The company that headed the restoration Capability Brown landscape at Luton Hoo Hotel, Golf & Spa on the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire border has received a prestigious national award.
Canterbury-based landscape architects and ecologists Lloyd Bore worked in conjunction with Luton Hoo’s Head Gardener Keith Hersey and his team on the painstaking long-term project to reinstate the 1,065 acre estate’s magnificent parkland and gardens to their former glory.
The work was recognised when Lloyd Bore received the 2011 Landscape Institute Award at a ceremony held in London
The Luton Hoo estate is the legacy of England’s greatest landscape designer Capability Brown who was responsible for over 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain and he worked for two successive owners of Luton Hoo in the mid-1750s. After buying Luton Hoo in 1999 Elite Hotels engaged Lloyd Bore and other specialists to research the estate and piece together the history and layout using old plans, maps and paintings. The restoration is one of Lloyd Bore’s largest projects to date.
Capability Brown designed the main entrance to Luton Hoo in the shape of a serpentine to provide a constantly changing vista to visitors as their horse-drawn carriages rounded the bends, before finally revealing the grand mansion house. It was cleverly planned to give incoming visitors the most impressive view of the lower lake and outward travellers the best view of the upper lake.
Other features on the estate include terraced formal gardens with a centrepiece fountain, fully restored to working order, which is fed by water from the lake. Other curiosities include a Victorian grass tennis court with an original pavilion that can be rotated to follow the sun or shade, a secret sunken woodland rockery and a pet cemetery with ornate headstones.
The Landscape Institute is the Royal Chartered organisation for landscape architects, and as a professional organisation and educational charity works to protect, conserve and enhance the environment for public benefit.