Seeing an Eden from a Desert:

What can contemporary visual representations of eighteenth-century Kew and Richmond Gardens tell us about what the gardens looked like, the design intentions of the makers, and the experience of the historical visitor? From late 1764 Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown re-designed Richmond Gardens, a site directly adjacent to Kew Gardens. In the eighteenth century these two royal gardens had separate and distinct topographies, but now respectively form the western and eastern parts of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.