The Gardens Trust’s third series of lectures on Victorian gardens continues on October 6 with Ben Dark’s exploration of Boating Lakes and Backhanders: J.J. Sexby and the Politics of the Public Park.
Lieutenant Colonel J. J. Sexby, Chief Officer of the London County Council’s Parks Department, has been credited with creating the model for twentieth century public parks. To contemporaries it seemed that at a wave of his magic wand ‘bandstands blossom forth, lakes sparkle, shelters spring up, delightful refreshment rooms, not to mention drinking fountains, abound and playgrounds leap into joyful existence’. But these features were far from universally popular. Contemporary landscape architects accused Sexby of being ‘the merest amateur’ and advocates for naturalistic planting derided the Parks Department for their ‘ugly tea gardens’. Meanwhile, behind the Council’s rockeries and ‘Old English’ gardens lay a bitter soup of political infighting, official corruption and bureaucratic incompetence.
This talk will re-examine Sexby and the parks he created in the light of the economic, aesthetic and moral arguments that raged around him, and will argue that his true genius has long been misunderstood.
Ben Dark is an author, gardener and horticultural journalist with a particular interest in the history of plants and landscapes. His book The Grove: A Natural Odyssey in 19½ Front Gardens (Octopus, 2022) used the plants of a single street in South London to weave together stories of the city, its people and their flowers and was called ‘the best gardening book of 2022’ by the Daily Telegraph, as well as being praised by The Sunday Times, the New Statesman and The Mail on Sunday.
Alongside writing Ben also hosts the award-winning Garden Log podcast, providing a discursive look at the culture, literature and practice of gardening. He has a degree in history from Bristol University and an MA in garden and landscape history from the University of London, writing his dissertation on J. J. Sexby and London’s Municipal Public Parks, 1889-1910.
£5 each or all 6 for £30. Register at Eventbrite HERE. The recording will be available for a week following the Zoom lecture.
