Caroline Holmes

Wednesday, March 26, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Artists’ Gardens: Gardens of the North American Impressionists

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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.

North American Impressionists were inspired by what was happening in European art. In 1872 American artist William Merritt Chase told the New York Times ‘My God, I would rather go to Europe than go to Heaven!’ Philadelphia’s 1876 World’s Fair Centennial International Exhibition inspired the quest for ‘olden tyme’ plants and poetry, fulfilled by Childe Hassam’s muse, the poet Celia Thaxter on Appledore Island. Parallels can be drawn between Monet at Giverny and the gardens created by John Henry Twachtman at Greenwich, Connecticut and the Cos Cob and Old Lyme Art Colonies in the same state. In 1893 Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition which featured the mural Primitive Woman by Mary Fairchild MacMonnies facing Modern Woman by Mary Cassatt. Gardens and children were ingeniously combined by Cassatt and Canadian Impressionist Helen MacNicoll. Tired of narrow artistic traditions at home, three generations of American artists including Frederick Frieseke travelled to Monet’s Giverny to live, or lodge at the Hotel Baudy.

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. Image: detail, On the Terrace by John Henry Twatchman (c.1890-1900), Smithsonian American Art Museum, public domain

Thursday, December 8, 11:00 am – 12:30 pm – The Folly & The Ivy, Online

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Caroline Holmes takes us on an entertaining tour of garden follies with intellectual gymnastics, jaw dropping extravagance or private vision. Cryptic, fantastical, allegorical, innovative, romantic and modernist from the Renaissance to Charles Hamilton’s Painshill, into Bomarzo’s ‘Sacro Bosco’, an ocean of shell grottoes and finally a ‘blotto grotto’ in Herefordshire. The program is on December 8 beginning at 11, and is sponsored by the Oxfordshire Gardens Trust. £5.00. Register HERE.


Caroline Holmes is a lecturer, broadcaster, author and consultant designer. She is Academic Tutor for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education and also lectures for various organizations internationally, and on tours sponsored by the US Institute of Classical Architecture and Art in France. In 2019 she was keynote speaker at the International Water Lily Symposium at Giverny based on the research for her last book Water Lilies and and Bory Latour-Marliac – the genius behind Monet’s Water Lilies. She is the author of 12 books, here latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English Garden Celebrated. Her RHS Herbs for the Gourmet Gardener was finalist in the 2014 Garden Media Guild Reference Book of the Year Award. Design consultancies include Tudor-inspired gardens for a Humanist Renaissance ‘journey’ around Notre Dame de Calais, 16th-18th-century orchards and gardens with modern operatic borders at High House for the Royal Opera House, and the poisons planting in The Alnwick Garden. Caroline co-presented Glorious Gardens on Anglia TV and has presented several series for BBC Radio 4. She received the Gertrude B Foster Award for Excellence in Herbal Literature in 2011 and the Elizabeth Crisp Rea Award in 2017 from the Herb Society of America. Her own house and garden have been featured in Country Homes and Interiors, Country Life, Country Living, Garden News and The English Garden and filmed for BBC and Anglia TV. www.horti-history.com

Monday, November 28, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Paradise on Porcelain – Catherine the Great’s Green Frog Service

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The Gardens Trust’s second series exploring how gardens and flowers have influenced and inspired other arts and crafts turns to ceramics. This lustrous material was invented centuries ago in China and has long been regarded as rare, beautiful and highly sought after, and by the 18th Century the secret of making and firing this material had been discovered in Europe. Porcelain provided an ideal background for painted decoration, and botanical designs and landscapes provided a rich source of inspiration. Three of our talks provide a brief chronology of floral images and themes on porcelain from the symbolism of Chinese peonies to the botanical depictions of ‘Sir Hans Sloane’s plants’. We also look at the eighteenth century fashion for illustrating topographical views on ceramics, including the iconic Green Frog Service and the depiction of the circuit created at Hafod, as well as other picturesque views, all of which have provided objects of great beauty, usefulness and prestige, as well as being an invaluable tool for the modern researcher.

