyer

Chinoiserie – an early European interest in the arts, architecture and gardening of the Far East – blossomed in Georgian Britain, coinciding with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution and modern consumerist society. Soon, every landscape park and public pleasure ground in the country had a Chinese pagoda, bridge, barge or brightly painted tea-house in which to drink tea, that most fashionable of imported luxuries.

This lecture will examine the politics and trade routes of eighteenth-century Britain, as well as the growing craze for informal gardening. This had been gaining traction since 1685 when William Temple published his appraisal of East Asian Garden asymmetry, without ever having travelled to China. The talk will consider the authenticity of British Chinoiserie, and reveal what, if anything, the landscape style owes to Asia’s early gardens. In short, just how English was the English landscape garden after all?

Dr Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher, with an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century patronage. Originally an art historian with a side of Spanish, she accidentally fell into garden history whilst working at the Alhambra in Granada. Laura has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot Brown and Humphry Repton – as well as on the historic gardens of Cambridgeshire. She lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and works as a conservation consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura lives in Bristol, in a lilac-and-blue Georgian house with a tiny garden overlooking Repton’s Ashton Court estate.

Image: The Chinese House at Shugborough, Staffordshire, photo c.2009 ©Laura Mayer

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Recording 5: Humphry Repton: from Picturesque provocateur to Regency ornamentalist with Laura Meyer

Humphry Repton (1752–1818) initially styled himself Capability Brown’s successor: the next great improver of landed property. This was a bold and ambitious stance, which opened him up to persecution from the new school of Picturesque aesthetes. These men championed a Romantic appreciation for rugged and sublime topography, and a disdain for the manicured lawns of Brown and his contemporaries which had come before.

Ultimately forced to develop an entirely new aesthetic, Repton’s later designs were crowded with terraces, trellises, bowers, bowling greens and gravel walks. He called this new style ‘Ornamental Gardening’. Immortalized by Jane Austen in her novel Mansfield Park, Repton’s ingenious Red Books, with their ‘before and after’ overlays, helped nurture an appreciation for landscape amongst his Regency clients. This lecture traces Repton’s career from his early entanglement with the Picturesque writers, to the progressive ornamental style of the turn of a new century.

Dr Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher, with an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century patronage. Originally an art historian with a side of Spanish, she accidentally fell into garden history whilst working at the Alhambra in Granada. Laura has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot Brown and Humphry Repton – as well as on the historic gardens of Cambridgeshire. She lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and works as a conservation consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura lives in Bristol, in a lilac-and-blue Georgian house with a tiny garden overlooking Repton’s Ashton Court estate.

Image: A picnic party at Longleat, from Loudon’s The Landscape Gardening and Landscape Architecture of the Late Humphry Repton, Esq, 1840, courtesy of the University of Adelaide, public domain

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