Boston Flora

Tag: Gardens Trust

  • Tuesday, February 20, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Ancient Roots: Of Cabbages and Kings, Roman Kitchen Gardens, Online

    Join The Gardens Trust and Gillian Hovell and discover how the ancient Romans set the seeds of the shape and uses of our modern gardens. Explore the truly ancient, vibrant and fascinating origins of our personal garden spaces and of the grandeur of public gardens. Find out why, if the Romans could have had ‘House and Garden’ magazines, they would have reveled in them! See gardens anew through ancient kitchen gardens, mythological stories, attitudes to wildlife and public parks that all still flourish in our green spaces. Then stroll through the gardens of Roman Pompeii, now blossoming with new insights. This second session on February 20 will follow the origens of Roman Kitchen Gardens.

    The surprisingly not-so-humble cabbage and gardens fit for royal kings were very real themes in the kitchen gardens of Ancient Romans. It’s a spicy, fruitful and fragrant story of a society in which your kitchen garden said far more about you than you might imagine … ingredients (rich and poor) were once tied up with morality and virtue. As the Roman influence grew, taking gardens into new lands, Roman philosophers, poets and garden experts wrote of these private supplies as big business, a personal medicine cabinet and a feast for all. Discover what they grew in their kitchen gardens 2,000 years ago and why, as well as their varied uses. We peer into the ancient growing of vegetables and fruit across the Roman Empire and we see the produce of our gardens from a very Roman viewpoint. Has it changed much in 2,000 years, or is there a timelessness here, despite some very culturally-specific beliefs?

    After graduating with 2-1 (Hons) in Latin and Ancient History from Exeter University, Gillian Hovell worked in BBC Television and became an award-winning freelance writer, author, public speaker & broadcaster in the media and online. As an independent expert in the ancient world she specialises in archaeology, prehistory and in the Greek and Roman eras. She is a lecturer at York University and can be seen and heard on TV & Radio.

    Gillian has excavated at major sites in the UK and Europe (hence ‘The Muddy Archaeologist’) and she shares her expertise and her passion with diverse audiences in the UK and internationally. For history and archaeology are everywhere, and they add colour, depth and meaning to every aspect our lives today.

    Her series of The Muddy Archaeologist Online Courses enables you to explore ancient history, archaeology and Latin with her at any time. An ever-growing collection is available, and they can also be found on Gillian’s website here.

    This ticket (REGISTER HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for o the entire course of 6 sessions at a cost of £42 via the link here. [Gardens Trust members may purchase tickets at £31.50 for the series or £6 each talk]. 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.

  • Wednesday, February 14, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Women’s Writing and Construction of Gender in the Medieval Enclosed Garden, Online

    Images of enclosed gardens are everywhere apparent in medieval literature – from biblical narrative to secular love lyric, to adventurous romance tale. This Gardens Trust February 14 online lecture, however, will engage with its representation in literary works written by, for or about women in order to demonstrate the powerful, gendered dynamics inherent to this multivalent space, a gendered representation that often afforded women more agency than traditional representation normally permitted.

    Lecturer Liz Herbert McAvoy is Professor Emerita in Medieval Literature at Swansea University and Honorary Senior Research Associate at the University of Bristol. Her primary research interests lie in the areas of texts written by, for and about medieval women; female anchoritism and other forms of enclosure; the medieval garden; and female mysticism. She has written widely on all these topics, including three recent books published by Boydell & Brewer: Women’s Literary Cultures in the Global Middle Ages (2023), edited with Sue Niebrzydowski, Vicki Kay Price and Kathryn Loveridge; and Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages (2023), edited with Cate Gunn and Naoe Kukita Yoshikawa. This talk is based on the findings in her latest monograph, The Enclosed Garden and the Medieval Religious Imaginary (2021).

