This is the third lecture in a six-week series of lectures which will look at the history and development of garden technology from Medieval times right up to the present day. The ‘technology’ of gardening has developed enormously over the past centuries due to mechanization, automation, advances in science – and we can now grow plants without soil, we have automated watering systems for our greenhouses and we can watch while the robot mower, controlled from our smartphones, trims our lawns to perfection. But although we may approach them differently, the tasks and challenges that face gardeners today are much the same as they were back in Tudor times and earlier: preparing the soil, planting, protecting, composting, propagating and so on and so on. The rise in the organic movement over the past few decades has reminded us that the gardeners of old knew at least as much about gardening and working in harmony with nature as we do now, so how have new technologies developed and progressed our gardening knowledge, practice, and techniques?
The Gardens Trust has engaged a series of expert speakers to examine this question, including the renowned garden writer and designer, Noel Kingsbury, National Trust curator James Rothwell, expert on lawnmowers through the ages Keith Wootton, as well as regular Gardens Trust lecturers Jill Francis and our very own David Marsh; who will take a different technology in turn – tools, fertilizers, pest control, glasshouses, lawnmowers and plant breeding – and explore their history and development in relation to gardening. Tickets £24 or £5 each. Register through 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 (If you do not receive this link please contact us). A link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.
On March 7, enjoy Things ‘that noye Gardens’ – A History of Pest Control, with Jill Francis. Garden pests and diseases have been with us for as long as we have been making gardens. The first gardening text to be published in English promises to teach us how to dress, sow and set a garden, but at the same time, and equally importantly, offers remedies for ‘beasts, worms, flies and suchlike’ that are harmful to gardens. This talk will look at the many and various ways gardeners have sought to control them, from the downright superstitious, through practical remedies learned through observation and experience to the introduction of revolutionary chemical controls, which we may now wonder whether they have done more harm than good.
Jill Francis is an early modern historian, specializing in gardens and gardening in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries. She was awarded her PhD in 2011 by the University of Birmingham and has taught as a visiting lecturer at Birmingham and also the University of Worcester. She also has lectured in a variety of Garden History fora, including the Institute of Historical Research Landscape and Gardens seminar program and most recently, has become increasing involved in the Gardens Trust extensive online provision. She also works at the Shakespeare Institute Library in Stratford-upon-Avon. Her first book, Gardens and Gardening in Early Modern England and Wales, was published by Yale University Press in June 2018.
