The house was built by Sir Henry Hobart, but little remains of his early 17th century garden. His great grandson, the 1st Earl of Buckinghamshire redesigned the garden in the early 18th century and the central axis of the garden and grand vista looking up to the Doric Temple is still there. His son, the 2nd Earl, living at the height of the Landscape Movement, concentrated on creating a park with rolling pasture, the great lake and the Orangery, probably designed by Wyatt and built in 1782. It is known that Humphry Repton suggested some of these improvements and Repton's son, John, was employed after 1823, working on garden furniture and other features. In the 1860s the 8th Marquis Lothian created the present grid pattern for the formal areas of the garden employing, Markham Nesfield, the son of William Andrews Nesfield who did much work at Kew, to excavate the 2-acre parterre, although Lady Lothian dictated its interior planting. The present-day planting there was carried out by Norah Lindsay in the years between the World Wars and has been carried forward by the National Trust. She also designed the less flamboyant Secret Garden.