The idea of goings-on in the shrubbery always raises a snigger. Why should this be? It’s an innocent enough garden feature and a key element of the Regency garden, as we discover in Timothy Mowl’s new book, which pinpoints the moment the shrubbery lost its innocence – just after 6pm on 30 September 1784. A bricklayer working in the garden of the 1st Lord Foley at Stoke Edith, Herefordshire, heard cries coming from the shrubbery in the vicinity of the grotto; he looked over the fence and saw Lady Ann Foley (wife of Lord Foley) with Charles Henry, Earl of Peterborough. Reportedly, ‘his lordship had Lady Ann round the middle, and … her Ladyship’s coats were up; and … her Ladyship’s naked legs and thighs round Lord Peterborough’s hams; and her arms round her Lordship’s neck…’

A court case ensued, and then divorce, with the public transfixed by accounts of the incident. Humphry Repton, the leading landscape designer of the time, worked for Lord Foley. Subsequently there were bills for seats, steps and a new door (and lock) to the notorious shrubbery. Perhaps it is not surprising that this was one project about which the usually publicity-hungry designer decided to keep quiet.

Repton is prominent in All Around Is Fairy Ground, which spans the period 1795 to 1837, ­the ‘very long Regency’ perhaps, ­and treats only ornamental gardening around the house, as opposed to design in the wider landscape of the kind that made Repton’s name. Mowl is harsh on the character