Gardens and Forests

2016: Landscape Gardens

In 2016 Royal Mail celebrated the 300th anniversary of Lancelet 'Capability' Brown's birth with some of the significant landscape gardens he created.  Nicknamed Capability Brown because he used to say to those wishing to employ him that their garden or land had "great capability for improvement".  He completely changed the gardens in the 18th Century from the formal French style into the artifice of what looked like a natural landscape.

He worked as Head Gardner at Stowe (bottom left stamp above) and created the Grecian Valley for Lord Cobham and from there everyone wanted to employ him on their estates. Creating lakes, serpentine rivers, bridges, woods and hills on country estates something triggered in the English psyche and we continue to love them.   

150 of  the 250 sites he designed survive today and the National Trust highlight some of them here

2011: Europa - Forests

 But lets head into the woodland of Luxembourg.  The stamps were created by the artist and naturalist Alan Johnston and painted outdoors to "capture the climatic, ecological and geological characteristics of the environment".

2016: Visiting Card From Finland

I love the misty landscape of woods and water on this FDC, it is almost as if one were a bird flying over it.

The 'visiting card' title of this duo  is of course because these are the stamps used on international postcards. The one on the left is  Nuuksio National Park in Southern Finland ("a hikers paradise") and the other is the fresh green leaves of a birch tree in sunlight.

An entry to Sunday Stamps II them - Gardens or Forests - wander and wonder at  See It On A Postcard