‘I am asked again whether Humphry Repton worked on a smaller scale than Capability Brown, and whether he should be regarded on that account as less worthy of our regard.
Category: Boundaries
The outworks of the Danish Camp at Ugbrooke might easily be mistaken for the pale of a mediaeval deer park.
The question that exercises my good friends from Devonshire, on the other hand, is ‘where the deer were at Ugbrooke?’ ‘Did they wander freely over all the extensive parkland, or were they contained in smaller paddocks?’
If this were a strictly theatrical planting, the spiky junipers would be out of place
How productive simple misunderstandings can be! My note 67 caught the eye of Mrs B of Kew, who was prompted by the discussion of netties to ask about netting shrubberies to protect them from grazing animals.
Well, Mrs B, that’s not precisely what is meant by a nettie, but your question remains worthwhile.
The horse-drawn carriages of Central Park are not inconspicuous
I was caught in a grimace, with a root beer at the bar on my first step to becoming American, when Mr L of Brooklyn, English as it happens, approached me, and on discovering my occupation, asked whether the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted had been influenced by Capability Brown.
‘The hawthorn.., has little claim to picturesque beauty… Its shape is bad. It does not taper, like the holly, but is rather a matted, round, heavy bush.’ Notwithstanding the Rev William Gilpin’s attack, there is a case to be made for hawthorn as the native that Capability Brown planted in greater numbers than any other tree, ‘the pride of park scenery’ as William Marshall called it.
Everybody loves variety, whether French: ‘The finest gardens are those which are the most varied’ [Diderot]; Chinese: ‘Each of these Valleys is diversify`d from all the rest, both by their manner of laying out the Ground, and in the Structure and disposition of its Buildings.’ [Joseph Spence]; or English: ‘Mr Pope used to say that all the beauties of gardening might be comprehended in one word, variety.’
Preparing to wharf at Langley
I have read a note from Dr E of Fife asking how lakes can work as any kind of a boundary in a deer park, since deer can swim. Dear Dr E, it’s all in the way the lake edge is constructed – wharfed or beached.
A newly planted quick hedge or single oxter, having a fence down one side
I have received a note from Mr H. of Bromsgrove, a man whose opinions I greatly admire. Mr H. has read my notes on Croome, and having recently visited himself, he asks for my comments on the thorn hedges
Part 4: the conduit
Mrs D. has been in touch again and is clearly unhappy. She explains that she had hoped to tour the whole of Worcestershire in three days, and wonders if I could offer her Croome in 40 minutes.