For almost 20 years, The Primrose Hill Lecture Series has been exploring, and debating, some of the most important issues we face as a modern society. It is now recognized as one of London’s leading spaces for bold, lively and informative talks. It is a non-profit organization run by volunteers: the money we raise goes towards valuable community work – including vital local services for the homeless, vulnerable young people and the elderly – and the upkeep of the building that hosts them. On Wednesday, July 2, enjoy a live virtual event with Matthew Pottage in conversation with Catherine Horwood on Green Spaces from Wisley to Regents Park. A virtual ticket is £10 and may be purchased through Eventbrite HERE. Ticket holders may watch after the event on YouTube after the event concludes, as well.
Matthew Pottage is the youngest-ever curator of the Royal Horticultural Society’s Wisley gardens. He has recently been appointed the first ever Head of Horticultural and Landscape Strategy for the Royal Parks where he will manage restoration projects across Richmond Park and Bushy Park, and create a new garden in Regent’s Park. An author and regular panelist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, he started at RHS Wisley as a trainee, progressing from Garden Manager to Curator in just 12 years. He has overseen the creation of the Exotic Garden, the Wisteria Walk, the Heather Landscape and the Clear Lake. He also has plenty of advice for patio gardeners.
Catherine Horwood is an author and historian specializing in horticultural and social history. Her books include Beth Chatto – A Life with Plants, Rose and Potted History – How Houseplants Took Over Our Homes. A long-term resident of Primrose Hill, she is a passionate gardener and has opened her gardens for the National Gardens Scheme. She is a trustee of the Camden Highline and is currently working on a biography of garden designer and author Penelope Hobhouse.
Celebrate the launch of The Gardens Trust book on Unforgettable Gardens with online talks from three of its contributors. Ticketholders will receive a code for a 30% discount on pre-orders of the book from Batsford, the publishers.
Unforgettable Gardens explores the history of British garden design through some of the most beautiful, intriguing, unusual and important gardens, parks and landscapes in the UK, with stunning photography accompanied by insightful profiles from leading garden historians and conservators.
Arranged chronologically, Unforgettable Gardens covers over 50 individual gardens, most of which are open to the public, which have been carefully selected to give an overview of British garden design from the 16th to the 20th century. Each century opens with an illuminating essay, exploring the wider changes in social context, taste and style in each period.
Curated by the Gardens Trust, the UK conservation charity dedicated to protecting, researching and celebrating historic gardens, this book is intended to inform, inspire and encourage everyone to enjoy, visit and support our national heritage of parks and gardens.
This ticket is for the entire series of 3 talks, or you may purchase a ticket for individual talks, costing £8 via the links below. (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75).
Ticket holders can join each session live and/or view a recording for up to 2 weeks afterwards. 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 2 weeks.
Week 1. 15th October: the Bobarts and Oxford Botanic Garden with India Cole. First in a series of 3 online lectures, £8 each or all 3 for £21 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75) Jacob Bobart the Elder (c.1599-1680) was the first keeper of the Oxford Physic Garden (as the Botanic Garden was originally known). Bobart’s early life is shrouded in mystery, and he is best remembered now for his supposed eccentricity, but he deserves recognition for establishing the garden’s original (impressive) plant collection with limited resources. His son, Jacob Bobart the Younger (1641-1719) later became the second superintendent of the garden and was crucial in its development and on-going success. Bobart the Elder’s other son, Tilleman (?-1735), gained a position working as a gardener at Blenheim Palace and then Hampton Court. This talk will give an overview of the Bobarts and their contributions to botany and horticulture, as well as considering how mercantile and commercial interests informed, influenced, and aligned with their pursuits of gardening and botany in the early-modern period.
Week 2. 22nd October: Margery Fish and East Lambrook Manor with Catherine Horwood. Second in a series of 3 online lectures, £8 each or all 3 for £21 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75) In 1980, John Sales, then Head of Gardens for the National Trust said of East Lambrook Manor, in Somerset, that ‘in the development of gardening in the second half of the twentieth century, no garden has yet had greater effect.’ This effect was to create a passion in Britain for ‘cottage garden’ planting brought to prominence through the enthusiasm and hard work of its creator, Margery Fish.
