John Claudius Loudon - father of the English garden - His first commissions

His first commissions

In 1804, Loudon travelled back to Scotland to undertake a commission from the Earl of Mansfield for alterations to the gardens at Scone Palace. He also designed the landscape at Barnbarroch in Wigtonshire between 1805 and 1807, parts of the landscape at Llanarth in 1805, and was at Tan-yr-Allt in 1806.[7] He laid out the pleasure grounds at Ditchley between 1805 and 1810, built the house and surrounding garden at Hope End in 1809 and laid out the grounds of Stradsett Hall between 1810 and 1813.

These designs were in contrast to the relative uniformity of style of the ‘natural’ landscapes designed by Lancelot Brown, Humphry Repton and other professional ‘improvers’.

Loudon was particularly scathing of Brown and his ‘improvements’. He wrote: ‘wherever his levelling hand has appeared, adieu to every natural beauty! See everything give way to one uniform system of smoothing, levelling and clumping of the most tiresome monotony’.[8]

In 1806, Loudon published his third book, A Treatise on Forming, Improving and Managing Country Residences, which expounded his views not only on horticulture but architecture as well. The same year he turned his attention to agriculture by buying Wood Hall Farm in Oxfordshire, indicating that his methods must have been very profitable. While managing nearby Great Tew Park, Loudon established one of the earliest agricultural colleges, which he ran until he left the estate in 1811.

Loudon resumed his landscape gardening practice and the money that he made from it and the farm, enabled him to travel to Europe for the first time in 1813. He visited Sweden and Central Europe before travelling to Russia and Germany. By the time he returned the following year, Loudon had lost his fortune through risky speculation, so he revived his businesses of landscape gardening and writing. In 1818 he prepared a plan for Bullmarsh Court in Berkshire and he was also consulted about plans at Alton Towers, possibly around this time.