Tag Archives: Capability Brown

Temple Newsam

A trip to Yorkshire for a wedding gave me a great opportunity to visit a garden I’ve always wanted to see: Temple Newsam, a wonderfully rambling imposing mansion  just a couple of miles from Leeds city centre.  Best known for its magnificent collections … Continue reading

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Menageries 4: Knowsley … and Edward Lear

More on menageries….real and imaginary. The early 19thc saw a shift from menageries as showcases for curiosities to the beginnings of the zoological garden as a base for science. At the same time that the royal menagerie in the Tower was … Continue reading

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Mrs Montague : The Bluestocking Gardener

Elizabeth Montagu is best known today as one of the leaders of the bluestockings and a great lady of letters – she was ‘brilliant in diamonds, solid in judgement, critical in talk’ but it’s much less well known that she was an … Continue reading

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Eternal Wrest…

Wrest Park is a rarity.  I’ve heard comments that the house  looks a bit like a mundane French provincial station but, if so, it is a Grade 1 listed French provincial railway station, and mundane on the outside only. Inside … Continue reading

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Tiglath-Pileser I & the passion he shared with William Robinson

It’s not every day that an exotically multi-syllabled king of ancient Assyria gets mentioned in the context of Brtain’s historic parks and gardens.  But I was writing a  lecture about  early plant hunting and decided to start with evidence from antiquity when … Continue reading

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