In this talk, Dr Catherine Horwood will look at how Margery Fish was able to take cottage gardening forward into becoming a national movement by telling her life story, and the legacy she left behind. As well as describing Fish’s work at East Lambrook Manor, she will reveal how her books, starting with We Made A Garden published in 1956, show Fish’s knowledge of plant material having amassed over 2,000 different species and cultivars from a network of horticultural friendships and wayside finds.
Week 3. 29th October: Castle Howard with Sally Jeffery. Last in a series of 3 online lectures, £8 each or all 3 for £21 (Gardens Trust members £6 each or all 3 for £15.75) The dramatic and varied landscape at Castle Howard was designed in the early eighteenth century by John Vanbrugh and Nicholas Hawksmoor with the active participation of the owner, Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle, and is among the most memorable and innovative ever created. As Horace Walpole wrote: ‘Nobody had informed me that at one view I should see a palace, a town, a fortified city, temples on high places, woods worthy of being each a metropolis of the Druids, the noblest lawns in the world fenced by half the horizon, and a mausoleum that would tempt one to be buried alive…’. Its main lines survive today, and its history can be further illuminated by surviving drawings and documents.
Created and re-created against the backdrop of cycle of war and peace with its accompanying social and economic impacts, the twentieth century garden pivots between tradition and modernism, informality and structure. The century sees a shift in both style and materials as concrete takes its place at the heart of new towns and spaces, whilst the country house garden struggles to survive and flourish again in a new order. Garden design increasingly reflects the needs of a wider range of society, whilst literary and artistic movements locate gardens at the very heart of the struggle for meaning in a world of change and aspiration. The Gardens Trust series reflects the continuity and change in garden design and understanding through the twentieth century highlighting specific gardens and designers and setting them within more contextual discussions. 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. Tickets £30 or £5 each. To purchase a ticket for the complete series through Eventbrite, visit HERE. The Gardens Trust has complete details on its website.
The March 16 talk with the excellent Catherine Horwood centers on Margery Fish. My personal favorite instructional quote from one of Ms. Fish’s books is “First, have your man dig a ditch.” I didn’t have the man to do such a thing, and it was an artifact of an age.
For many years, Margery Fish fought a lonely battle to revive the popularity of the cottage garden style of planting in an age of close-mown striped lawns and beds of formal floribunda and Hybrid Tea roses. But was cottage garden planting ever a true horticultural style or rather a romantic, bucolic myth? In this talk, Dr Catherine Horwood will look at what constitutes this type of planting, where it originated from and how it links to other gardening styles. She will consider how Margery Fish was able to take it forward into becoming a national movement through her life story, and the legacy she left behind.
Dr Catherine Horwood is an experienced speaker and the author of many books on social history including Gardening Women. Their Stories from 1600 to the Present (Virago, 2010) and Potted History. How houseplants took over our homes (Pimpernel Press, 2020). Her biography Beth Chatto. A Life with Plants(Pimpernel Press, 2019) was selected as the European Garden Book of the Year in 2020. She is currently working on a biography of Lady Dorothy Nevill.
The rose is the world’s favorite flower and always has been. It is the greatest floral symbol of love and romance the world over and touches people’s hearts at many points in their lives: the flower most often chosen to celebrate significant milestones, such as weddings or anniversaries, and to mark births and deaths. This talk will trace the journey of the rose across the centuries, from battles to bouquets, charting its botanical, religious, literary and artistic history. Dr Catherine Horwood will explore the story of what makes this botanical family so loved: from Cleopatra’s rose-petal-filled bed to Nijinsky’s Spectre de la rose ballet; from the highly-prized attar of rose oil so believed by the ancient Persians to top-brand perfume labels today; and from Shakespearean myths about the Wars of the Roses to the significance of Queen Elizabeth’s I’s embroidered dresses.
Dr Catherine Horwood is an experienced speaker and the author of many books on social history including Gardening Women: Their Stories from 1600 to the Present(Virago, 2010) and Potted History – How Houseplants Took Over Our Homes (Pimpernel Press, 2020). Her biography Beth Chatto: A Life with Plants (Pimpernel Press, 2019) was selected as the European Garden Book of the Year in 2020. She is also author of Rose(Reaktion Books, 2018), which was described by Gardens Illustrated as ‘a clearly-written, information-packed review of the historical, religious, cultural and artistic significance of the world’s favourite flower’.