This ticket is for the entire course of 6 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual session, costing £5 via the link HERE. 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.

In 1762 Catherine II acceded to the Russian throne. Within 10 years, as the taste for the French baroque moved towards a more ‘natural’ approach to landscaping, employing English gardeners had become all the rage. Catherine wrote to Voltaire: I love English gardens to the point of folly; serpentine lines, gentle slopes, marshes turned into lakes, islands of dry ground, and I deeply despise straight lines. … in a word, my plantomania is dominated by anglomania. Negotiations were opened with Josiah Wedgwood to create a 50-person set of 90 pieces for dinner and dessert in creamware paste (rather than the finer porcelain). Her Anglomania was pampered by some 1,222 views of castles, abbeys, stately homes and gardens, and scenes of town and country not forgetting natural curiosities in Britain. Each piece had a green frog device for her ‘English’ residence on the road between St Petersburg and Tsarskoe Selo which she affectionately called La Grenouilliere, thus it has become known as the Green Frog Service. It is a marvelous product of Enlightenment and Industry in eighteenth century England. Most pieces are in The Hermitage.

Caroline Holmes is an experienced and accomplished lecturer working for a wide range of organizations including leading tour and cruise operators. She is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and is also a Course Director for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her own gardens are open to the public and have featured in many magazine articles and on television in both Britain and Japan. She is author of 12 books, her latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English garden celebrated (2021).

Tuesday, November 8, 5:00 am – 6:30 am – Garden Designs Around The French Riviera: Heart and Soul

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On November 8 enjoy the third in the Gardens Trust series on gardens of the French Riviera. This ticket is for this individual session and costs £5, or you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 4 sessions at a cost of £16 via the link 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.

This lecture takes us from the Impressionist desire to catch light effects with a focus on Renoir at Les Collettes where he saved its ancient olive groves and entertained fellow artists. In direct contrast Beatrice d’Ephrussi represented all Renoir disliked, she dynamited part of Cap Ferrat to create a world of colourful, geometric gardens, hiring and firing a legion of architects and gardeners. The landscape of the Fondation Maeght (below) presents and represents the heart and soul of contemporary art and sculpture, a canvas of light and shade that is at the same time an inspiring setting. If contemporary art serves its purpose it should evoke excitement (or horror) and excite your critical faculties which leads us into the contrasting studio gardens of Arman and Bernar Vernet. The former by invitation and the latter still his atelier and inspiration.

Caroline Holmes is an experienced and accomplished lecturer working for a wide range of organisations including leading tour and cruise operators. She is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and is also a Course Director for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her own gardens are open to the public and have featured in many magazine articles and on television in both Britain and Japan. Since the 1990s she has been researching, writing about and lecturing on the Riviera. Caroline is author of 12 books, her latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English garden celebrated (2021).

Tuesday, October 25, 5:00 am – 6:30 am – Garden Designs Around the French Riviera: Modernism and the Counterblast to White, Online

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The Gardens Trust will offer a four part online series exploring contrasts, conflicts and harmonies in French Riviera garden design on Tuesdays, beginning October 25. The live webinar begins at 10 British Standard Time, which is really, really early in the morning, but a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session ends and will be available for one week. The registration link HERE is for the entire course of 4 sessions, for £16 through Eventbrite, or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £5. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk.

This is a series that moves inland from the coast but never far from Mediterranean blues whether from the sky or the sea. Fertility was created in these ancient landscapes by forming terraces or restanques which can still be seen planted with vines, olives, fruit or vegetables. The gardens that surround many of the villas we will explore have used these terraces to decorative and productive effect. Renoir understood that you don’t paint the leaves on olive trees but the play of light between them, Mediterranean light has inspired artists in every sphere. We can appropriate Homer and the Odyssey to take a journey from this landscape’s classical roots to its challenging contemporary art by way of impressionism and surrealism. The tastes are eclectic and the plantsmanship glorious set within an array of architecture and arboreal canopies.

