February 27, 2025 - Boston Flora

Wednesday, March 19, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Artists’ Gardens: Monet at Giverny, Online

February 27, 2025 by Boston Flora

Plants and gardens have long served as a creative inspiration for artists. They are places of color, structure and changing light, representations of memories and emotions, expressions of the cycle of life and the passing of time. When the garden is one created by the artist themself, the scope for exploration and engagement intensifies and, whether garden-lover or art-lover, we are drawn in to their stories and meanings. In this four-part series, The Gardens Trust will explore a range of gardens created and celebrated by their artist owners. 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 2 weeks) will be sent shortly afterwards. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

The first session takes place March 19. In 1883 the painter Claude Monet moved into a new home, Le Pressoir in Giverny. Below the house he created gardens whose colours vibrantly or contemplatively evolved under the Normandy skies. Initially he painted the rural motifs of the poplars and grain stacks and then, until his death in 1926, he devoted himself to the floral canvas of his own making. Botanically and horticulturally skilled, Monet grew the latest in irises and water lilies, watching them as the day reflected its course in their shapes, moments captured for eternity in over 500 paintings. The landscapes of Japanese ukiyo-e (floating world) woodblock prints fed into Monet’s sense of perspective and use of plants. The meticulous restoration of Giverny in the 1970s provides the canvas to explore the man, his paintings and his gardens. We will also briefly compare these gardens with Le Jardin Monet Marmottan in Japan.

Caroline Holmes is a University of Cambridge ICE Academic Tutor and Course Director; has lectured in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Europe and Japan as well as for cruises crossing the Baltic, Caribbean, Mediterranean and Red Seas, and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Author of 12 books including Monet at Giverny, Water Lilies and Bory Latour-Marliac, the genius behind Monet’s water lilies; and Impressionists in their Gardens, she is a consultant designer specialising in evoking historic, artistic and symbolic references, and contributes to Viking TV. Her website is https://horti-history.com

Tuesday, March 11, 6:00 am – 7:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – William Robinson: The Horticultural John Ruskin

February 27, 2025 by Boston Flora

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 2 is entitled William Robinson: The Horticultural John Ruskin. Born in Ireland, Robinson moved at the age of 23 to work in the Royal Botanic Society’s Garden in Regent’s Park, then on the edge of London. A great admirer of, and later correspondent with, Ruskin, he drew a direct analogy between the ‘bedding system’ which he hated, and Ruskin’s description of the industrial world. In his talk, Richard will outline Robinson’s gardening and prolific writing career and discuss the ways in which he hoped to improve the lives of the poorer members of society, becoming, as a 1931 Country Life article declared, ‘England’s greatest gardener’.

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).