Boston Flora

Tag: 19th Century Garden

  • Thursday, December 8 – The 19th Century Garden: Where the Suburbs Meet Utopia, Online

    Between 1801 and 1901 the population of England and Wales rose from 8.9 million to 32.6 million, with the majority pouring into the expanding urban fringes. Gardens flourished in the new suburbs, allowing aspiring homeowners to demonstrate their fortunes and their taste. As James Shirley Hibberd declared ‘He who lays out his garden in accordance with correct principles of taste, may find it as much amusement, and as genuine a solace from the cark and care of life, as if it were a domain of thousands of acres’. Gardening periodicals provided everything from over-sized hedge cutters to (mini) hothouses for suburban homeowners anxious to create individual utopias in identical spaces. Women and children joined the movement to create paradise in Pooter-land. As the century progressed, colourful annual bedding and newly introduced conifers gave opportunity for differentiating the fashionable from the outmoded, the comfortably-off from the merely aspiring, and the morally upright from the delinquent. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5 Register at 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. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    Twigs Way is a garden historian, writer and researcher. Twigs is fascinated by the past and intrigued by the role of flowers, gardens and landscape in art and culture of all kinds. Her talks and books reflect that endless curiosity with themes of symbolism and meaning, class and gender, art and literature . . and her desire to follow unknown paths towards the unexpected. From gnomes in Neasden to hollyhocks from the Holy Land every plant has a tale to tell, every garden a past. Twigs’ history of the Chrysanthemum in art and culture was published by Reaktion in 2020. She is currently working on the history of the daffodil and also researching the life of Viscountess Frances Wolseley. Twigs’ best-selling book is Gardening for Rabbits but you may prefer her Suburban Gardens published by Amberley in their Britain’s Heritage series.

    Front garden, early 20th century. © Garden Museum Ref 2000-327

  • Thursday, December 1 – The 19th Century Garden: Nurseries and Seedsmen, Online

    Much of the driving force behind the development of gardens during the Victorian period was due to the success and enterprise of Britain’s nurseries and seedsmen. They led the way in scouring the globe for new plants for British gardens and greenhouses, introducing them in to commercial production and encouraging the spread. of gardening through cheap and reliable seeds. Companies like Carters, Suttons and Veitches transformed British horticulture in just a few generations, becoming internationally important businesses. But they were not alone. There were dozens of others, smaller in scale, but no less important in impact, taking advantage of improved rail networks, cheap postage and printing, as well as increased leisure time. This Gardens Trust online talk on December 1 will tell their story, primarily through the example of Carters Seeds, which was the largest in Britain and later one of the largest in the world. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5 – 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. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

    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

  • Thursday, November 17 – The 19th Century Garden: The Talented Miss Jekyll (1843-1932), Online

    Now known mainly as a garden designer and plantswoman, Gertrude Jekyll combined creativity and mastery of many crafts. She was described as a ‘pioneer spirit’. Jekyll trained at the School of Art in South Kensington, where she showed talent in painting, metalwork and embroidery. As a true Arts and Crafts practitioner, she studied and mastered every craft thoroughly.

    In 1884 she acquired 15 acres of land in Munstead, Surrey where she would build her home and used the garden as a trial ground, experimenting, extending her knowledge of plants and breeding her own improved varieties. The plant nursery followed, from which she was able to supply plants for her clients.

    Jekyll was a keen photographer and wrote many books and articles for Country Life and other gardening magazines. She was involved with some 400 garden commissions for clients in America, Europe and the UK. Her legacy continues to this day.

    Cherrill Sands is a garden historian with an MA in the Conservation of Gardens, Landscapes & Parks from the Architectural Association, London. She is the Historical Consultant for Painshill in Surrey and is currently acting curator of the archives. Cherrill is a former Chair of Surrey Gardens Trust and is on the Research and Recording team. As a freelance speaker Cherrill presents talks throughout the UK and abroad on garden history and theatre.

    This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5 – register on 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. A link to the recorded session (available for 1 week) will be sent shortly afterwards.

  • Thursday, October 13, 5:00 am – The 19th Century Garden – Painting the Victorian Garden, Online

    The fifth in a series of six online lectures from The Gardens Trust brings David Marsh back on October 13 to discuss Painting the Victorian Garden.

    The Victorian Age saw gardens emerge as a major artistic subject in their own right, perhaps hand in hand with the spread of interest in garden-making. A small number of artists even specialized in recording by their own choice not just the gardens of the rich on commission but much more ordinary gardens. This lecture will look at a range of painters and paintings who after decades of neglect are beginning to be recognized as significant figures in both art and garden history. We shall, in the words of Roy Strong, go ‘sauntering past immemorial yew hedges to linger over a herbaceous border before ascending ancient stone steps leading through a weathered iron gate to who knows where’. But we’ll also look inside the conservatory and at the reality behind the chocolate box cottage garden.

    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 on Eventbrite HERE.

  • Thursday, September 15 – The Challenges of the Victorian Working-class Garden, Online

    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. Labor 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 15 at 5 am Eastern time (a recording link will be sent, good for seven days, to watch at your leisure), Margaret Willes will start things off with The Challenges of the Victorian Working-class Garden.

    Margaret Willes spent her career in book publishing, latterly as the Publisher at the National Trust. On retirement, she took up writing on various aspects of cultural history. Her gardening books include The Making of the English Gardener: Plants, Books and Inspiration, 1560-1660 (Yale University Press, 2011), A Shakespearean Botanical (Bodleian Publishing, 2015), and The Gardens of the British Working Class (Yale University Press, 2014). She cultivates her own garden in Hackney.

    Her title is deliberately double edged. Gardening was indeed often a challenge to working-class men and women, who lacked spare time, money and access to sources of information, often denied them through lack of literacy. When asked to write a history of British working-class gardens, Ms. Willes also faced a challenge, though finding out about the 19th century was easier than for earlier times. She shall consider the sources that she found both useful and illuminating, from recreations of historic gardens to literature, photographs and oral history. She shall look at a wide range of what might be considered gardens, across Britain and Ireland, town and country, including shared spaces such as allotments. £5 each or all 6 for £30. To see the full schedule, and to register through Eventbrite, visit HERE