Thursday, December 8 – The 19th Century Garden: Where the Suburbs Meet Utopia, Online
Between 1801 and 1901 the population of England and Wales rose from 8.9 million to 32.6 million, with the majority pouring into the expanding urban fringes. Gardens flourished in the new suburbs, allowing aspiring homeowners to demonstrate their fortunes and their taste. As James Shirley Hibberd declared ‘He who lays out his garden in accordance with correct principles of taste, may find it as much amusement, and as genuine a solace from the cark and care of life, as if it were a domain of thousands of acres’. Gardening periodicals provided everything from over-sized hedge cutters to (mini) hothouses for suburban homeowners anxious to create individual utopias in identical spaces. Women and children joined the movement to create paradise in Pooter-land. As the century progressed, colourful annual bedding and newly introduced conifers gave opportunity for differentiating the fashionable from the outmoded, the comfortably-off from the merely aspiring, and the morally upright from the delinquent. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5 Register at Eventbrite HERE. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and again a few hours before the talk. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.
Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. Twigs is fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her talks and books reflect that endless curiosity with themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature . . and her desire to follow unknown paths towards the unexpected. From gnomes in Neasden to hollyhocks from the Holy Land every plant has a tale to tell, every garden a past. Twigs’ history of the Chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion in 2020. She is currently working on the history of the daffodil and also researching the life of Viscountess Frances Wolseley. Twigs’ best-selling book is Gardening for Rabbits but you may prefer her Suburban Gardens published by Amberley in their Britain’s Heritage series.
