The name Lancelot 'Capability' Brown has become synonymous with the eighteenth-century English landscape garden: between 1751 and 1783 his consultancy handled over 170 major commissions. Ruthlessly efficient, he could stake out the 'capabilities' of a particular terrain within an hour on horseback. Rising to the position of Master Gardener to George III, his trademark features included bald lawns, clumped trees, undulating lakes and enclosing belts of woodland on the estate's perimeter. With this standard park formula Brown and his followers held the commercial monopoly on garden design well...

Humphry Repton (1752-1818) ambitiously styled himself Capability Brown's successor; the century's next great improver of landed property. He believed that the art of laying out grounds could only be achieved by 'the united powers of the landscape painter and the practical gardener', and ingeniously combined his knowledge of farming with a talent for topographical sketching. Over thirty years Repton amassed an incredible four hundred commissions, capitalizing on the whims of the fashion-conscious upper classes left rudderless after Brown's death. Sensitive and snobbish, Repton's ambitions were...