Stowe became a showcase and chief entertainment venue for Lord Cobham's influential friends, including William Congreve, Jonathan Swift and Alexander Pope.

Here he also trained his 'mob' of nephews, including four adopted nephews, after his brother-in-law Richard Grenville died. They supported him as MPs and brought back ideas from visits to classical sites in Italy. The most famous of these was Prime Minister William Pitt, who contributed both ideas and political support for the satirical sideswipes laced through the 1730s works at Stowe.

Lord Cobham found himself in the political wilderness in 1733 for opposing Walpole, but used his time to both extend the gardens eastwards and drive home a political point. Enclosing forty acres to create the Elysian Fields, Kent constructed two of Stowe's most famous landmarks - the Temple of British Worthies and the Temple of Ancient Virtue, linked by the Shell Bridge to the Grotto in the north. Not a great fan of the established church, he shrouded it completely in trees.

By 1742, now in his sixties, Lord Cobham swept away the parterre he had created twenty five years earlier. Well aware that taste in garden design was now for the naturalistic look, he brought in Lancelot 'Capability' Brown, the twenty six year-old for whom Stowe was his first major commission. Adding another sixty acres to the garden in the northeast corner, the last major area was completed. Differences of opinion with Richard Grenville, his nephew, led to monuments, like the Grecian Temple, being remodelled again within five years.

By his death, Lord Cobham had established the core of Stowe and begun its naturalisation, with 205 acres, nearly forty temples, eight lakes, forty busts and fifty statues completed under his direction.