Brown, ‘Capability’

Lancelot Brown ( 1716 – 83 ), the most famous landscape gardener of the 18th century and the designer of numerous schemes for British country houses. Brown got his nickname from his habit of saying that an estate looked capable of improvement. He swept away the formal gardens of previous generations and provided instead an open, ‘natural’ look, with rolling pastures, clumps of mature trees, and wide expanses of water.