    Ticket price 8 pounds, through Eventbrite. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the talk (If you do not receive this link please contact us), and a link to the recorded session, available for a week, will be sent shortly afterwards. Register at www.eventbrite.co.uk

  • Tuesday, February 13, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – Ancient Roots: How the Romans Set the Seeds of Garden Design

    Join The Gardens Trust and Gillian Hovell and discover how the ancient Romans set the seeds of the shape and uses of our modern gardens. Explore the truly ancient, vibrant and fascinating origins of our personal garden spaces and of the grandeur of public gardens. Find out why, if the Romans could have had ‘House and Garden’ magazines, they would have reveled in them! See gardens anew through ancient kitchen gardens, mythological stories, attitudes to wildlife and public parks that all still flourish in our green spaces. Then stroll through the gardens of Roman Pompeii, now blossoming with new insights. This first session on February 13 will follow the blossoming of the amazing 2,000-year-old story of why we have gardens at all.

    This is a fascinating tale of how they grew in the Roman world to become so much more than a productive space by a house. As the Empire expanded and the ordinary people aspired to have show-off homes, the gardens rapidly became a work of art in themselves. Now, for the first time in history, they became the personal creative spaces we know and love today. You’ll be astonished at how much the Romans have shaped our modern gardens today: from practical suppliers of food to homely open spaces and grand vistas and landscapes. They all have fascinating ancient roots that reveal how gardens came to be our own social, spiritual and physical spaces. Greenery, space, status, pleasure and fun, places of togetherness and of meditative solitude … all these aspects have truly ancient roots.

    After graduating with 2-1 (Hons) in Latin and Ancient History from Exeter University, Gillian Hovell worked in BBC Television and became an award-winning freelance writer, author, public speaker & broadcaster in the media and online. As an independent expert in the ancient world she specializes in archaeology, prehistory and in the Greek and Roman eras. She is a lecturer at York University and can be seen and heard on TV & Radio.

    Gillian has excavated at major sites in the UK and Europe (hence ‘The Muddy Archaeologist’) and she shares her expertise and her passion with diverse audiences in the UK and internationally. For history and archaeology are everywhere, and they add colour, depth and meaning to every aspect our lives today.

    Her series of The Muddy Archaeologist Online Courses enables you to explore ancient history, archaeology and Latin with her at any time. An ever-growing collection is available, and they can also be found on Gillian’s website here.

    This ticket (REGISTER HERE) is for this individual session and costs £8, and you may purchase tickets for o the entire course of 6 sessions at a cost of £42 via the link here. [Gardens Trust members may purchase tickets at £31.50 for the series or £6 each talk]. 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.

  • Tuesday, January 30 and Tuesday, February 6, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern (but recorded) – John Singer Sargent and Gardens, Online

    John Singer Sargent (1856-1925) was an American artist, born in Florence and trained in Paris, who spent most of his working life in London. He is best known as the portrait painter of the international elite, where his work captures the style, glamour and anxiety of a society on the cusp of change. These two Gardens Trust talks on January 30 and February 6 will concentrate not on Sargent’s portraiture, but on the studies of gardens and flowers he painted in the English countryside in the mid 1880s, his experiments with Impressionist light and brushwork, and a series of later works which express the beauty and melancholy he found in historic European gardens.

    Elaine Kilmurray is Research Director of the John Singer Sargent catalogue raisonné, and co-author of the 9 published volumes of the catalogue (Yale University Press, 1998-2016). She has co-curated exhibitions of Sargent’s work in London, the United States and Italy, and has written and lectured internationally on the artist and related subjects.

    This ticket link is for the course of 2 sessions. or you may purchase a ticket for individual sessions, costing £8. [Gardens Trust members may purchase tickets at £10.50 for the series or £6 each talk]. The purchase is through Eventbrite. Attendees will be sent a Zoom link 2 days (and again a few hours) prior to the start of the first talk), and a link to the recorded session will be sent shortly after each session and will be available for 1 week.

    The first talk on January 30 is entitled In an English Country Garden. This talk will consider Sargent’s paintings done in the English countryside during the summers and early autumns of 1885 and 1886, concentrating on the creation of the most important work of those two painting campaigns, Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose (Tate Britain, London). It will include comparisons with gardens painted by Impressionist artists, and refer to the symbolism of the relevant flowers, to the motif of the garden and to aspects of contemporary garden design. The February 6 talk is entitled The Romance of European Gardens. In the early years of the twentieth century, Sargent traveled extensively in Europe, painting obsessively. The historic gardens of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Corfu were one of his favorite subjects. Their appeal lay in aesthetic beauty, in the dialogue between art and nature, sculpture and vegetation they represented, but also in the sense of time passing and continuity embodied in them. The talk will look at Sargent’s distinctive interpretations in oil and watercolor and the ways in which they reflect contemporary sensibility regarding gardens and garden architecture.

