Great English Gardens: Capability Brown's Stowe [audio 13min]

The magnificent landscaped gardens at Stowe were built in the early 1700s by Lord Cobham, a wealthy Whig MP who developed them into a showcase for his wealth and taste acquired from studying the classics. Together with his head gardener Capability Brown, Cobham set about creating a natural landscape but with a formalised approach. In the next in our series on great English gardens, Andrea Wulf explains to Maggie Ayre how the gardens at Stowe have contributed to garden design. This Other Eden: Seven Great Gardens and 300 Years of English History by Andrea Wulf and Emma Gieben-Gamal is published by Little Brown.