We set the scene in the first session in the 1920s with Comte Charles de Noailles and his wife Marie-Laure who were painted by Picasso following their marriage in 1923. They commissioned Robert Mallet-Stevens to build a summer Modernist villa in the hills above Hyères, an innovative modernist response linking the gleaming white house and garden – the Villa Noailles. The gardens were designed by Gabriel Guevrekian. Edith Wharton was a neighbour and good friend to both the Noailles and Lawrence Johnston. In contrast writer, designer, caricaturist, decorator, painter, ironworker, landscaper and French lithographer Ferdinand Bac argued that architecture should look to the colours of the ancient Mediterranean cultures. From 1919-1927 he designed his masterpiece across 6 hectares at Les Colombieres above Menton for the Ladan-Bockairy’s. From 1995 the house and gardens were restored by Michael and Margaret Likierman.

Presenter Caroline Holmes is an experienced and accomplished lecturer working for a wide range of organisations including leading tour and cruise operators. She is an Accredited Lecturer of The Arts Society and is also a Course Director for the University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education. Her own gardens are open to the public and have featured in many magazine articles and on television in both Britain and Japan. Since the 1990s she has been researching, writing about and lecturing on the Riviera. Caroline is author of 12 books, her latest being Where the wildness pleases – the English garden celebrated (2021).

Friday, March 4, 5:00 am (but recording link will be sent) – The Linwood Lecture, Online

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The Gardens Trust is delighted to be working with Linwood Fabrics to offer a treat of a lecture from garden historian Caroline Holmes, looking at the English gardens and their stories that inspire a 21st century textiles designer. What do the words ‘the English garden’ evoke for you? Flowers, arbors, horticultural abundance and voluptuous style? Five key examples of such Englishness inspired Ella Richards to create five glorious designs for Linwood Fabrics. Who and what are they? Gertrude Jekyll, Hestercombe, Albertine, Vita Sackville-West and Kitty Lloyd Jones. Five defining names in, out and about the long borders of English garden history. Caroline Holmes will prime the backdrop and weave their narrative before Ella introduces the patterns they inspired.

For 27 years Linwood has put excellence at the heart of everything they do, from the quality of their designs to their level of service. In that rather English way, they straddle the worlds of creativity and innovation to produce distinctive collections of fabrics and wallpapers.

The in-house design team draws its inspiration from textile archives, museums, and the natural world to create contemporary and classic prints, weaves, and wallpapers. Each collection is carefully crafted, and designs are still drawn and painted by hand.

They’ve chosen to create a lecture in conjunction with the Gardens Trust because of the shared appreciation of the British landscape. The Trust by its tireless work on conservation and preservation, and Linwood through its celebration of classic plants on its fabrics and wallpapers. Tickets are £5. Register through Eventbrite HERE.

Friday, February 25, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Shear Genius and Ripping Yarns

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The legendary woodland of the High Weald conceals and reveals an array of architecture, settings and horticultural feasts which is why Caroline Holmes chose it for her book Where the Wildness Pleases – the English Garden Celebrated. Published in July 2021 (view here), it has been well received worldwide. Watch and listen to Caroline via Zoom in this celebratory talk that will not only delve into many gardens to reveal their pleasing details but raise funds for the Kent and Sussex Garden Trusts as well as the National Garden Scheme.

Amongst the settings there are castles such as Hever, Penshurst, Scotney; rambling English country houses like Batemans, Borde Hill, Gravetye Manor, Great Dixter, Hole Park, Leonardslee, Nymans, Stonewall, Wakehurst Place; Wealden homes like Balmoral Cottage, Falconhurst, Hammerwood Park, High Beeches, Smallhythe Place and Standen. The list goes on with more properties offering contrasting inspirations in their dramatic landscapes and glorious plantings.

This ticket costs £5 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. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/where-the-wildness-pleases-shear-genius-and-ripping-yarns-tickets-169776852135