Todd Longstaffe-Gowan, the renowned landscape architect and historian, shares anecdotes from his new book English Garden Eccentrics: Three Hundred Years of Extraordinary Groves, Burrowings, Mountains and Menageries (Mellon/Yale, 2022). Longstaffe-Gowan introduces a cast of obscure and eccentric English garden-makers who created intensely personal and idiosyncratic gardens between the early seventeenth and early twentieth centuries. With tales of miniature mountains, intriguingly shaped topiaries, exotic animals, excavated caves, and assembled architectural fragments, Longstaffe-Gowan highlights the follies and foibles of that personified these gardens and their makers.
Todd Longstaffe-Gowan is an internationally acclaimed landscape architect with a practice based in London. He is gardens adviser to Historic Royal Palaces, lecturer at New York University (London), president of the London Gardens Trust, editor of The London Gardener, and author of several other books including The London Town Garden (Yale, 2001) and The London Square (Yale, 2012). He has developed and implemented long-term landscape management plans for the National Trust (Swindon, United Kingdom), English Heritage (Swindon, United Kingdom), and a wide range of private owners in the United Kingdom and around the world. Longstaffe-Gowan has had extensive input in the conservation and redevelopment of a variety of historic landscapes in London, including the Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace, Kensington Palace Gardens, and the Crown Estate.
Free. Advance registration for the Zoom transmission is required. The program is sponsored by The Clark in Williamstown, and you may register at www.clarkart.edu
