The Gardens Trust’s third set of lectures on the C19th garden takes us towards its heyday. As Britain’s empire expanded plant hunters scoured the world to bring home plants to fill the gardens and greenhouses not just of the rich but an ever-growing middle class. Gardening became a hobby, and indeed a passion for many in the working class too. As a result, gardening books and magazines flourished, and horticulture became big business. Garden design, like architecture became more and more eclectic. Labour was cheap so extravagance and display became commonplace in the private realm while public parks, often on a grand scale, were created all over the country, but especially in urban areas. Inevitably however there was a reaction against such artifice and excess, with a call for the return to more natural styles, and by the end of the century the cottage garden was vying with the lush herbaceous border to be the defining feature of the late Victorian garden.
On Thursday, September 22, David Marsh will speak on The Global Garden. The Victorian garden was a truly global space. The growth of empire went hand in hand with changes in technology and the development of commercial nurseries and plant hunting. This lecture will show how grand gardens such as Biddulph Grange and Alton Towers were designed around the arrival of a vast array of exotic plants, but also exotic architecture. Eclectism ruled… while Italianate and Gothic continued to be the predominant styles you could find Egyptian temples and Swiss chalets, as well as Himalayan valleys and American forests, while inside conservatories and glasshouses you could explore the flora of every corner of the world. And it wasn’t long before that was true of the gardens of suburban villas and terraced cottages as well.
After a career as a head teacher in Inner London, Dr David Marsh took very early retirement (the best thing he ever did) and returned to education on his own account. He was awarded a PhD in 2005 and now lectures about garden history anywhere that will listen to him. Recently appointed an honorary Senior Research Fellow by the University of Buckingham, he is a trustee of the Gardens Trust and chairs their Education Committee. He oversees their on-line program and writes a weekly garden history blog which you can find at https://thegardenstrust.blog. £5 each or all 6 for £30. Register HERE.
