Boston Flora

Tag: Essex Gardens Trust

  • Wednesdays, August 13, 20, & 27, 7:30 am – 8:15 am Eastern – Sketch & Scribe to Celebrate Parks & Gardens

    Join Essex Gardens Trust’s Writer in Residence, Siobhan Pierce and Artist in Residence, Jane Frederick for three FREE exciting creative online sessions to celebrate your favorite parks and gardens.

    These fun and friendly practical workshops are designed for you to have a go at writing and image making to develop your confidence and enhance your skills whilst celebrating a treasured garden, park or green space that you know and love. Siobhan and Jane will help you nurture your memories and provide you with inspiration and the practical tools to stimulate your imagination through drawing, collage and prose.

    Your free ticket includes access to all three lunchtime sessions:

    Wednesday, August 13, Glimpses of the Garden: Building Your Favorite Garden with Drawing and Collage; Wednesday, August 20, Sensory Garden: Exploring Your Favorite Garden Through Word Play; and Wednesday, August 27, Reimagined Garden: Playfully Combining Image and Text.

    Suitable for complete beginners, the workshops may be attended individually or as a group and are suitable for 7 years and up.

    For a suggested materials list, and to sign up, visit Eventbrite UK HERE.

  • Saturday, March 19, 6:30 am (but recording link sent) – Garden Hunting in China, Online

    The Essex Gardens Trust, in association with the Gardens Trust, presents Garden Hunting in China with Timothy Walker on March 19.

    China, with its abundant variety of both sophisticated and traditional horticultural methods, has long been recognized, not only for its lovely gardens, but as a serious contributor to global horticulture and plant conservation. In his talk, Timothy Walker will give us an entertaining and fascinating view over centuries of gardens and gardening in China. We will be taken on a tour of some of the 35, uniquely beautiful sites he visited while on a seven week Churchill Traveling Fellowship tour in that country. As a plant scientist and gardener, he will enrich our visit with his own experiences and extensive botanical knowledge

    Today, as the world warms, plant and seed conservation becomes increasingly important. In his talk, Timothy will also introduce us to how modern gardens in this fascinating country are contributing to global conservation by successfully safeguarding the thousands of plant species in China. Timothy Walker is a renowned lecturer, botanist and gardener. From 1988 to 2014, he was the director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden & Arboretum; during this period, their show gardens won four gold medals and a number of silver medals at the Chelsea Flower Shows. Since 2014 he has been a College lecturer and tutor in Plant Sciences at Somerville College Oxford. His particular interests are euphorbias, pollination, and plant conservation. For more information on Timothy, please visit his website Timothy Walker – horticultural lecturer. £5 Register through Eventbrite HERE.

  • Saturday, October 9, 9:30 am – 11:00 am – Essex Gardens Trust 25th Anniversary Talk: A Tale of Two Gardens, Online

    This year, Essex Gardens Trust has been commemorating 25 years since it was founded and is delighted that Matthew Wilson, award-winning garden and landscape designer will be adding to the celebrations by giving the Trust’s ‘Unforgettable Gardens’ Anniversary Talk, “A Tale of Two Gardens”. Matthew has a strong connection with Essex, having worked in the county for several years, most notably as Curator of ‘Hyde Hall’, the fabulous, 360-acre RHS Garden near Chelmsford. Matthew also helped to transform the seriously neglected landscape around Castle Hedingham, a medieval Historic House in the north of the county, into a glorious, wedding-perfect setting while working on Channel 4’s TV series, ‘Landscape Man’.

    Following on from RHS Hyde Hall, Matthew relocated to Yorkshire, still working for the Royal Horticultural Society, where he became Head of Site and Curator of RHS Harlow Carr. In “A Tale of Two Gardens”, Matthew will relive for us his experience of gardening in these two, very different locations. The contrast between the semi-arid conditions of Essex and the cooler, damper climes of Yorkshire could hardly present a greater challenge for a gardener. Matthew will describe how he adapted to the advantages and disadvantages of each site, creatively using a wide range of design and planting solutions to meet and overcome the challenges. We will learn how this led to iconic garden features such as the award-winning Dry Garden at Hyde Hall and the much-photographed Main Borders and Winter Walk at Harlow Carr.

    Today, Matthew runs his own successful garden design and horticultural consultancy, with projects ranging from small urban gardens to master planning of estates, both in the UK and overseas. He has designed two show gardens at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. His first, for the Royal Bank of Canada in 2015, focused on living sustainably and won a Silver Gilt medal at the show. Its design included an arid, zero irrigation ‘dry garden’ and a water harvesting/storage zone. In 2016, Matthew’s second garden at the Chelsea Flower Show was sponsored by ‘Welcome to Yorkshire’ (the official Yorkshire tourism agency) and called ‘God’s Own County – A Garden for Yorkshire’. The design was inspired by the East Window at York Minster and won the highly regarded People’s Choice Award.

    Matthew is also a popular broadcaster, both on TV and Radio, and widely known for his contribution to Radio 4’s ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’. He is a lecturer and writer, contributing to gardening publications such as BBC Gardeners World Magazine and Gardens Illustrated, as well as to The Financial Times. He is listed in House & Garden magazine, in 2021, as one of the top 50 garden designers in the UK.

    Tickets are Five Pounds, available through Eventbrite by clicking HERE Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session, available for one week, will be sent shortly afterwards.

  • Saturday, April 17, 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm – University of Oxford Botanic Garden: 400 Years of Gardening and Botany, Online

    Essex Gardens Trust, in association with The Gardens Trust, presents an online talk with Timothy Walker on Saturday 17th April @ 5.30 pm Eastern Time. Tickets £5, available through Eventbrite by clicking HERE.

    The University of Oxford can lay claim to the oldest botanic garden in Britain, now in its 400th year. Since 1621, the Oxford Botanic Garden has stood on the banks of the River Cherwell in the centre of Oxford. It has evolved from a collection of medicinal herbs for seventeenth century physicians into the most compact, diverse collection of plants in the world, where 4,500 species can be seen in its 4½ acres, which support teaching and research at Oxford and beyond. This glorious garden is surrounded by a high stone wall, set off by a lovely gateway, and within which there are many ornamental trees and shrubs as well as rectangular ‘order’ beds and a wealth of other features.

    Timothy Walker is a former director of the University of Oxford Botanic Garden & Harcourt Arboretum, having started as General Foreman. He is a lecturer, botanist, gardener, Fellow of the Linnaean Society, and author of Plant Conservation; Plants: A very short Introduction; and the RHS handbook on Euphorbias.

    Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days prior to the start of the talk, and a link to the recorded session, available for one week, will be sent shortly afterwards.