Repton was born in 1752 in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. After an unsuccessful start in the textile business, [and several other things] he set himself up as a landscape gardener. He went on to design around 400 hundred English landscapes and gardens, becoming a worthy successor to the great Capability Brown.
He famously produced ‘Red Books’ or folios to present his proposed improvements, showing ‘before’ and ‘after’ views of the landscape.
Repton’s work links the landscape design of the eighteenth century and the gardenesque movement of the early Victorian years. At the end of his life he said ‘as a landscape designer I have never been superseded by a more successful rival. My own profession, like myself, was becoming extinct.’ Nothing like being self-confident!
GARDEN HISTORY TALKS 