A choice of gardening books | 1 December 2016

Garden design usually breaks out of its confines to become part of the general consciousness only in Chelsea Flower Show week, but this year there have been so many events to mark the tercentenary of the birth of Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown — the most prolific and talented designer of the 18th-century landscape garden — that even the general public has noticed. Most events have occurred under the umbrella of the Capability Brown Partnership, the brainchild of a landscape historian called John Phibbs, who has spent several decades studying Brown’s 170-odd landscapes and advising some of the owners on their recovery, care and conservation.

Capability Brown: Designing the English Landscape (Rizzoli, £45) describes 15 Brown ‘landskips’ in chronological progression. Some, like Blenheim and Chatsworth, are extremely well known; others, such as Himley Hall and Moccas Court, were certainly new to me. This book contains superb photographs by Joe Cornish and can be warmly recommended with only one small caveat: the author assumes that the reader understands topography as he does. Some modern plans would have helped.

A few miles from Stowe, where Brown laid out the ‘Grecian valley’ for the 18th-century Whig politician Viscount Cobham, is Thenford House, owned by a 20th-century politician of a different stripe. Thenford: The Creation of an English Garden (Head of Zeus, £40) is a handsomely-produced book, in which Michael Heseltine and his wife, Anne, describe their garden’s development over 40 years. Lord Heseltine announces straightaway that he is very rich, which has the signal virtue of being honest. As gardeners know, £50 notes make the best manure and the Heseltines — driven by the true collector’s love of plants, especially trees and shrubs — have committed masses of cash and all their limited leisure to creating an enormous and spectacular garden.