    Image: Boboli Gardens, c.1906, Brooklyn Museum of Art, USA

  • Tuesday, December 5, 5:00 am – 6:30 am – American Moderns: Land Art and Landscape, Online

    The study of landscape design is essentially a study of human culture; the way people shape their environment reflects a sense of their place in the world. Traditionally western landscape design has veered between the Classic and Romantic traditions, pitting European formality against English naturalism. During the twentieth century however, these stylistic polarities gave way to new concerns as designers looked increasingly to the historical, political and cultural context of their sites. As the New World was often in the forefront of this movement, this Gardens Trust four-lecture series on American Moderns will examine key landscapes from the two continents, exploring the designs which pushed the boundaries of the profession by pioneering new approaches, reflecting new philosophies and challenging assumptions about the form, use and meaning of landscape. You may purchase tickets for the entire series through Eventbrite for £16, or individual sessions costing £5, at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/american-moderns-tickets-670807291667 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.

    Week Four on December 5 is Land Art and Landscape. In the 1960s the boundary between landscape design and contemporary art was breached in a movement known as Land Art. While reacting against the commercialization of the art market, Land Artists tended to be politically active, reflecting the ideology of the budding ecology movement and railing against the increasing disengagement of the arts from social issues. Often choosing inaccessible locations and using the site itself as their canvas, Land Artists used the fabric of the earth – water, soil, rock and vegetation – as their primary materials, while paying homage to the historical uses of the site. As Land Artists depended largely on wealthy patrons or private foundations to create their monumental – and often monumentally expensive – projects, the movement faltered during the economic downturn of the 1970s and was further undermined by the co-opting of the works by commercial galleries. Nonetheless Land Artists such as Maya Lin, Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt and Michael Heizer continue to create extraordinary landscapes – wave fields, spiral jetties, lightning fields, and whole concrete mega-cities – which challenge our idea of landscape design.

    Speaker Katie Campbell is a writer and garden historian. She lectures widely, has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham universities; she writes for various publications, and leads art and garden tours. Her most recent book, Cultivating the Renaissance (Routledge, 2021) , explores the evolution of Renaissance ideas and aesthetics through the Medici Tuscan villas. Her previous book, British Gardens in Time (Quarto, 2014), accompanied the BBC television series. Earlier works include Paradise of Exiles (Francis Lincoln, 2009), looking at the late nineteenth century Anglo-American garden-makers in Florence, Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design (Frances Lincoln, 2006) and Policies and Pleasaunces (Barn Elms, 2007), a Guide to Scotland’s Gardens.

  • Tuesday, November 21, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern – American Moderns: Guided by Nature, Online

    The study of landscape design is essentially a study of human culture; the way people shape their environment reflects a sense of their place in the world. Traditionally western landscape design has veered between the Classic and Romantic traditions, pitting European formality against English naturalism. During the twentieth century however, these stylistic polarities gave way to new concerns as designers looked increasingly to the historical, political and cultural context of their sites. As the New World was often in the forefront of this movement, this Gardens Trust four-lecture series on American Moderns will examine key landscapes from the two continents, exploring the designs which pushed the boundaries of the profession by pioneering new approaches, reflecting new philosophies and challenging assumptions about the form, use and meaning of landscape. You may purchase tickets for the entire series through Eventbrite for £16, or individual sessions costing £5, at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/american-moderns-tickets-670807291667 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.

    Week Two on November 21 is Guided by Nature. Inspired, perhaps, by the Aboriginal people whom they largely eradicated, Americans appear more inclined than their European forebears to accommodate rather than eradicate nature. From the Transcendentalist writers and Hudson River painters of the nineteenth century to the Nature poets and photographers of the twentieth century, Americans often find in their wilderness a manifestation of the divine. This lecture will examine the work of such mid-century designers as Frank Lloyd Wright, Lawrence Halprin, Richard Haag and Isamu Noguchi, to demonstrate how they attempted to evolve a new relationship with the natural world. In such varied projects as private retreats, urban parks and obsolete industrial sites, these designers drew design ideas from nature while working with natural processes to construct their effects.

