The Green World of Brown exhibition at Weston Park

This dynamic, mixed-media, free to enter exhibition, The Green World of Brown, presented by The Landscape Foundation (UK), explores how the most celebrated English landscape designer and early environmentalist Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown (1716-1783) remains the ‘Great Influencer’.

Photograph: Allan Pollok-Morris

Taking place at The Rose Paterson Gallery from 5 August – 26 September 2025, The Green World of Brown focuses on a new direction to the Brown story by showing the works of a broad spectrum of creative people influenced by Brown over the last 300 years in over 60 estates and public parks that are still enjoyed today.

Artists and craftspeople: painters, sculptors, poets, photographers, landscape designers, architects, engineers, musicians, even writers, editors, playwrights, actors and filmmakers, have all been inspired by Brown’s holistic, innovative, naturalistic approach to landscape, architecture and interiors.

The Green World of Brown opens at Weston Park, within one of Shropshire’s best-loved landscapes, Weston Park and explores how Brown’s philosophy developed in his lifetime.  A creative mix of visuals will help visitors experience both the dramatic scale of Brown’s stunning panoramas and the detail of his designs.  Both historical and contemporary media and editorial will include paintings, text, stills, video and projection. Several drawings and plans, including Brown’s, will be on display.

Centre stage is the relationship photography has had with Brown’s landscapes and architecture.  Visitors will be able to get up close and personal to a collection of analogue and digital photography inspired by Brown’s work from the earliest pioneers, including Fox Talbot’s photography at Lacock Abbey (courtesy of the National Science and Media Museum Bradford) to the most advanced ground and drone photography in the world today.  Alongside contemporary women photographers, a small tribute will highlight photographic heroines, Anna Atkins, Lucy and Charlotte Bridgeman, whose accomplishments in breaking new ground in 1800s photography have been often overlooked.

From the main avenue of the RHS Chelsea Flower Show to the terraces of Chatsworth and Trentham, this exhibition will be the first to highlight designs of highly acclaimed 21st century landscape architects who have worked alongside Brown including Tom Stuart-Smith, Piet Oudolf, Kim Wilkie, Dan Pearson, Nigel Dunnett and XA Tollemache.

The Green World of Brown Community Project for students from local schools will run alongside this exhibition. The exhibition has been purposely designed in a sustainable way, mainly displaying existing media and artworks, thanks to the support of various archives.