Brown, Capability (Lancelot Brown), 1715–83, English landscape gardener, b. Kirkharle, Northumberland. The leading landscape gardener of his time, he is known for designing gardens that broke with the French formal tradition. He favored a distinctively English style of grandly picturesque, natural-appearing, and asymmetrically structured landscapes replete with groves of trees, expansive lawns, meandering streams, and sylvan lakes. Brown began as a young gardener to the gentry and, working at the famous gardens at Stowe during the 1740s, became a disciple of William Kent Kent, William, 1685–1748, English landscape gardener, architect, and painter. A minor painter, Kent made ceiling decorations for Kensington Palace. He greatly influenced landscape gardening by changing the prevailing artificial style to one based more closely
..... Click the link for more information. . In 1749 he became a consulting gardener and earned his nickname by often telling clients that their properties had "capabilities." Brown created many of the most important gardens of the 18th cent., including those at Petworth House, Kew, Blenheim Palace, Ashburnham Place, and Warwick Castle. He also designed several country houses.

Brown, Capability

orig. Lancelot Brown

(born 1715, Kirkharle, Northumberland, Eng.—died Feb. 6, 1783, London) British master of naturalistic garden design. He worked for years at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, one of the most talked-of gardens of the day, under William Kent (1685–1748). By 1753 he was the leading “improver of grounds” in England. At Blenheim Palace he created masterly lakes and almost totally erased the earlier formal scheme. His landscapes consisted of expanses of grass, irregularly shaped bodies of water, and trees placed singly and in clumps. His style is often thought of as the antithesis of that of André Le Nôtre, designer of the formal Versailles gardens. Brown's nickname arose from his habit of saying that a place had “capabilities.”