    Speaker Katie Campbell is a writer and garden historian. She lectures widely, has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham universities; she writes for various publications, and leads art and garden tours. Her most recent book, Cultivating the Renaissance (Routledge, 2021) , explores the evolution of Renaissance ideas and aesthetics through the Medici Tuscan villas. Her previous book, British Gardens in Time (Quarto, 2014), accompanied the BBC television series. Earlier works include Paradise of Exiles (Francis Lincoln, 2009), looking at the late nineteenth century Anglo-American garden-makers in Florence, Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design (Frances Lincoln, 2006) and Policies and Pleasaunces (Barn Elms, 2007), a Guide to Scotland’s Gardens.

  • Tuesday, November 28, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern – American Moderns: Art as Inspiration, Online

    The study of landscape design is essentially a study of human culture; the way people shape their environment reflects a sense of their place in the world. Traditionally western landscape design has veered between the Classic and Romantic traditions, pitting European formality against English naturalism. During the twentieth century however, these stylistic polarities gave way to new concerns as designers looked increasingly to the historical, political and cultural context of their sites. As the New World was often in the forefront of this movement, this Gardens Trust four-lecture series on American Moderns will examine key landscapes from the two continents, exploring the designs which pushed the boundaries of the profession by pioneering new approaches, reflecting new philosophies and challenging assumptions about the form, use and meaning of landscape. You may purchase tickets for the entire series through Eventbrite for £16, or individual sessions costing £5, at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/american-moderns-tickets-670807291667 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.

    Week Three on November 28 is Art as Inspiration. While some designers found inspiration in the primal forces and biomorphic forms of the natural world, others looked to the often-radical ideas of contemporary art movements. Drawing on such diverse features as the overlapping planes of cubism, the multiple axes of vorticism, the startling colors of pop art, De Stijl’s paring down of color and form, the simplicity and spirituality of abstract expressionism and the deliberate ephemerality of installation art, designers such as Fletcher Steele, Dan Kiley, Robert Irwin and Martha Schwartz pioneered new approaches to landscape design.

    Speaker Katie Campbell is a writer and garden historian. She lectures widely, has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham universities; she writes for various publications, and leads art and garden tours. Her most recent book, Cultivating the Renaissance (Routledge, 2021) , explores the evolution of Renaissance ideas and aesthetics through the Medici Tuscan villas. Her previous book, British Gardens in Time (Quarto, 2014), accompanied the BBC television series. Earlier works include Paradise of Exiles (Francis Lincoln, 2009), looking at the late nineteenth century Anglo-American garden-makers in Florence, Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design (Frances Lincoln, 2006) and Policies and Pleasaunces (Barn Elms, 2007), a Guide to Scotland’s Gardens.

  • Wednesday November 15, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm – Head Gardeners at Historic Sites: Kate White at Branklyn Gardens, Online

    The Gardens Trust Wednesday webinar series this Autumn will focus on head gardeners working at historic sites. This is the first lecture of the second set of five talks, exploring how individual head gardeners are balancing the heritage of their site, the wishes of its owner(s) and their own interests and experience. We’ll hear about the role from both seasoned head gardeners and those more recently appointed. Learn about the challenges they face, including climate change, as well as the joys of horticulture and heritage. you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £20 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.

    Branklyn Garden near Perth in Scotland was developed in the 1920s and has an emphasis on Himalayan flora. Occupying only two acres, but with over 6000 current plant accessions, Branklyn is a garden packed with interest throughout the year. This talk will look at the challenges and opportunities of managing such a diverse plant collection and explore the history of this unique place within the portfolio of National Trust for Scotland gardens.

    Kate White is the new head gardener at Branklyn. She originally studied Crop and Soil Science and worked in organic agriculture for seven years before deciding to change careers. Armed with qualifications in horticulture and garden history from RBGE, she has taken on various roles, including as Head Gardener at Cowden Japanese Garden and Bannockburn House Trust, and also works in adult horticultural education and volunteer training.

