The Gardens Trust presents a series of three talks on botanists and botanical art across three centuries, exploring people and illustrations that have defined, recorded and celebrated the world of plants in all their distinctiveness and intricacy. We start the series with exciting new research on previously unremarked botanical images on the paneling of a fine Jacobean house in Hampshire. In the second lecture we will examine the extraordinary set of almost a thousand paper collages of exotic plants produced by an 18th century woman of advanced years, before finishing with tales of a Victorian lady traveler who sought out rare plants in their native lands, not to collect – but to paint. Tickets for the three part series may be purchased through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/botanists-and-botanical-art-tickets-834657221217 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.

On May 21, Anne Benson will speak on Early Botanists and the Botanical Paintings at Bramshill, Hampshire. Bramshill House in north-east Hampshire is one of the largest, surviving Jacobean mansions in England. What is seen today is mostly the work commissioned by Edward, 11th Baron Zouche of Harringworth (1556̶ 1665), from between 1605 and 1625. The Grade 1-listed gardens and parkland also contain features from the Jacobean period including walled gardens, avenues and the destination gardens of a maze and a lake with a man-made island. This talk first presents these features and then continues with Ann’s recent research on the botanical images painted on the panelling of a first-floor room in the north-west wing of the house. Previously rarely referenced and under-researched, these surviving botanical paintings are shown to be of international significance in terms of their date of creation, botanical detail, state of preservation and through Bramshill’s historic owners, for associations with the early botanists and horticulturalists of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

Dr Anne Benson FSA FRHistS is a garden historian specializing in the Tudor and Stuart periods. She is best known for her multidisciplinary research on the ancestral homes of the Dukes of Beaufort, namely Troy House and Raglan Castle, Monmouthshire and on the Jacobean Bramshill estate, Hampshire. Leverhulme Emeritus Fellowship funding enabled Ann to research the garden history of Cambridge colleges founded in medieval and Tudor times. Subsequently, she was awarded a Beaufort Fellowship at St John’s College, Cambridge. Ann is a former teacher, director of university post-graduate courses, Arts Society lecturer and Cabinet Office consultant. She continues to lecture for national bodies on garden history research.