Stowe
The English landscape garden with temples, lakes and ha-ha – nature arranged like a painting.
In the 18th century Lord Cobham had the garden at Stowe reshaped. William Kent designed the Elysian Fields with temples alluding to politics and virtue, and Capability Brown was head gardener there before becoming the country’s most sought-after landscape designer.
The landscape garden was a reaction against the French Baroque garden. The style spread across Europe as the English garden.
Materials: Grass, trees, water, stone temples
Manufacture: The ground was reshaped, lakes dug and thousands of trees planted over several decades.
Winding paths and lakes instead of straight axes.
Temples and monuments set out as in a painting.
A ha-ha: a sunken fence that keeps animals out without blocking the view.