Created and re-created against the backdrop of cycle of war and peace with its accompanying social and economic impacts, the twentieth century garden pivots between tradition and modernism, informality and structure. The century sees a shift in both style and materials as concrete takes its place at the heart of new towns and spaces, whilst the country house garden struggles to survive and flourish again in a new order. Garden design increasingly reflects the needs of a wider range of society, whilst literary and artistic movements locate gardens at the very heart of the struggle for meaning in a world of change and aspiration. The Gardens Trust series reflects the continuity and change in garden design and understanding through the twentieth century highlighting specific gardens and designers and setting them within more contextual discussions. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week. Tickets £30 or £5 each. To purchase a ticket for the complete series through Eventbrite, visit HERE. The Gardens Trust has complete details on its website.

The second lecture of the winter series is A New Jerusalem: from a Tonic to the Nation to New Towns, with Kate Harwood. As part of the New Jerusalem, Clement Attlee’s post-war government planned a series of ‘new towns of the future with blocks of flats, American-style highways and flyovers and a strict separation of the new city into different zones for housing. leisure and industry’. As Maxwell Fry declared ‘The new Britain must be Planned’. But where were the landscape architects and garden designers in all this? The contributions of these professionals, first intimated in the Festival of Britain of 1951, and the influences they absorbed from the United States and Europe will be considered in this talk – which is very much a work in progress!

Kate Harwood is a garden historian involved with planning and conservation , especially for Hertfordshire Gardens Trust. Hertfordshire is an area which has been blessed with many of the New Towns and the work of designers such as Jellicoe, Patterson, and just over the border in Essex, Gibberd. She has taught and lectured on garden history for some years.