  • Tuesday, November 14, 5:00 am – 6:30 am Eastern – American Masters: Landscape and National Identity, Online

    The study of landscape design is essentially a study of human culture; the way people shape their environment reflects a sense of their place in the world. Traditionally western landscape design has veered between the Classic and Romantic traditions, pitting European formality against English naturalism. During the twentieth century however, these stylistic polarities gave way to new concerns as designers looked increasingly to the historical, political and cultural context of their sites. As the New World was often in the forefront of this movement, this Gardens Trust four-lecture series on American Moderns will examine key landscapes from the two continents, exploring the designs which pushed the boundaries of the profession by pioneering new approaches, reflecting new philosophies and challenging assumptions about the form, use and meaning of landscape. You may purchase tickets for the entire series through Eventbrite for £16, or individual sessions costing £5, at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/american-moderns-tickets-670807291667 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.

    Week One on November 14 is Landscape and National Identity. Geoffrey Jellicoe once claimed that ‘All man-made environment is a projection of our psyche, whether individual or collective’. This lecture will explore how designers from different parts of the Americas – the Brazilian Roberto Burle Marx, the Mexican Luis Barragan and the American Thomas Church – used gardens and landscapes to shape and promote ideas of national identity. Wary of the European traditions of their country’s former colonial rulers, these designers looked to indigenous flora, building materials, architecture, agricultural methods, cultural traditions and mythologies to establish distinct, new approaches which reflect the national and local character of their sites. Image: Sítio Roberto Burle Marx, Rio de Janeiro. Halley Pacheco de Oliveira

    Speaker Katie Campbell is a writer and garden historian. She lectures widely, has taught at Birkbeck, Bristol and Buckingham universities; she writes for various publications, and leads art and garden tours. Her most recent book, Cultivating the Renaissance (Routledge, 2021) , explores the evolution of Renaissance ideas and aesthetics through the Medici Tuscan villas. Her previous book, British Gardens in Time (Quarto, 2014), accompanied the BBC television series. Earlier works include Paradise of Exiles (Francis Lincoln, 2009), looking at the late nineteenth century Anglo-American garden-makers in Florence, Icons of Twentieth Century Landscape Design (Frances Lincoln, 2006) and Policies and Pleasaunces (Barn Elms, 2007), a Guide to Scotland’s Gardens.

  • Wednesday, November 8, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Head Gardeners at Historic Sites with Seamus O’Brien at Kilmacurragh, Online

    The Gardens Trust Wednesday webinar series this Autumn will focus on head gardeners working at historic sites. This is the first lecture of the second set of five talks, exploring how individual head gardeners are balancing the heritage of their site, the wishes of its owner(s) and their own interests and experience. We’ll hear about the role from both seasoned head gardeners and those more recently appointed. Learn about the challenges they face, including climate change, as well as the joys of horticulture and heritage. you may purchase a ticket for the entire course of 5 sessions at a cost of £20 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.

    On Wednesday, November 8, the featured speaker will be Seamus O’Brien. Kilmacurragh is a 17th century estate in County Wicklow and for several centuries was seat of the Acton family. In this talk, head gardener Seamus O’Brien traces the evolution of the estate and gardens from its monastic origins to the creation of a Dutch park in 1697, which was swept away in the 19th century to create the present wild-style Robinsonian garden. The plant collection at Kilmacurragh was augmented by successive Keepers of the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin in Dublin. Following the Acton family’s bankruptcy after the Great War, the gardens and famous Queen Anne house fell derelict until 1996 when the estate was purchased by the Irish State to be managed as a satellite of the National Botanic Gardens, Glasnevin. Seamus will talk about his experiences managing Kilmacurragh today as one of the largest restoration projects in Britain and Ireland, and his work re-stocking the garden though expeditions to various parts of the world.

    Seamus O’Brien has been Head Gardener at the National Botanic Gardens, Kilmacurragh, since 2006. He trained at Glasnevin and holds an International Diploma in Botanic Gardens Management from Kew. He has studied plants in their native habitats in China, Nepal, Tibet, California, Bhutan, Myanmar, Chile, Australia, Tasmania, New Zealand and India, and has published two award-winning books inspired by these expeditions. He lectures internationally and is a member of the RHS Woody Plant Committee and a judge of the RHS Early Spring Shows. In 2018 Seamus was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland’s Gold Medal of Honour, in 2021 he was made a Fellow of the Explorer’s Club (New York) and in 2022 he was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s (UK) Loder Rhododendron Cup.