Presented in association with the Australian Garden History Society.

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown is famous for transforming the English landscape. Was he a genius, this fashionable gardener/architect who re-contoured the Georgian gentry’s estates and great country houses? On the tercentenary of his birth, Sue Ebury spent summer days exploring his work and pondering his heritage; gardens, once regular and contained, embraced surrounding hills and valleys; marshes were drained; streams became sinuous rivers and serpentine lakes; wild countryside – la belle nature – encroached on domestic surroundings. Through photographs, paintings and archives we gain insights into how the Georgian gentry used this ‘omnipotent’ magician’s landscapes to enhance life in the country.

Sue Ebury was a founding committee member of Australian Garden History Society, the honorary editor of the proceedings which established the society and one of the honorary editors of the journal. She is also a Patron of the National Library of Australia and was a member of the Library Foundation Board for seven years.

Sue is incapable of going on holiday without a project, and multiple visits to England, Italy and Japan over the past thirty years have resulted in a number of papers and lectures reflecting the garden aesthetic of these countries. 

Become a member of the Friends of the National Library of Australia. 

Images
Top: Gardens at Blenheim Palace, image courtesy of Sue Ebury.
Right: Richard Cosway, Portrait of 'Lancelot Capability Brown', c.1770–1775, private collection/Bridgeman Images