Daily Archives: February 20, 2025

Tuesday, March 4, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – A History of Gardens: The Origins of the Arts and Crafts Garden

by

The Arts and Crafts Movement sought a return to vernacular traditions in the face of increasing industrialization. It thrived for two decades or so around the turn of the twentieth century, although its effect is still obvious today in many decorative arts. In the garden, the movement was most clearly articulated through the work of William Robinson (1838-1935) and Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932). Their example was followed by a plethora of British architects and designers into the middle of the 20th century and beyond, and their influence spread to Europe, the US and further afield. What we today identify as Arts and Crafts gardens are perhaps typified by a geometric layout of compartments in close relationship with the house, alongside the use of architectural features in local materials and abundant, color-themed planting.

In this series, we will examine the origins of the Arts and Crafts garden, consider the work of Robinson and Jekyll in detail, and survey some of the many other British garden-makers who were influenced by the movement. The series will end with an international flavor, exploring the work of an American designer who was a life-long admirer of Robinson and Jekyll.

This ticket is for this individual talk (Click HERE) costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for other individual sessions, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire fifth series of 5 talks in our History of Gardens Course at £35 via the link here. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 5 for £26.25). Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. Ticket sales close 4 hours before the talk.

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 2 weeks .

Talk 1 will take place March 4 with Richard Bisgrove. What eventually became the Arts and Crafts Movement had two strands: a rejection of ‘modern’ painters in favour of mediaeval art and a reaction to the perceived horrors of the Industrial Revolution. The leading proponents of these ideas were John Ruskin and William Morris. In his talk, Richard will outline very briefly the lives of these two men and discuss their interests in, and influences on, the gardens of their age.

Richard Bisgrove has degree in Horticultural Science and Landscape Architecture. As a lecturer in horticulture and landscape management at Reading University his main research interests were the management of species rich grasslands (the flowery mead!) and garden history, with particular emphasis on Gertrude Jekyll and William Robinson. He was for many years a member of the Council and Conservation Committee of the Garden History Society and of the Gardens Panel of the National Trust. His publications include The Gardens of Gertrude Jekyll (Frances Lincoln, 1992; University of California Press 2000) and William Robinson: the wild gardener (Frances Lincoln, 2008). Image: The Red House, William Morris’s house ‘planted’ in a Kentish orchard, photo Richard Guy Wilson Architecture Archive, 1983, under a CC BY 4.0 license

Wednesday, March 5, 6:30 pm – 8:00 pm Eastern – Architecting Nature: Philip Johnson, David Whitney, and the Evolution of the Glass House Estate, 1946 – 2024, Live and Online

by

This is the second program in the 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens Speaker Series, The Quality of Doing: Mid-Century Modern Grand Homes & Gardens, featuring four scholars who will look at the work of Mid-Century Modern architects and designers through the lens of landmark homes and gardens across the United States. Learn more about the series and purchase series tickets.

“To me the whole experience of what’s been labeled now all over the world ‘the glass house’ is a misnomer. To me, the house is a park. To me, the whole experience is a park in which there are, indeed, monuments or occasions or accidents or things by nature and things that I’ve placed there that create a place.” Philip Johnson (1906-2005)

World-renowned architect Philip Johnson’s words convey the undeniable importance of the fifty-acre estate he assembled and tweaked over fifty years in partnership with curator and plantsman David Whitney. This talk will consider the social, architectural, and gardening history of the property, and its evolution from five untamed acres to a carefully contrived ideal landscape that is the setting – and the view — for The Glass House and its orbiting playground of Modernist follies constructed between 1946 and 2005. 

All talks begin at 6:30 p.m. in Morven’s Stockton Education Center. Doors and the virtual waiting room open at 6:00 p.m. A Zoom link will be sent to all virtual participants upon registration. Light refreshments inspired by each site will be provided for in-person attendees.


Maureen Cassidy-Geiger is an internationally recognized curator, scholar and educator with special expertise in European decorative arts and the history of architecture, gardens and court culture. Formerly on the staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Frick Collection and Parsons School of Design, she has curated exhibitions in Europe and America and has published and lectured on a broad array of subjects, for amateurs and specialists alike. In 2021, she presented The Art of Architecture: Beaux-Arts Drawings from the Peter May Collection at New-York Historical Society, to accompany the publication of the two-volume catalogue Living with Architecture as Art: The Peter May Collection of Architectural Drawings, Models and Artefacts (Paul Holberton Press).

This program is sponsored by David Schure and Grant Wagner, mid century modern house specialists from Callaway Henderson Sotheby’s International Realty. The 2025 Grand Homes and Gardens series is sponsored by Bryn Mawr Trust.