Humphry Repton


Book Description

A definitive survey of the glorious British landscapes designed by Humphry Repton, whose influence is felt everywhere from the rolling meadows and kitchen gardens of English estates to New York City’s Central Park. Widely acknowledged as the last great landscape designer of the eighteenth century, Humphry Repton created work that survives as a bridge between the picturesque theory of Capability Brown and the pastoral philosophy of Frederick Law Olmsted. By turns inspired by and in opposition to the grandeur of Brown’s estates, Repton’s contribution to the British landscape encompassed a tremendous range, from subtle adjustments that emphasized the natural features of the countryside to deliberate interventions that challenged the notion of the picturesque. This remarkable book explores 15 of Repton’s most celebrated landscapes—from the early maturity of his gardens at Courteenhall and Mulgrave Castle to more adventurous landscapes at Stanage, Brightling, and Endsleigh that would point the way toward how we envision parkland today. With photography by Joe Cornish commissioned specially for the book, and including reproductions of key illustrations and plans for garden design from the famous red books that shed light on Repton’s vision and process, this book illuminates some of Britain’s most beautiful gardens and parks—and the masterful mind behind their creation.




Humphry Repton


Book Description

Humphry Repton (1752–1818) remains one of England’s most interesting and prolific garden and landscape designers. Renowned for his innovative design proposals and distinctive before-and-after images, captured in his famous “Red Books,” Repton’s astonishing career represents the link between the simple parklands of his predecessor Capability Brown and the more elaborate, structured, and formal landscapes of the Victorian age. This lavishly illustrated book, based on a wealth of new research, reinterprets Repton’s life, working methods, and designs, and examines why they proved so popular in a rapidly changing world.







Humphry Repton


Book Description

This publication reproduces all the text pages and illustrations from the two Red Books in the collection of the Garden Library at Dumbarton Oaks; that for Brandsbury, produced in 1789 as the first Red Book, and the one for Glemham Hall, produced in 1791.







Capability Brown and Humphry Repton


Book Description

Inspired by French and Italian landscape painting, a number of eighteenth-century artist-gardeners led by William Kent created an art-form unique in the West, althought favoured from times of antiquity in China and Japan: the picturesque garden - virtually a landscape picture made not of paint on canvas but of real country and buildings. Towering above the rest of the professional practitioners of this art, in terms both of genius and industry, were two remarkable men, Capability Brown and his successor Humphry Repton. Both transformed many thousands of acres of England and Wales from 'natural' into 'picturesque' landscape; both , in the course of their work, met many of the leading men of their day, and George III made a friend of Brown; both, in their different ways, exerted a lasting influence on other landscape designers, including those of America and Europe. -- Book jacket.







The Red Book of Primrose House


Book Description

In this charming Potting Shed Mystery from bestselling author Marty Wingate, Texas transplant Pru Parke’s restoration of a historic landscape in England is uprooted by an ax murderer. Pru Parke has her dream job: head gardener at an eighteenth-century manor house in Sussex. The landscape for Primrose House was laid out in 1806 by renowned designer Humphry Repton in one of his meticulously illustrated Red Books, and the new owners want Pru to restore the estate to its former glory—quickly, as they’re planning to showcase it in less than a year at a summer party. But life gets in the way of the best laid plans: When not being happily distracted by the romantic attentions of the handsome Inspector Christopher Pearse, Pru is digging into the mystery of her own British roots. Still, she manages to make considerable progress on the vast grounds—until vandals wreak havoc on each of her projects. Then, to her horror, one of her workers is found murdered among the yews. The police have a suspect, but Pru is certain they’re wrong. Once again, Pru finds herself entangled in a thicket of evil intentions—and her, without a hatchet. Marty Wingate’s captivating mysteries can be enjoyed together or separately, in any order: The Potting Shed series: THE GARDEN PLOT | THE RED BOOK OF PRIMROSE HOUSE | BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE | THE SKELETON GARDEN | THE BLUEBONNET BETRAYAL | BEST-LAID PLANTS The Birds of a Feather series: THE RHYME OF THE MAGPIE | EMPTY NEST | EVERY TRICK IN THE ROOK | FAREWELL, MY CUCKOO Praise for The Red Book of Primrose House “All of the elements—gardening, history, romance, mystery—are perfectly blended with each other to form a coherent whole that is both entertaining and thoroughly engaging.”—Bibliotica “[Marty] Wingate once again brings readers a quirky cozy packed with fun characters, gardening history, and suspense.”—No More Grumpy Bookseller “Just know that Marty Wingate knows how to write a cozy mystery very well and that you will be hooked from page one.”—A Bookish Way of Life “I enjoyed The Red Book of Primrose House as much, or maybe more, for the way it developed and dealt with the relationships involved as for the murder mystery. I’m looking forward to seeing what trouble Pru gets into next.”—Reading Reality




Place-making


Book Description

Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783) is the iconic figure at the head of the English landscape style, a tradition that has dominated landscape design in the western world. He was widely acclaimed for his genius in his own day and his influence on the culture of England has arguably been as great as that of Turner, Telford and Wordsworth. Yet, although Brown has had his biographers, his work has generated very little analysis. Brown was prolific; he has had a direct influence on half a million acres of England and Wales. The astonishing scale of his work means that he did not just transform the English countryside, but also our idea of what it is to be English and what England is. His work is everywhere, but goes largely unnoticed. His was such a naturalistic style that all his best work was mistaken for untouched nature. This has made it very difficult to see and understand. Visitors to Brown landscapes do not question the existence of the parkland he created and there has been little professional or academic analysis of his work. This book for the first time looks at the motivation behind Brown’s landscapes and questions their value and structure whilst at the same time placing him within the English landscape tradition. It aims primarily to make landscape legible, to show people where to stand, what to look at and how to see.