Daily Archives: January 24, 2022

Tuesday, February 1, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm, GMT – Forgotten Women Gardeners: A Passion for Plants and Politics, Lady Dorothy Nevill, Online

by

This February 1 Gardens Trust online talk focuses on the turbulent life of Lady Dorothy Nevill (1826-1913), who gardened at Dangstein, W. Sussex, where she amassed an enviable plant collection and interacted with Sir William Hooker of Kew and Charles Darwin. Although occasionally tainted by scandal, Lady Dorothy survived it all through a passion for both plants and politics.

Dr Catherine Horwood is an experienced speaker and the author of many books on social history including Gardening Women. Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010) and Potted History – How Houseplants Took Over Our Homes (Pimpernel Press, 2020). Her biography Beth Chatto: A Life with Plants (Pimpernel Press, 2019) was selected as the European Garden Book of the Year in 2020.

£5. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

Wednesday, February 2, 1:00 pm – 2:00 pm – Between Wild and Cultivated: The Marginal Garden and its Care, Online

by

The “marginal garden” explores the boundaries between the wild and the cultivated, particularly the interface of where native plant species meet naturalizing garden ones. Such places have ideally achieved a reasonably stable co-existence. Marginal gardens, including Innisfree, can be exciting and surprising, and can challenge our conceptions of both what ‘nature’ and ‘cultivation’ are.

However, like any natural or semi-natural habitat they are never completely stable. Their creation and management requires the insights, knowledge and skills of both horticulture and ecology, and suggests strongly we need a new profession that brings these two areas, formerly separate, together. We also need to look critically and objectively at our management techniques, particularly for managing invasive species, and ask how these can be used to enhance the biodiverse marginal garden.

Presenter Noel Kingsbury is a renowned planting-design consultant and writer on gardens and naturalistic planting, with over 20 books to his name. Noting that “few garden writers are as prolific or as influential,” Noel has been called ”the great chronicler of contemporary planting design…this generation’s Gertrude Stein.” His newest book, Wild: The Naturalistic Garden (Phaidon, March 2022) profiles gardens around the world including Innisfree. www.noelkingsbury.com

This is the first in Innisfree Garden’s 2022 Lecture Series, Romanticism at Innisfree: Nature as Muse. The public programs will explore the wide-ranging cultural and artistic embodiments of Romantic ideals and their impact on Innisfree Garden. Held as a lunchtime virtual series on Wednesdays at 1 pm Eastern time, they are free to all Innisfree members, $15 for the general public, or $75 for the series (one free lecture) Register now.